On Advertising: HP gets personal

On Advertising: HP gets personal - Technology - International Herald Tribune: "FingerSkilz.tv, shows what appear to be close-up videos of a man's hand on a desktop, using two fingers to perform soccer tricks with a wadded-up paper "ball." The Brazilian-style handiwork attracted more than 180,000 unique visitors to the site, prompted widespread discussion on blogs and moved imitators to create their own "fingerball" videos and post them on the Web.

Last Thursday, the site, supposedly set up by a bored young office worker, was revealed to be a "viral" advertisement from Hewlett-Packard, the leading edge of a new global campaign that aims to imbue HP's machines with some of the coolness more commonly associated with Apple.

The new strategy follows the hiring last year of Satjiv Chahil, a former marketing executive at Palm, Sony and Apple, as head of marketing for the HP personal systems group, which includes the company's PCs and laptops. It emphasizes consumers, with all their quirky individualisms, after many years in which manufacturers like HP and Dell courted corporate customers first.

Goodby, based in San Francisco, is working on the HP account with the global agency groups McCann Erickson and Publicis; Zenith Optimedia is handling the media buying. The agencies are now looking for European and Asian personalities to supplement figures like Jay-Z and a snowboarder, Shaun White, who appear in the U.S. ads."