HP to promote touchscreen printer in entire ad break

The ad will use a touchscreen creative that will be common across all the commercials during Channel 4’s Heston Blumenthal Christmas Feast Special on Friday (December 18). It has been put together in a collaboration between BBDO, M2M and Channel 4 and will see five ads linked together by an HP branded creative.

The ad break forms part of a wider Touchsmart campaign that encompasses desktop, laptop and printing interfaces. It has been trialled in France and is being rolled out worldwide by the computing giant, in an effort to promote its new printer range.

HP says it “was developed to highlight the new HP Photosmart printer’s touchscreen interface”, and shows a finger swiping the TV screen to move between ads.

Jan Huckfeldt, HP marketing director of imaging and printing group for EMEA, adds: “A lot of documents and photos remain on the hard drive and don’t ever get printed. HP is making it easier to crop, enlarge, edit and edit photos, which you can do directly on the printer. It’s a big step forward in printing technology.”

The ads featured will be for John Lewis, Coty, HMV, Waitrose and Guinness. They have been edited together by BBDO in Paris.

Mark Hanlon, TV account director at M2M, says: “It’s becoming increasingly hard to create standout in any pioneering manner leading up to Christmas. Our relationship with Channel 4 meant we could create a truly pioneering way to showcase touchsmart technology within the biggest pre-Christmas program for our audience. We’re very excited, as this has never been done before.”