The Campaign

HP is the world’s leader in printing supplies, with a proud history of technological innovation that puts environmental issues at the heart of its corporate mission. It has worked tirelessly in China to bring the same corporate responsibility to its practices in the mainland, not just within core cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, but also those harder to reach second, third and fourth tier cities. However, HP faces a problem that is persistent amongst many developing nations, the production and sale of counterfeit or cheap refill supplies. Whilst much can be done whilst working with Governments and within international law, more is needed to be done to educate and persuade key stakeholders and target audiences. With determination to stop these practices that can be significantly harmful to the environment, HP set about changing how people in China’s second, third and fourth tier cities viewed both original and non-original printing supplies. Our remit presented some core difficulties. How do you deliver a clear and consistent message to areas where wages are relatively low and information hard to come by? To overcome this, we would seek to change the perception that counterfeit or cheap refill supplies are cost-effective and even more worrying – not harmful to the environment. Our tactics leveraged both social media and more traditional forms to ensure an overarching approach to spreading our core messages and changing attitudes that have become particularly entrenched. We would therefore bring HPs message to people’s doorstep.

The Brief

To educate Chinese consumers about ensuring the sale and purchase of original printer supplies and subsequently to increase sales of original printer supplies by delivering a constant message to the target audience. This would be done via opinion leaders and a variety of activities utilizing both new and traditional media. Ensuring we highlight: - The wrong perception that counter-fit or refill supplies are cost-effective and have a negligible impact on the environment. - The clear advantages original printer supplies have over counter-fits. - The need for better flows of communication between HP and these hard-to-reach consumers.

Results

Working closely with HP, we have delivered the tour to five of the key cities outlined in our strategic plan. Our exciting journey with HP has seen a substantial reaction to the story we are trying to tell. Thus far, over 140 well-respected and influential local journalists, enterprise customers and analysts attended the events and helped disseminate our core messages about counter-fit supplies to the Chinese consumer. We have been able to help generate healthy discussions across a variety of media platforms including CCTV, WHTV, NJTV, GZTV and CDTV. Yet the campaign would be nothing if it failed to make any discussion within the powerful netizens community. To this end we have released 219 Weibo posts, directly touched 4,030,500 internet users, have been forwarded 25,017 times and received 7,780 comments. Importantly the coverage HP has received has covered 29 provinces, supporting one of the core strategies of the campaign, to impact and invigorating discussion in China’s 2nd, 3rd and 4th tier cities.

Execution

Our execution had four strands: • Keep it green by Sending out ‘green’ invitations to promote environmental protection, the design of a personalized eco-stamp for each blogger, and a signing board to encourage participants to support environmental protection. • Target strategically important cities that would pave the way for the next wave of China’s development as a core focus of HP’s business model. • Give consumers and influencer’s hands-on experience to ensure they received the core ‘dividing’ lines between original and counter-fit supplies. • Stay on message by education all media and key influencers on our core message when covering the tour, this meant that all media coverage the tour was exposed to would carry the central principles of our campaign.

The Situation

There is confusion amongst Chinese consumers as to the benefits of original printer supplies, especially within second, third and fourth tier cities. Many mistakenly assume that the recycling and reuse of cheap, counter-fit supplies will have notional environmental impact. This is compounded by the difficulty in telling the difference between those original and fake goods. HP needed to bring their message to the hands and doorstep of the Chinese consumer, only then could they show give people insights into the true difference between the two.

The Strategy

In 2013, HP worked closely with the agency to develop a strategic plan that would see its core objective delivered via a ‘HP Supplies Public Benefit Tour’. The strategy was seeking to use the tour as a backdrop to connect with consumers on a more intrinsic level and help change attitudes towards original printer supplies. This was vital because we considered the delivery mechanisms to be as an important strategic pillar as the actually overarching narrative. For the tour we selected strategically important cities that would help create momentum including Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Wuhan and Chengdu. Beijing was selected to give the campaign/tour a focal point at its beginning and thus helping to create momentum, ensuring we could leverage the opinions of key influencers across many different types of media.