HOW CREATIVE STORYTELLING WON OVER THE TOP
500 DECISION MAKERS FOR HPE

Value we created (the results)

• 1min 26sec average campaign dwell time
• 4.5x higher click through rate than standard HPE awareness banners
• 10.51% replay rate
• 300% higher interaction rate than the Economist Group benchmark
   

The business problem we solved

HPE are committed to delivering technological innovation that fosters business transformation. In order to fulfil this, it’s essential that they are able to communicate effectively with IT decision makers, an audience that is traditionally hard to engage with. The Yeasayers campaign sought to solve this problem by engaging this audience on their terms with content tailor made for their interests - that crucially did more than the often dry technology business campaigns that they are used to.

What we did

Globally, HPE was running a campaign focussed on convincing IT decision makers to say 'Yes' (two TV spots were made, along with banner ads). The existing campaign focused on the idea that IT managers are bombarded with products and requests that they have to say 'no' to all the time. HPE wanted to capture their attention and help them say 'yes'. Our role was to extend this concept on an experience level for the EMEA audience.

In order to capture the attention of IT managers we first had to tap into their interests. Social analysis of 500 IT decision makers on Twitter revealed that gaming was the third most mentioned interest in their profiles (beaten only by sport and family). Taking this as a starting point, we then brought the HPE brand story to life by building a mobile game inspired by classic arcade ping pong-style games. It started with players watching the ball move from side to side, shaking their head. But then the game rotated vertically, so players begin nodding along…saying 'yes'.

How we did it

The game featured a number of levels in order to meaningfully engage users and to help us tell the key parts of the HPE value story. Through a series of “power ups”, the game revealed the benefits of HPE’s core offerings such as their data and analytics capability and their hybrid IT solutions. This was storytelling done differently.

The campaign was placed with The Economist which was identified as a key publication for the campaign’s target audience. The Economist ran the game in their own apps across Europe and then Asia and achieved 300% higher interaction rate than the Economist Group benchmark. What’s more, the campaign achieved an astonishing 1min 26sec average dwell time and 6.7 times higher click through rate than standard HPE awareness banners. It's now being built to live permanently on HPE.com and featured prominently at HPE’s biggest event of 2017.