Faced with the challenge of standing out during the second busiest selling season of the year, and knowing that kids drive 80% of home PC purchases, even though most advertising is targeted at parents, HP needed a Back-to-School campaign that would do two things: First, get teens to engage with the brand in a way that would convince them that HP’s student-focused notebooks and desktop PCs were “cool”. And second, the campaign needed to deliver an interactive and engaging way for teens to persuade their parents into buying a computer for them.

We created The Society For Parental Mind Control–an “underground” teen movement dedicated to helping kids get the computers they really want through “mind control”. We spread the word with virally seeded web films, video and flash banners, a summer concert tour, and profile pages on the best social networking sites–all driving to The Society’s secret lair at controltheirminds.org. Here, kids could learn all about HP products, watch fun videos, and send mom or dad an “ESP-mail”–a mind-bending e-mail designed to encourage parents to buy them computer. Parents were targeted with DRTV, banners, and print.

We saw a 36% increase in HP brand preference among influencer teens. We saw impressive growth in HP’s Back To School Quarter numbers as well: Income went up 28%. Overall sales rose by 15%. Notebook PC sales went up 49%. Desktop PC sales increased by 15%. And, we helped HP surpass $100 Billion in annual sales for the first time ever.