Hewlett Packard, transparency and the brand valuation bubble

Paris - june 7th 2013 - Last tuesday, as part of an ongoing investigation exploring internet censorship and monitoring in Iran and in Syria, Reflets.info uncovered Hewlett Packard's link with TCI, Iran's state-own ISP - controling all Iranian internet traffic -, where HP technology is used to update its filtering and surveillance capabilities, paired with Chinese ZTE appliances. The way Hewlett Packard technology was assembled and integrated on TCI's infrastructure shows HP as a central building block of Iran's "halalnet", its heavily filtered internet, "nationwide surveillance" enabled.

Those revelations could become a major disruption in HP's day to day communication and marketing activities, and could generate significant losses in terms of sales and marketshare, especialy in a declining domestic PC market, already facing a crisis. One must note that the reasonnable first step in such crisis management sequence usualy consist in putting on hold all ongoing communication and marketing operations.

Beside a TV ad currently airing throughout the world for its flagship B2C product, the HP Envy 4 TouchSmart Ultrabook, featuring stars such as magician Dan White and DJ Robbie Wilde,, Hewlett Packard is currently ongoing a brand-oriented TV ad campaign sharing "brand values" that are totaly inconsistant with its involvment in Iran, where HP technology is...