Beyond Urban Branding

Shaun White is hard not to love. He's funny, crazy, cocky- everything most of us wish we were. To see him do this ad with HP was awesome. I think HP is doing a great job of allowing for their stars to announce upcoming things (the skateboard line, the jacket etc.). -Beyond Urban Branding beyondurban@gmail.com

QBert De La Soul Tony Hawk HP's new campaign with Dr. Dre is no joke. Its major. Its corporate WAR at its best and I love it! Since I dropped the Dre-n-HP vs. Apple story lots of folks have emailed me, called me and smoke signaled me their thoughts. The essence of it- Apple ain't going out soft. They have arguably the most loyal followers of any tech brand ever. The other basic reality- PC's are for work, and Apples are for fun. But there is something else going on at HP. For lack of a better word for it, lets call it the "Jordan Strategy." Dr. Dre's Detox is possibly the most anticipated rap album in the history of the genre. I think HP is going after the NEW generation of beatmakers. They don't want Apple defectors. They want kids coming up now who see Dr. Dre as Jordan of rap. "Be like Dre" is the short version. Nike never said other peoples shoes weren't cool, comfortable or fun to wear. "But Jordan wears Nikes" was the bottom...

So I go to youtube and HP has a new Dr. Dre ad. It's blowing my mind because, I have written several pieces on HP ads. You can scroll down and see my pieces on Serena and Jay-Z. HP tends to do solid ads with cutting edge artists and athletes. But Dr. Drizzzle? Man, this is off the meat rack. Long story short, Dre is in the studio with rapper Stat Quo (Southern rappers represent!). He basically talks about how HP makes his music sound like its supposed to. Hewlett-Packard really came tight. Its a clean, quick, focused ad and Dr. Dre did not have to go out of his element to make the ad work. There is no artist Apple can get to counter this. Check and mate my good man. Put the board and the pieces away. Dre is in the building. This was unsuspected and well played. Now, on the real, its amazing to see Dr. Dre pushing hard for PC's on the music side of the game? Who would have thought Dre uses HP to make those block rockin' beats? Can Dr. Dre convince young aspiring beat maker...

Beyond Urban Branding opens Tech Week with a true banger of an ad. We'll look at tech ads from time to time on our blog. But this week its gonna be all tech brands, all the time. We will begin with HP's ad featuring Serena Williams. When we did the first soft launch, we reviewed the precision HP crafted their ad with Jay-Z . It's easily one of my favorite tech ads. I actually feel like HP and a lot of other well done ads don't get their proper recognition because Apple gets so much props for their ads. OK, so this ad is actually better than the Jay-Z ad for one reason in particular. Strategic co-branding. In one commercial Serena craftily pitches, her video game (never played it but apparently shes got something going on with EA Sports) her designs with Nike and most importantly- her clothing line Aneres . Now, I don't know why or how Andre 3000 and Uno were able to get shout outs in the ad. Was she just giving them props or did somebody have to pay to get them i...

HP did the thug thizz right there. Jay-Z was just about at the apex of his game when this ad dropped. The hologram effects and the casual conversation gave HP an amazing edge. The ad dripped confidence and coolness like few urban ads have. It also gave Hip-Hop a mature look that was long overdue and it did not looked forced. -Beyond Urban Branding