HP - HP Takes Smart Tank Campaign to the Streets with Live-Printed Billboard and Mobile Print Service

HP has launched a new UK OOH and experiential campaign designed to drive awareness and growth for its Smart Tank printers — which use refillable ink bottles rather than cartridges designed to last a minimum of three years.

The campaign is rooted in a simple insight: new data from OnePoll shows more than half of Brits rely on printing for last-minute documents, yet only one in five have a printer readily available at home.

To demonstrate the product’s reliability and print quality, HP quite literally printed one of its billboards live in Clapham, London — using an HP Smart Tank printer to produce the creative made up of 319 A4-sized sheets before installing it onto a large-format OOH site. The process was captured through photography and a time-lapse film, showing the creative coming to life from printer to billboard in real time.

“With such a strong product claim around reliability, we really wanted to lead with a ‘show, not tell’ approach, and allow the medium to become the message,” said Debbie Fagan, Creative Director at Edelman. “Turning an OOH billboard into a spectacle the public could actually experience — along with the added jeopardy of whether we could really pull it off.”

The activation forms part of HP’s wider UK campaign, delivered by an inter-agency team including Edelman (creative, design, earned and talent), Grand Visual and Talon (special-build OOH), and Omnicom and PHD (media).

At the centre of the activity was a specially designed Piaggio Ape vehicle, transformed into a mobile print service, which completed 340 print jobs — including Mother’s Day cards, sheet music, visa forms, and documentation for a new baby — across London, Bristol and Manchester. The London activation was fronted by British actor and comedian Alexander Armstrong.​

“This campaign takes HP into new territory, showing up in a cultural, grounded way that goes beyond traditional product messaging,” said Rebecca Ojumu, Senior Consumer Marketing Lead at HP. “HP Smart Tank solves an everyday pain point, and instead of just talking about the printer’s reliability, we chose to prove it. It’s been an opportunity to push creatively and make something that truly connects with people in a meaningful way.”

The activation turned everyday stress moments into shareable experiences, supported by video content across social and earned channels, and further amplified by a national rollout spanning 3,000 OOH and radio placements.