AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Advertising Age

Agency Will Deploy HP Printing Technology for Other Clients

BBDO’s slogan is “The work. The work. The work” — which now includes working with Hewlett-Packard to improve the way the agency’s clients distribute and track their direct mail, packaging, point-of-sale materials and other marketing collateral.

One part of a new arrangement between HP and BBDO involves the marketer handing the agency a relatively straightforward piece of ad business, essentially a global account that was formerly handled by Publicis. In working on the account, BBDO will partner with Omnicom Group sibling Goodby, Silverstein & Partners — which will remain the creative engine on the business — to continue to evolve the HP Imaging and Printing Group’s “What do you have to say?” campaign.

But HP and BBDO are billing this as more than an ad deal, calling it a “strategic marketing partnership.” The idea is for BBDO to work with HP, harnessing the marketer’s latest printing and web products to improve the digital print supply chains for other BBDO or even Omnicom Group clients. “This isn’t about one of our clients replacing their existing printers with HP printers,” said Andrew Robertson, president-CEO, BBDO Worldwide. “It’s about using HP’s latest web technologies to help our clients’ reduce printing duplication and waste, track their work better, and really take advantage of things like the ability to customize on the fly.”

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