HP needed to strut its stuff to London’s creative world. While known for home and corporate computing, no one knew HP’s cutting-edge design technology was behind some of the world’s most visually-stunning theatrical productions.

Having learned peer advocacy was the primary driver behind the Digital Media and Entertainment community (DME) decision makers’ choice of work stations, HP devised a unique, ownable experience to generate leads and turn them into brand apostles.

The 11-day ZED pop-up studio was the first promotion of its kind, a place for a hard-to-reach niche audience to fall in love with the HP Z Workstation range.

Promotional elements included:

• Demonstrations of the soon-to-be-launched ZBook laptop workstations

• Previews of Nuke and MARI software

• Workshops with AutoDesk and Adobe, software ecosystem partners

• Creativity challenges: 3D sculpting sessions and multi-studio collaborative to create an animated short film

• Evening talks representing influential industry gurus -- Framestore, The Mill and Milk

The HP ZED pop-up studio showed firsthand why HP workstations offer the best tool for London’s thriving creative community, delivering an authentic and empowering brand experience on all fronts:

• Peer advocacy: increased 66% in the target audience; unaided HP brand awareness soared 200%.

• Improved overall perception: HP now surpasses its main competitor in 85% of key vertical category dimensions.

• Successful social interaction: organic ZED Twitter activity reached 18.2 million impressions.

• Generation of leads: 4,000+ generated at a price per seat opportunity of £0.02 per qualified lead, with ROI calculated (against value of seat opportunities generated) of 11:1.

News of HP’s innovative promotional approach spread beyond the DME vertical category. HP is now adopting it across multiple industry sectors and geographic regions as a growing communications platform. ZED events have run in Paris and New York, with Hollywood (LA), Bollywood (Mumbai) and Cannes (Film Festival) in development.