HP to tell the world it is serious about the Web

Hewlett-Packard is to blow a cool $100 million on a new advertising campaign in an attempt to convince people that it is serious about the Internet. Despite being responsible for much of the hardware that helps power the Net, HP is still not perceived to be an Internet company, marketing manager Nick Earle admitted at a conference in San Francisco. That's why HP is to embark on the biggest-ever advertising campaign in the company's history, although exactly how that money is to spent still remains sketchy. What is known is that HP has poached Allison Johnson, who used to work on IBM's e-business campaign, to help carry out this costly makeover. An in a sideways swipe at the recent scramble to make money on the Net, Earle said that HP will be successful in what he called "Internet Chapter Two", when companies are no longer fixated with just selling books and trawling the Web looking for information. ®