Web DevelopmentPC Brands Get Behind A$100M Advertising Campaign In Desperate Bid To Get People To Buy A PC
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Some of the biggest brands in the PC business are set to get behind a $100M advertising campaign aimed at stimulating demand for a PC.
Recent research from Gartner and IDC reveals that Windows 10 has failed to stimulate PC interest among both business and consumers. Also failing to impress the market is a sleuth of new PC ‘s that are thinner, faster and lighter than ever before.
Many of the new PC’s detach from keyboards so they can function as tablets, too.
Most new PCs are now powered by Windows 10, which Microsoft bills as its best operating system yet.
“With this perfect storm of innovation, we felt it was the time to tell our story,” said Steve Fund, Intel’s chief marketing officer.
The fear among PC makers is that so many people have gone so long without buying a new personal computer that consumers are now happy with a combination of a tablet and smartphone at the expense of also owning a PC.
The $100 million marketing push aims to highlight how much better PCs have gotten since smartphones and tablets came along.
Rival PC makers Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo are joining forces with Microsoft and Intel to revive languishing PC sales with ads that don’t promote specific brands.
They’ll be punctuated with the slogan, “PC does what?”
$5M of the $100M is expected to be spent in Australia.
The campaign is similar to what beef tourism and dairy producers have done to stimulate interest in dying categories.
“People think having something good is good enough because they are unaware of how much better the PCs are now.” Said Fund.
The campaign, scheduled to begin Monday in the U.S. and China and later in other parts of the world will include TV commercials on major networks and online ads.
The participating companies will split the $100 million cost of the campaign, which will run through November in an effort to entice holiday shoppers.
The ads are primarily targeting consumers who haven’t bought a new PC in at least four years.
The PC push comes amid a 3 1/2-year decline in sales that has been driven by a shift to smartphones and tablets able to handle many of the tasks that previously required desktop and laptop computers.
Even the late July release of Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system couldn’t reverse the slide in sales of PC’s.
Worldwide shipments of PCs fell by 8 percent from the previous year during the three-month period ending in September, according to the research group Gartner.
Lenovo, HP and Dell were the top three PC makers in the quarter.
But the pendulum may be poised to swing in the other direction. About half the consumers polled in Gartner’s personal technology survey said they plan to buy a new PC during the next year, compared to just 21 percent who said they have a tablet on their shopping list.
In an effort to reverse a recent decline in iPad sales, Apple introduced a larger version of its trendsetting tablet that’s designed to behave much like a laptop.
The iPad Pro will sell for over $1000 in Australia and an accompanying keyboard will cost an additional $200.
Consumers who have owned the same PC for several years can now buy a vastly improved model for $500 to $700, Moorhead said, making it more likely the marketing campaign will win converts. “I think the PC might have its best hand in the past five to seven years,” Moorhead said.