Integrated Campaigns for HP and Juke by Samsung

I have only my creative instincts and years of advertising experience when I approach campaigns. Two such campaigns I will attempt to decipher are the HP printer campaign featuring Gwen Stefani and the Samsung Juke campaign featuring the song “Juke Box Hero”. Both these campaigns are considered integrated campaigns. Integrated marketing is defined on Wikipedia as follows:

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC), according to The American Marketing Association, is “a planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time.” Marketing Power Dictiona Integrated marketing communication can be defined as a holistic approach to promote buying and selling in the digital economy. This concept includes many online and offline marketing channels. Online marketing channels include any e-marketing campaigns or programs, from search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click, affiliate, email, banner to latest web-related channels for webinar, blog, RSS, podcast, and Internet TV. Offline marketing channels are traditional print (newspaper, magazine), mail order, public relations, industry analyst relations, billboard, radio and television.

Both these campaigns approach this integration model differently. I will look at both examples and see what they tried to accomplish. Then I will conclude what to leverage for future ad campaigns.

First, I will look at HP. The challenge of HP, as Kate Maddox points out in her article, was to focus on delivering a next-generation digital printing platform to consumers, small businesses and enterprise customers. The global ad campaign, developed by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, includes TV, online and outdoor. Kate Maddox quotes Kathy Stromberg, VP at HP’s Imaging and Printing Group, “We really want to think beyond printers to the world of printing. We want people to think about printing in terms of the web and what the web is enabling.” The campaign brings to life the strategic shift that not only HP wants to make, but what our customers are driving.” This campaign is supported with a hefty $300 million global ad campaign aimed at getting consumers to better use the web to custom produce everything from invitations and greeting cards to concert souvenir books – and, of course, print those using HP products.

A growing trend: Stromberg adds, “For the first time in our history, we are having at least 50% of our media online versus traditional media.”

Central to the campaign are microsites featuring celebrity entrepreneurs, with applications that let users express themselves by mashing, creating and publishing digital content in innovative ways. As part of the campaign, these celebrities were the focal points to highlight different printing possibilities one can achieve by using an HP printer. For example, at hp.com/gwen, users can combine their personal content with free designs from Gwen Stefani to print greeting cards, CD labels and paper dolls. Based on snowboard developer Jake Burton’s style, one can go on hp.com/burton and create small and midsize businesses with online tools to help them build their own brands. And at hp.com/paula, entrepreneurs can use free customizable tools to print business cards, letterheads and brochures based on graphic artists’ designs. (source: Kate Maddox)

The online campaign also featured banner ads that let users create content such as business cards within the ads. The campaign kicked off with distinctive out-of-home placements, including a billboard in Times Square that displayed user-generated content created online. To provide a printing toolbar as well as Snapfish printing service to its Windows Live Spaces community, HP has partnered with Yahoo and Microsoft.

As posted on the blog by geeksugar, the basis of this campaign, as referenced by The Utility Belt, was to encourage people to experiment with demanding print jobs at home and at work. In doing so, consumers will be able to add photos to Gwen’s Sweet Escape tour shots to create their very own album. Gwen will also be showcasing Harajuku Lovers paper dolls that can be customized online and printed at home. HP’s new logo for these designs inspired by Gwen will be called “Gwen Stefani for you”. Additionally mentioned in the Adage article about the HP campaign, Ms. Stromberg explains an aspect of the campaign, “We are focusing on what the end result is rather than hardware products.”

One of Gwen Stefani's customizable paper dolls.

She continues in the Adage article by saying, “The campaign is the culmination of an integrated HP strategy to make web-based printing simpler than before and to build itself as not just a computer manufacturer, but a next-generation printing platform. We’re looking at platforms that cross into the enterprise space, the high-end graphic arts, and every venue where customers are going to want to create and publish that digital content.”

What has not been noted throughout my research was the onslaught of Mrs. Stefani’s image in fashion magazines, as well as the fact that she just happened to launch a perfume around the same time period as this campaign.

The challenge of the Juke campaign was to tap into this youth market, while still trying to create appeal to consumers up to their forties. As reported in an Adweek article, the Juke is described as:

“…a phone for high school kids and college students who are tired of carrying around two devices and don’t have a lot of money,” said Roger Entner, an analyst at telecom research firm Ovum, Boston. The fact that the Juke carries as much music as an iPod Nano doesn’t necessarily make it an iPhone killer, but it does give parents an alternative that might pacify their kids. At $99, it is a quarter of the price of the iPhone. “It’s a tremendous product for the price,” said Bill Ogle, the new CMO of Samsung Telecommunications America, Dallas. “Samsung brought the first music-capable phone to the U.S. and is continuing that history by launching the Juke by Samsung.”


The additional challenge of the Juke campaign was not only to create a highly visible integrated campaign, but to do it with $20 million, compared to the $300 million budget of HP. Cheil decided an iconic, very product-focused approach would help the Juke cut through the clutter, and help it stand apart from the Verizon advertising that was launching simultaneously. How do you drive an iconic, product-focused ad? The thought was to drive it with a very iconic song that just happened to reinforce the product name: Foreigner’s classic, “Juke Box Hero”.

The TV teaser and thirty-second spot were supported by traditional outdoor and print execution. Additionally, Cheil created an online video contest to continue the momentum built by the TV and print campaign. The purpose of the contest was to attract amateur musicians who were invited to participate in an original music video contest, rightly named “Juke Box Hero”, to vie for $10,000. Ultimately, being part of an online jukebox. In response, Bill Ogle said the Juke campaign will “undoubtedly be the largest initiative of its kind for Samsung in the U.S. market.” Samsung spent $59 million behind its phones in 2006 with $19 million doled out in Q4, per Nielsen Monitor. Plus, Verizon spent more than a billion dollars on media last year with a little less than a third of its budget dedicated to Q4.


The online contest via YouTube, attracted a respectable number of participants whom eventually ended up on an online jukebox. The second mechanism of the “Juke Box Hero” contest was to engage the consumer to create playlists on samsungjuke.com to help crown the Juke Box Hero. Creating a playlist was also supported with a Facebook widget, which is embedded in a person’s page. This widget highlighted the participant’s choices to be the Juke Box Hero. Additionally, consumers were encouraged on IMEEM to create a music playlist of untapped talent to listen to.

Stepping back and looking at both campaigns, I can appreciate what they were both trying to accomplish. Both had the challenge of cutting through the clutter of their respective product categories. HP took a more traditional path — using a celebrity to attract consumers to engage with the product. I only noticed their online campaign, which seems to support their proclamation of 50% of their media being online. From a creative standpoint, it packed a powerful punch. It was attention-getting and had a consistent voice. I would only say for an integrated campaign, it seems odd I noticed the online more than anything else.

Perhaps being closer to the Juke project, I saw the impact a bit clearer. I couldn’t miss the TV, the print was in the New York Times, and Cheil used Samsung’s electronic billboard. Online was prominent with banners and ad placements on YouTube. I feel Cheil was the David against the Goliath Verizon campaign. Cheil had a smaller budget than both Verizon and HP, and was thereby challenged to maximize every media dollar possible. In the end, we must all step back and see what a fully integrated campaign can be. The traditional route of TV and print combined with online is still an effective model, but it cannot be the only one available to us. Recently, we have been exploring the possibilities of social networking as an untapped resource we have not fully utilized.

In the end I think both campaigns are worthy of recognition, whether they sold a million plus units or not isn’t always in the lap of the creative execution. We can only hope Juke helped build brand awareness from our previous campaigns. And the next time one considers a phone, they’ll consider Samsung.

By Jeffrey Babson Interactive Copywriter, Cheil USA