The Brief

The global corporate slogan of HP is “The Computer is Personal Again”. However, HP Japan has been trying unsuccessfully to communicate this brand message. The objective is to build a strong brand pull for HP Japan by establishing a brand image among young people that HP is a PC brand that lets you express yourself.

Creative Execution

We launched a campaign that put individuality back into job-hunting in Japan. It was the introduction of an entirely new recruitment system: students who gave unique answers to questions set by top executives of leading companies in Japan on the HP campaign site were given an opportunity to have face-to-face job interviews with the presidents.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

We felt that the best time to communicate the message “express yourself” to young people is during their job-hunting period - because when they are job-hunting, they lose all individuality. In Japan, everybody in their third year at college starts to put on a dark suit, dyes their hair back to black, memorise a job interview manual for model answers, and battle against everyone else to find employment with any company that offers security for the rest of their working lives.

Results

During the campaign period, over 100,000 students registered on the site and became believers in the HP brand that encouraged them to “express yourself.” One hundred of them were given an opportunity to meet top executives for job interviews, given exemptions from job application examinations, and allowed to participate in a special internship program. Through the campaign, the score of the HP brand awareness among college students became 223% from the previous year. Job recruitment is a national event that occurs every year. By making it the stage for our campaign, we created a mechanism by which we send over 100,000 young HP fans into the market each year.