HP has come out with special edition laptops that come with a red backlit keyboard, Star Wars decals, and customizable Star Wars sounds on the laptop to replace your standard bings and beeps.
HP’s sales pitch…
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Enjoy almost 40 years of Star Wars history with “concept art” created by Lucasfilm artists before the films were made, a collection of storyboards which were actually used to guide filming, and behind-the-scenes photos, set designs, costumes, models, and more.
Sound schemes and wallpapers
Replace standard notifications with iconic Star Wars sounds including R2-D2 and lightsabers. Choose among Star Wars themed wallpaper collections including black and white stills, ships, Tatooine, and more.
Aurebesh font
Type like you’re a citizen of Coruscant. Aurebesh, the Galactic Base Standard language, comes loaded in the font library of the Star Wars™ Special Edition Notebook.
Bonus features
The first Marvel Star Wars comic in the series, e-book excerpts from the Star Wars Universe and Star Wars movie trailers all come pre-loaded on the Star Wars™ Special Edition Notebook.
Red backlit keyboard
Unleash your inner Sith with glowing red backlit keys. Keep going even in dimly lit rooms with an illuminated keyboard.
Source: http://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/Laptops/star-wars-special-edition
Whether or not changing up the aesthetics of their laptops by exploiting the excitement around the new Star Wars films is yet to be seen.
While I personally doubt HP will make much money directly from these laptops, especially when you consider they most likely paid a fat licensing fee to Disney, the marketing opportunities afforded by these laptops might make up for any losses.
How’s that?
HP gets to make advertisements using Star Wars, gets to push consumers towards the Star Wars themed laptops, and all of HP’s other products get to come along for the ride.
Example!
HP: SO YOU LIKE STAR WARS HUH?! Want a Star Wars laptop? Heyyy look at this fancy monitor we have on “sale”!
It’s a cross sale made possible by HP opportunistically using art people love.
Disney also benefits from HP’s Star Wars themed laptop in more ways than just a fat licensing fee.
Disney’s art gets to piggy back off of HP’s advertising. This increases societies awareness of that art… which of course is good business for Disney. Extra ticket sales, you know.
Disney also benefits by HP’s making of the laptops by increasing the ways people can engage with the art that they love. Now people have a Star Wars laptop to type away on while their friend plays Star Wars: Battlefront in the living room.
We’re talking big business here. The licensing fee HP paid is probably at least several million dollars.
Now add in the sales from HP’s Star Wars products and the extra products sold.
Now add the advertising spending by HP.
Now add in the extra ticket sales, extra merchandise sales, and extra DVD sales that HP’s promotion will fetch Disney…
We’re talking tens of millions of dollars in economic activity stemming from just one itty bitty part of the overall Star Wars business…
Which is part of an even larger business, the business of art.
*Star Wars, HP, etc. are all the property of their respective owners.
The Business of Art – HP’s Star Wars Laptops by Jordan Wunderlich is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.