HP targets business travellers to take on iPad

HP has identified business travellers as a key target audience for its latest Windows 8 tablet as it looks to tap into the bring your own device trend and raise awareness there are more suitable tablets for business than the iPad.

HPad

The tech company has partnered with First Great Western Trains and British Airways for out of home, experiential, social and digital activity targeting CEOs, CIOs and owners of small to medium sixed businesses by positioning the Elite Pad 900 as “the tablet built for business”.

As part of the £1m campaign, two First Great Western Trains have been wrapped – in partnership with CBS Outdoor – with the campaign’s creative, which will each travel on three to four key commuter routes a day for six months. Inside the train, an HP ambassador will demo the Elite Pad to first class passengers and also offer standard class passengers the opportunity to upgrade their carriage to trial the device.

Concurrently, the HP campaign will appear in six major airports across Europe with co-sponsored Intel and Microsoft digital and poster advertising expected to reach more than 22 million travellers over the next two months. The advertising is supported by experiential stands in BA lounges showcasing the Elite Pad 900, Elite Book Folio and Elite Book Revolve.

The aim of the campaign is to raise awareness HP is a manufacturer of tablets and capture business people responsible for IT with a mobility message at a time when they are considering which ecosystems to upgrade. Support for Windows XP – which many businesses still run on – will cease in 2014.

Dexter Harriss, HP head of commercial marketing for printing and personal systems in UK and Ireland, told Marketing Week: “People are already bringing their own iPads to work and this is why we brought [the Elite Pad 900] out. A lot of people don’t know we have tablets yet so this is predominantly an awareness and experiential campaign to inform [business people] you don’t just have to look at iPads any more.”

The £1m investment in this product alone also emphasises CEO Meg Whitman’s commitment to make HP a mobility company, according to Rebecca Shears, HP’s head of marketing, printing and personal systems in the UK and Ireland.

She added: “The size of investment shows how serious we are about business and mobility as we’ve never spent that much on a B2B campaign just to showcase one product. Mobility is key to our strategy and that’s why mobile for business is the important message in this campaign.”

HP’s PC division [Personal Systems Group] suffered in the last quarter, reporting a 20 per cent drop in revenue year on year in the three months to 30 April.

In the results statement CEO Meg Whitman said HP’s road to recovery was a “multi-year journey” and was “encouraged” by the second quarter performance.

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