Some friends of mine who work with HP told me about a new campaign they are rolling out centered around the “Society for Parental Mind Control” which provides a cool way for kids to “suggest” to their parents to buy them a new HP.  At the campaign site there are some funny videos of the mind control method in action and the company does a great job of speaking in the right language and being on the edge of whacked out to make everything feel very authentic and credible.  

I’m hoping the campaign is extended to provide a way for kids to upload their own videos showing how they are mind controlling their parents for other things – think it would be fun to show kids getting new cars, new videogames, whatever.  Perhaps out in clubs some cool hypnotic glasses can be passed out to extend the campaign to the street level a bit.  Looks like someone from the agency has created a quick video of a parent who has started "The Society Against The Society For Parental Mind Control" - so continuing to tell the story of the campaign. 

The campaign is very similar to one H&K rolled out back in 2001 for Motorola called "Stop The vBox" (which was a new messaging device - the V200 - that we called the vBox).  We developed two fictional sites for the campaign - one for people trying to stop the product from coming out because txtng was going to kill the English language and another for people excited about the new product.  This was before the days of blogging and youtube and everything in between but was a great way, like the HP campaign, to tell a story to engage your audience in on some fun.  Good times!