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| The 3000’s marketing chief tunes
in from making a name for HP newcomers The newest member of the Commercial Systems Division (CSY) management team tunes in this month from a hot market: HP’s broadcast video products. Christine Martino spoke to us on her first official day of work, after meeting informally with some channel partners at 3000 distributor Client Systems just after GM Harry Sterling named her to succeed Roy Breslawski. She came to the 3000 division from what she called a “fun and sexy market” to get to a job that’s “more mainstream HP. This division is certainly mainstream HP.” Martino faced a challenge familiar to 3000 customers while working for the VID division, in a video market dominated by titans like Sony: to get better alternatives noticed and earn market share. “HP has made a very good name for themselves in the broadcast industry, especially compared to the other computer companies that have attempted it, like IBM, Digital and SGI,” she said. Martino noted that after her four years of work in the division, HP was number two in on-air broadcast video servers, behind Tektronix. “We were a virtual unknown when I started at VID and are now number two,” she said, “so that was kind of a fun ride.” Martino said understanding the
market and creating a strong product image are the things that can transfer
first to her new post. “Branding is a kind of strong term,” she
said, “but in a way we want branding of HP 3000s — a real sense
of what we can bring to this marketplace. To take the 3000 into new
markets, we need to have that same kind of thinking, of really
understanding what the end-user needs are completely and forming our
message around that.” HP changed its product line significantly in VID
mid-way through Martino’s term there, “so a lot of the [I did]
work in hashing out where we should play in the market will be really
useful [in CSY], especially if we want to take a look at new vertical
markets. I have a knack for adding a little pizzazz to things and putting
new faces on things, If I can drive that through the organization,
that’s good, because it lets everybody know there’s still
commitment to the 3000. It’s a cool box, regardless of how long
it’s been around.” Her approach to communicating with the customers will cover many different kinds of media: “We need to pump up the volume on our advertising campaign, being much more aggressive with it this year,” she said. “We also have the plans and funding to be much more aggressive with PR this year. One thing you find when you get through your channel down to the end user is they need to see and hear things in a variety of different vehicles.” HP will be advertising in its focused vertical market publications, but she’s not yet ready to place that $100,000-a-page 3000 ad in Golf Digest. And some new opportunities to use the Web for a customer message are on her desk this month. “The Web’s going to be very important to us, and we’re putting a lot of effort into it — but people need to know about your Web site,” she said. “It’s kind of a chicken-and-egg thing. I don’t know if the average 3000 buyer spends a lot of their day surfing the Web. You need to use other vehicles to make people aware of what you have at a Web site.” No online efforts can substitute for contact gained through customer visits like the Strategic Customer Forums held in November, she added. Martino said shaking up the HP network “isn’t one of my goals on the first day of the job, but that’s definitely my style. I never like to do things just because that’s how we’ve always done them. I don’t really plan on shaking everything up immediately, but I will look at everything we do to make sure we’re moving in the right direction. Even though VID was a new organization, being in the Test and Measurement Organization meant there was quite a bit of infrastructure we had to live with — which I constantly questioned. I plan on doing that here, whether it’s within the channel or the Enterprise Systems Group.” She said she’s spending her first month studying the customer base and channel partners, targets and allies in extending the reach of the 3000. Copyright 1998 The 3000 NewsWire. All rights reserved |
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