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Media world: HP’s ad campaign too hot to handle
Sunday, November 02, 2008 By Catherine O’Mahony
Poor old HewlettPackard. It must have seemed so jolly at the planning stage. A room full of people trying to come up with something – anything – to help them promote the new touch-screen computer model during the crucial Christmas sales season.

Some bright spark has the notion of reviving the 1980s Joan Jett hit Do You Wanna Touch Me and using it across the entire ad campaign.

Brilliant, say his bosses. It’s cheeky, it’s fun, it’s not what they’ll expect from boring old HP. Fantastic.

Off they go to invest millions in a campaign, which is now airing across the US.

And then someone twigs that all the royalties for HP’s use of the song will go to British musician and convicted paedophile Gary Glitter, who wrote and released this song in 1972.

Suddenly lyrics that run: ‘‘Do you wanna touch? – Yeah! Do you wanna touch? – Yeah! Do you wanna touch me there? Yeah!” – start to seem less fun.

Cue tabloid outrage in Britain (where Glitter’s antics are monitored more or less daily). By last Tuesday, US lobby group AbuseWatch.net had issued the first call for a HP boycott.

It’s hard to believe – given how easy it is to access information these days – that HP would have made such an avoidable gaffe.

Computers are not in short supply at HP, you would assume, and anyone with a basic familiarity with Google would have worked out the Glitter connection in seconds, even given the fact that Gary Glitter is not a well-known name in the US.

An online song directory I checked last week listed 90 tracks with titles that contained the word ‘‘touch’’, so there must have been a few alternatives.

Perhaps HP took a calculated risk and is now hoping it all blows over. It’s a US campaign, so the chances of a major outcry in that market are probably limited.

HP has, however, already had to scrap its digital campaign, because that can be seen in Britain, so that has been a cost.

And it’s attracted some terrible publicity, although it’s arguably of the kind that may pass below the radar of its target market.

The music world is awash with behaviour that would appal the moral majority, so it’s a minefield for brands – and it’s probably hard to find any track that’s utterly squeaky clean.

Still, with a bit more care, HP might have generated a much better story for itself by picking up on some genuinely iconic music, like Microsoft did when it used Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones or Apple which scored some credibility when it picked up on U2’s Vertigo. Instead, even being generous, it looks like HP didn’t bother to do its homework.

catherine@sbpost.ie

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