PC industry launches ad campaign to promote PCs as consumers turn to tablets and phones

With consumers increasingly turning away from PCs to phones and tablets, a group of major PC makers, plus Intel and Microsoft, are trying to give a leg up to the PC.

An ad campaign jointly launched by many companies, branded ''PC Does What?'' will show off the capabilities of a new generation of PCs powered by Intel sixth-generation Core processors from Intel and the Windows 10 operating system from Microsoft.

The PCs would be made by Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo. The ad campaign features at least five 16-second videos, all credited to Intel, which put people in a number of scenarios, all amazed by the capabilities of the PC.

The people excitedly exclaim ''PC does what?'' in each of the ads.

The chief marketing officers of all five companies gathered for a webcast, where they explained that the collaboration got underway in June. The ads would run for six weeks, ending on 30 November at about the time each company would start launching their own individual ad campaigns for the holidays.

According to Chris Capossela, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Microsoft, this was the first time members of the PC industry had launched a collective campaign of the type.

The campaign would be rolled out next week with five TV spots, online ads and social media. Intel's agency of record McGarry Bowen, is the campaign creator, but during the run up to the final campaign, agencies for each partner had pitched ideas to the consortium.

"This is the first time we've ever formed a partnership with the five biggest companies in the PC category," said Steve Fund, CMO at Intel, who came up with the idea, adage.com reported.

"The reason the time is now is that there has been unprecedented innovation in the category, with [Microsoft's] Windows 10 operating system, our new 6th-generation Core processor, and great innovation in terms of the best devices coming out from Dell, Lenovo and HP."

David Roman, CMO at Lenovo, said at first he was "a bit concerned" about how the creative product would turn out. "When you get together a group of people with very disparate interests, it can end up having a lowest-common-denominator effect -- with an end product that is too standardized and uninteresting," he said.

"These three OEMs compete ferociously with each other, so to get people to think about the category in a new way will benefit everybody," Roman added. "We want to bring back the excitement and the passion to the category, and get people to rethink the new generation of PCs."

Each partner briefed its own ad agency on the campaign objective, and the agencies then came out with their ideas to the consortium partners.

"McGarry Bowen was the clear choice," Roman said.

Global personal computer sales are projected to suffer a larger decline of 4.9 per cent in 2015 to 293.1 million, than projected earlier, says technology research giant IDC. (See:PC sales to decline 4.9 per cent in 2015: IDC).