Going to the Company Elders for Help

New York Times, March 10, 2008 — On a recent Saturday afternoon, John Toppel, a retired Hewlett-Packard sales manager, did not spend his leisure time golfing or mowing the lawn. He spent it at a local electronics store extolling the virtues of H.P. laptop computers to customers. He was not paid by the store or by Hewlett-Packard, for that matter. Mr. Toppel, 62, left the technology company four years ago, but he remains a volunteer cheerleader for H.P., one of thousands of its retirees whom the company is trying to galvanize into an auxiliary army of senior marketers, good-will ambassadors and volunteer sales people. None of them get paid; they do it, they say, because of their affection for the company.

Streamlining HP

Sam Lucente's business is corporate design. Persuasion is his game.

Fast Company, October 1, 2007 — Why am I meeting with you guys?" It was the spring of 2005, just three weeks into Mark Hurd's tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ), and product design was not at the top of his list of priorities. Hurd was consumed with the monumental task of restructuring a company with more than 150,000 employees in 170 countries and making operational efficiency a cornerstone of the tech giant's competitive strategy.

The ponytailed Sam Lucente, who'd become HP's first-ever vice president of design two years earlier, was in the hot seat. He flashed a slide that showed dozens of HP logos, each created by a different team within the company. The next slide was of a single logo, crafted by his corporate design crew, that could be used everywhere. Lucente predicted... continue reading

Best Global Brands

How five names in this year's rankings staged their turnarounds

BusinessWeek, August 6, 2007 — Reviving even a storied brand isn't easy once consumers have a negative perception of it...Still, it's possible to stage a brand comeback. Several such stories emerged in this year's ranking.

How H-P Reclaimed Its PC Lead Over Dell†

Shifting Battlefield to Stores was Key; Help from Vera Wang

Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2007 — Hewlett-Packard Co. is riding high today as the world's undisputed leader of personal-computer sales, but that's not how Todd Bradley found things when he joined the company in 2005.

Let Consumers Control More Than Just Ads

Direct Involvement: Innovative Marketers Invite Consumers to Guide Business Strategy

CMO Strategy by AdAge, April 9, 2007 — Stop selling consumers short. They want to do more than create ads for you. The latest wisdom of the crowds is that it's a good idea to ask consumers to create ads they think will appeal to other people like them. s it smart to allow everyday people to vote on which ads should be aired? Sure.

Behind the Epidemic of Lousy Viral Campaigns†

Me-too-itis Hobbles Too Many Marketers' Efforts

Advertising Age, January 8, 2007 — Most of the online viral campaigns you hear about and see these days have one thing in common: They suck.

What CEOs just don't get about marketing†

Advertising Age, March 7, 2005 — Good Execution Can't Save Bad Strategy