HP Marketing Vision Videos and Ads

From 1998 to 2002, Hewlett-Packard produced an award-winning series of videos aimed at illustrating HP Labs' vision for an Internet connected world. The work was a collaboration between HP Labs scientists and the San Francisco advertising firm Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.

• Amazon Changed the World: In the late 1990's Amazon was still a fledgling online bookseller. It was dwarfed by retail giants like Montgomery Ward, but Amazon had already licensed a recommender engine from MIT's Media Lab and was using it to transform the retail shopping experience. HP was Amazon's technology partner. These 30 second spots are still among my favorite ads. They're funny and insightful. The opening ad is called "The Shopping Mall" and is a classic.

• "Cooltown" was HP Labs conception of what the world would be like if daily problems could be brushed away with constant connection to the tools we take for granted today: instant communications, mapping and navigation, emergency services, business automation, healthcare, and online education. The mock-ups look a little hokey by today's standards but in 1999, they were beyond the reach of state-of-the-art technologies.

• "Rich DeMillo, Inventor" was part of a branding campaign featuring members of HP Labs technical staff. As CTO I was one of the scientists chosen for the campaign.

• Some of Amazon's technology was born in Bellcore Lab 215, which I ran in the 1990's. Al Aho preceeded me, and Alan Chynoweth preceeded Al. Dave Sincoskie was an executive director in 215, and was responsible for research that led to many Internet and e-commerce inventions. One of those inventions was online advertising, which Sincoskie believed would live with broadcast content and would enable online purchasing. Dave passed away several years ago, but his influence can be seen in this demonstration of how "60 Minutes" might be experienced if viewers could pause the broadcast to purchase a car.