xo
One Laptop per Child to Launch Amazon Store & Ad Campaign for Christmas
Nicholas Negroponte of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and Paul Lavole of TAXI talked at Advertising Week about the progress of the project and TAXI’s upcoming advertising campaign to support the November 17th, 2008 launch of the "Give a Laptop. Get a Laptop" store at Amazon.com.
The XO Laptop is great little machine that has won numerous design awards and tugs at heart strings like few other computers can. However, questions remain about its ultimate success and ability gain traction in world markets. Currently, a search for "xo laptop" on Amazon returns a list of low cost laptops like the Asus eee that compete with the XO for market share.
The advertising campaign aims to significantly improve the marketshare and mindshare of the XO laptop over the upcoming Christmas shopping season and generate widespread interest in One Laptop per Child project. The look and feel of the campaign seems very Appleish. The campaign concepts shown in the presentation consist of cute pictures of the XO on a white background with messages below like “Give a laptop. Get a Laptop. Change the world” and "Let’s create generation XO."
The partnership with Amazon is similar to last year, "Give a Laptop. Get a Laptop" lets consumers purchase two XO laptops and keep one while giving the other to a needy child somewhere in the world. However, this year Amazon will handle the entire sales and fulfillment process. Hopefully, this will eliminate the bottlenecks that plagued last year's campaign.
Interestingly, the next generation of the XO is an e-reading device that would seem to compete with Amazon's Kindle. It remains to be seen how this will play out given the close relationship with Amazon.
I would like to know what the XO campaign is doing to target expatriates living abroad and people with an interest in helping specific countries. Naturally, people will be more willing to give if they know that the donation will be directed towards communities they are involved with. I would certainly love to post an ad on Tadias.com to support laptops for Ethiopia.
