HP uses social media to out-do competition

Giving the campaign a face
The campaign - called 'A day in the life of Mr Z'- was devised by McCann Erickson and is aimed at promoting three key attributes of the Z-series range: power, performance and reliability. Superhero mascot Mr Z was intended to embody these characteristics and communicate them to the creative community.

The idea for the campaign followed research by HP's PR agency Porter Novelli in April 2009. The research was aimed at understanding the creative community and developing ideas for engaging with it.

According to Jessica Rowntree, associate director of Porter Novelli, the study used online mapping software to determine the biggest influencers within agencies and to select the creative people that would be most appropriate to target through this campaign. The research highlighted the interactive behaviour of the audience and demonstrated that it is a close-knit community enjoying strong peer support and participating in conversations online. 'Many were also entrenched with the same [computer] brands, therefore we wanted to address these issues by getting the guys to use the product and talk about it in an incredible and creative way,' says Rowntree.