The bigger HP picture

I’ve been the key copywriter for all the work done at BBD for HP over the past five years. In 2012, we were mid-project on two weighty jobs when HP re-branded with the ‘one HP voice’.

This change threw out every aspect of the old approach to copy overnight. But we still had deadlines to hit. So I read the new guidelines, put my headphones on and set about thinking and writing in a whole new way. It was a very relieved client who phoned to say ‘thank you’ a few days later when the new copy had been well received. The rebrand work came thick and fast after that.

To HP’s credit, the new voice is the best thing they could have done for their brand. No more long, demanding, technically-focused, dense, feature-heavy sentences. Instead the writer is free to understand the tech and talk about it in a way the audience would appreciate.  

If you’re into long copy and want to see HP’s voice sustained beyond two lines on a web page, flick through this. It’s what I was writing when the re-brand hit.