Bringing product capabilities to life

By creating the character of Jim, an IT manager experiencing a bad morning at work because of his overloaded and underperforming infrastructure, XPLANE brings a sense of realism and humor to a common problem and demonstrates the benefits of HP StorageWorks Scalable NAS.

Challenge | HP faces the ongoing challenge of how to best explain product capabilities during customer presentations. The company needed a visual tool that would help educate the customer on the Scalable NAS product and how it can function within an existing IT environment. In addition to the tool being educational, HP also wanted it to be entertaining and engaging.

Action | XPLANE developed a thought-provoking two-minute long animated sequence over a musical soundtrack that focuses on ever-growing online storage needs and how HP StorageWorks Scalable NAS can help. The piece follows IT manager Jim through a typical rough morning at work solving everyone’s emergencies. Just as Jim’s entire system is about to crash, he is visited by the disembodied Voice of Reason and shown a simple and cost-effective solution to his storage and throughput woes – Scalable NAS from HP.

This humorous vignette includes multiple characters, both in animated and voiceover form, and music. It addresses critical issues that IT managers are facing today and explains how HP’s Scalable NAS responds to each one. In the strategic discovery session XPLANE learned that HP planned to use the animation heavily in its sales and marketing efforts so thought went into making it of a size and style that would be appropriate for both Web viewing, face-to-face meetings and larger conference settings.

Results | HP has distributed the animation to its worldwide team and has received positive feedback across the board. The company’s sales force now uses it during customer presentations and at various events and conferences, with resounding success. HP has also posted the animation on its external Web site, where it has generated a substantial amount of traffic since going live. View it now by visiting www.hp.com/go/ScalableNAS and clicking on “View Animated Product Benefits.”

“We were blown away during our design meetings with the XPLANE creative team. The visual creations during our discussion really proved to us that they were listening and understood the concept of the animation.”

— Kate Davis, Marketing Communications Manager, HP