The tri-nation cricket tournament in Colombo, involving India, Sri Lanka and New Zealand, ended a few days back. But for brand Compaq, it’s the start of a new innings – something it wants to repeat every year.
The trophy itself was an innovation – the theme of Compaq. It was the world’s first digital Cup with a Q (Compaq’s logo)-shaped LCD screen. The screen will flash match-winning moments, key statistics, photographs and fan messages.
It’s the first time that Hewlett Packard (HP) has sponsored a cricket tournament in India to increase the brand awareness of Compaq. It was an “expensive affair”, says the company, but the return on investments has been fabulous.
Shubhodip Pal, Head of Consumer Marketing, Personal Systems Group, HP India, says the buzz that the 360-degree campaign created has been amazing.
The print advertisements led to 18,721 queries through SMS and 46,249 phone calls and the TV ads generated 67,329 SMSs and 32,712 calls. The other advantage of being the title sponsor was the exposure that the brand got. The total electronic media coverage was all of 18 hours and the company conducted regular online and on-ground activities. HP also created a dedicated portal called compaqcup.com that had 121,327 unique visitors within 12 days. It registered 512,954 page views and received 22,741 messages for the Cup.
The SMSs, calls and page views just went through the roof minutes after the Men in Blue lifted the Compaq Cup.
Pal says the Compaq Cup helped it connect better with the youth. “Cricket made sense as we are focusing on the youth in a country where cricket is a religion”, he says.The strategy was also in tune with HP’s global model. HP, for example, is in a sponsoring tieup with the NBA in the US.
When it comes to marketing and branding, HP has many firsts to its credit. It was probably the first IT company to have started celebrity endorsements. “When we started with Shahrukh Khan almost three years ago, it was clearly to create an awareness of branded products in a market where white-box (assembled PCs) had close to 50 per cent market share. Our market share since the association with Shahrukh has gone up significantly,” says Pal. Compaq has also been associated with the mega star’s team, the Knight Riders.
So though the association with Khan continues, the title sponsorship of an international cricket tournament will also become an annual feature. Twice every year, the company conducts a survey to understand the pulse of the country. A year back, the company saw a shift from desktop to mobility. “During that time, we decided to move away from our family focus to individuals and from desktop to mobility,” Pal says.
For HP, branding is also about product launches. The company has a six-month cycle in terms of product road-map. So its campaign generally coincides with the launch of a new product. So, a new line of HP Pavillion was launched during the Will’s Fashion Week in October 2008, and HP launched Compaq 610 series of laptops during the Compaq Cup.
The campaign, however, has had its share of detractors, too. Many IT analysts say while there is a need for branding initiatives in view of the growing personal computer market in India, others feel such mass-market campaigns may not be necessary. “The Indian PC market is maturing and we are seeing an exponential growth of consumers. But unlike mobile phones, PCs have not been that relevant to the masses,” says Diptarup Chakraborti, principal research analyst, Gartner India.
Chakraborti also says though HP is number one in the PC and laptop segment, its sales growth on a quarter-on-quarter basis has been marginal (2.9 per cent). Competitors, however, have been able to grow the market by a few percentage points more.
But that’s precisely the reason why Compaq Cup became that much more relevant for HP.
