Being Well Connected Takes You Places…

AUCKLAND, 5 October 2000 – A dynamic, personalised and totally interactive challenge – this was gen-i’s goal when developing a unique e-marketing campaign run in conjunction with Hewlett Packard (NZ) Limited earlier this month. A multi-tiered online campaign was developed, as part of gen-i and HP partner programme, offering as prizes five stylish HP e-Vectra PC’s and the chance to win a trip for two to an Air New Zealand international destination of choice.

A direct mail piece to 1,500 CEOs, CFOs and IT Managers throughout New Zealand invited recipients to log on to the specifically designed website for the campaign (www.gen-iwellconnected.co.nz) using a personalised identification. Participants registered on the site and were asked to identify a secret destination displayed on the live e-Vectra web cam. A response rate of 22% was recorded over the five consecutive days, exceeding the general 8-10% response anticipated with standard direct mail outs. Daily winners were presented with one of the state-of-the-art PC’s and the grand prize-winner has taken off on the ultimate well-connected trip with Air New Zealand.

“In designing the campaign, we wanted to not only offer existing and new prospects a smart and creative challenge, but also demonstrate our well-connectedness in terms of the HP and Air New Zealand partnerships,” says gen-i’s General Manager for Marketing and Strategy, Peter Dickinson. “The campaign has proven its success in the outstanding participation measurements. Across the campaign period, gen-i sent out approximately 2500 emails, with only 24 unsubscribes and returns received. The site itself had a total of 1900 hits during the five days.

“Also, as an upshot, the number of hits on gen-i’s home website has quadrupled - a direct result from the traffic on the promotional site.”
Joanna Burgess, Marketing Manager for Hewlett-Packard (NZ) Ltd commented, “The HP eVectra is a great example of our inventiveness and our campaign with gen-i was an excellent example of HP partnering with a company that has a clear strategy of building an interconnected world for its customers.”

Other elements of the campaign involved specialist online procurement services,
telemarketing and personalised post campaign follow-up, a comprehensive e-database, 24
hour remote support and a secure architecture - all hosted in-house. gen-i worked with HotHouse Communications and its own marketing group to provide the initial design and content delivery.

“With the entire site being completely automated, ‘zero administration’ was required, except for selecting winners – however even this was relatively automated, through an administration interface at the click of a button,” says Paul Macdonald, Technology Consultant for gen-i.

Technology Background
The HP server running Microsoft Windows 2000 with Microsoft Internet Information Server 5.0 built in, provided Web Services (delivery of dynamic pages and results, file transfer services allowing access to the database and security to prevent unauthorised access). The ‘user experience’ was written with a combination of Active Server Pages to provide the interactive content including updating the web cameras throughout the day. Javascript was used for client side interaction and applets enabled vertical and horizontal scrolling windows to incorporate movement on the screen.

ENDS

About gen-i
gen-i limited is the first and largest New Zealand-based e-business Internet integrator, focussing on designing, building, implementing and supporting e-business solutions and systems for large corporate customers. With over 400 people at offices in major centres in New Zealand, gen-i extends customer support worldwide – both online and through a network of service partners.
gen-i has four major areas of focus and expertise: Infrastructure, Ventures, Field Force and Procurement. Prior to its name change in 2000, gen-i traded successfully for more than 20 years as Wang New Zealand.

About HP
Hewlett-Packard (NZ) Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard Company and has been a part of the New Zealand community for over thirty years. Hewlett-Packard Company is a leading global provider of computing and imaging solutions and services for business and home focused on capitalising on the opportunities of the Internet and the proliferation of electronic services. The company's entrepreneurial flexibility is fostered by a decentralised organisation that gives business units considerable decision-making authority.

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