The Top Six Things Leo Apotheker Should Do To Make HP Cool

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Chances are, most of you have heard by now about HP’s plans to become the new “cool” in computing, taking over the top slot from Apple. But what can it do to make such a claim? Well, I’ve been puzzling that one over myself, and thus, I offer up a list–as is so often the case on Fridays–of the top six things HP can do to take the crown of cool straight off of Steve Jobs’ head and plant it squarely on Leo Apotheker’s.

6. Get The Kids Involved

HP has already started doing this, and that’s great. HP has already put up a hefty supply of devices geared toward the education market, and this accomplishes the main purpose of getting kids exposed to HP gear from their earliest days. And when the kids are exposed early, and grow up with HP in the classroom, it boosts the chance that they’ll be looking for HP gear when they get in the position to get some for home, or when they start asking Mom and Dad to foot the bill on new hardware. If HP becomes recognizable with the kids, they’ll get a whole lot of extra room toward being the cool company.

5. Expand The Product Line

Thinking HP right now, as my cohort Kevin Schram put it, is thinking “beige box”. There’s no way Apotheker is going to take up the mantle of cool from Apple if they’re still pumping out faceless, nameless hordes of boxes. HP needs to become as universal as Sony, as Samsung, and yes, as Apple. We need to see HP products in more places than the office; we need to see them in our home theaters, we need to see them in our pockets, we need to see them on the buses. Consider game systems, Blu-ray players, MP3 and other portable media players, the whole nine yards. HP’s got to get its product line going past office IT if it wants to be the cool company. They’ve got the office on lockdown, sure enough, but who do you go home to? You go to work with HP, you go home to Apple–and if HP wants to get cool, they’ve got to make sure you come home to them just as much as Apple.

4. Innovate Like Crazy

One of Apple’s big selling points is that it constantly innovates. Remember iPhone? Was there anything like the iPhone when the iPhone came out? No, not so much. Ask the same question about the iPod and the iPad, and you’ll likely get the same answer. Apple breaks ground, and this gives it the maximum boost toward novelty. If HP can learn to harness novelty in the same way that Apple does, (and frankly, given that some versions of their logo have the word “invent” right in the title, as pictured back in the opening paragraph, innovating should be a key company value) but for the PC market, then HP will go a long way toward being cooler than Apple.

3. Keep The Prices Under Control

This is a huge opportunity for HP to actually surpass Apple–Apple gear is great and all, but it costs an arm and a leg. Half of what you’re paying for with Apple is that Apple name and, once again, that Apple innovation. If you get the new Apple toy, you’re going to enjoy pride of place until the competitors finally start catching up. When you got an iPad, you were about the only person to have a tablet PC for months until everybody else started getting in the game. For HP to take that cool spot from Apple, it’s got to not only get their firstest, as Apple does, but also with the mostest, taking away serious ground from Apple by not only being the first to market but also at an affordable price.

2. Subvert The System

This is actually one thing that HP should not do in order to get that cool position. Now is not the time for HP to hire Justin Bieber to act as a spokesperson for one of HP’s big new things. If it wants to be cool, it needs to be cool on its own merits, not try and ride someone else’s coattails to the cool ranking. You can take this example straight out of Apple–how many iOS hardware items have you seen commercials for that essentially only feature the particular chunk of hardware? Sure, there’s some music, and maybe a finger moving the controls (not to mention that big Apple commercial featuring black silhouettes dancing with iPods), but so often, Apple commercials are just the item, hard at work before your very eyes. And that’s what HP has to do to be cool–let the products speak for themselves, and subvert the system.

1. Get Apotheker More Involved

Most everyone who’s interested in tech knows who Steve Jobs is. Comparatively fewer people are familiar with Leo Apotheker. I’m not suggesting that Apotheker needs to try and go all “rock star” like Steve Jobs does so often, nor does he need to throw quite so many hissy fits. But Apotheker needs to be more visible than he currently is to get that cool posture under HP, and I’m reasonably confident he can do it. Plus, the guy looks kind of like Patrick Stewart, and that could yield a whole lot of geek cred on his part, which would definitely go a ways toward giving HP the cool tag.

And so, that’s the top six ways that HP can achieve its goals to become the cool company in electronics production–there are many more ways than this, I’m sure, but the fact remains that this is a great way for them to get started. Can they pull it off? Apotheker is definitely a convincing personage, but it remains to be seen if he can get enough attention to truly be cool.

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