Q&A with Gary Elliott, VP Brand Marketing at Hewlett-Packard

As I mentioned in my last post, I am conducting interactive communication Q&A sessions with a number of ANA Annual Conference speakers. Gary Elliott, Vice President, Brand Marketing, Hewlett-Packard Company, is my first guest. Please find our conversation below.

1. The theme of this year’s ANA Annual conference is Reinvention and Innovation. What have you done this year to reinvent or innovate your brand?

Not so much re-invention as evaluating every opportunity to keep the HP brand fresh and relevant to both our external and internal audiences. We've evaluated and made decisions regarding utilization of more online media spending -- a doubling of our efforts from a year ago, new sponsorships (MTV's 'Meet or Delete'), cause-related marketing (Extreme Make-Over Katrina), cultural connections (Kyoto Foundation, Sydney Opera House), and event marketing ("HYPE Galleries" -- which demonstrate our printing technology at work). All these have contributed to keeping the HP brand fresh and relevant.

We also keep our business priorities clearly in front of us as we examine media, messaging strategies and design languages that show the potential to increase sales and grow our relevance with our audiences.

2. How does your marketing strategy embrace new forms of media that are constantly emerging? What are your perceptions about the use of traditional media in your marketing mix?

We've looked at how our audiences are using media for both information and for entertainment in every major market. We've adjusted our media mix accordingly. We and our media partners have also worked to develop a view of future media consumption patterns so that we have a longer term view of our investments. This helps in our planning and our negotiations. We've also increased our online presence and decreased our spend in other more traditional media.

3. One of the key platforms in the "reinvention equation" is marketing accountability. How does your increased focus on accountability influence your marketing decision making?

We are making progress. We are not where we need to be in having standardized metrics across the company but we are working toward that goal. Our first objective has been to build transparency and consistency in budget definitions and reporting. The majority of our spend is now being tracked.

Because we provide our customers with many different purchase choices -- via online, at retail, through call-centers, or through value-added resellers, we need to have measurements that can track the effectiveness of all of our programs.

We've also created a marketing dashboard that provides an updated view of our progress along two dozen key measurements that we hold ourselves accountable to as a marketing community.

4. How have you created brand loyalty among your consumers and what are you doing to keep them coming back?

Customers expect innovation from a technology company. This requires us to understand what parts of the technology experience are valued by our different customer segments and meeting those expectations. For example, we crafted a Total Care Package of support for our personal computer customers giving them added quality assurance; we have made it easier for customers to recycle our personal computer and printing products; we have simplified our website to make buying HP products only a few clicks away. Internally, we improved our Employee Purchase program to make it easier for HP employees and partners to purchase HP products.

5. HP has gone through some big changes recently, with a new CEO, the merger with Compaq, etc., all things that could have potentially hurt the brand in transition. Yet HP is doing well, and has restored its leadership in the technology sector. What were the most important things to keep top of mind during these tumultuous times that helped you come out on top?

The customer is in charge. Our job is to help them be successful. Everything we do needs to be focused on delivering services, products and solutions that satisfy their needs.

Comments

[Edward O'Meara]

Gary Elliott demonstrates a great point - marketers should focus on measured progress and focused risk taking.

Bragging about "reinvention" and "innovation" just illustrates self-promotional hype. Nice to see Gary did not fall into that trap. I hope all of your interviewees are this grounded and smart!