HP just launched a major global marketing program for its Color LaserJet multifunctional printers. The main pitch, “HP LaserJet Pays You Back,” is that users can save up to $2,500 in less than a year by switching to those products.

Curiously, the kickoff event featured two outside “entrepreneurs” as spokespeople: Ivanka Trump (whose main qualification is her dad, for whose business she works) and Bill Rancic (unknown to me, but apparently once a winner on the Apprentice reality show hosted by Ivanka’s dad). And their expertise on the subject of cost-cutting on printing is…?

The point here is that an HP laser MFP more than pays for itself in consumables, paper and energy savings. But compared to what? Well, the obvious conclusion is that it’s cheaper to print (and copy and fax) on a laser machine than it is to do so on an ink jet machine — including much of HP’s own product line. You also get additional savings through improved energy management (a real plus in current HP models) and duplex printing, which saves on paper costs — but that’s commonly available even on cheap ink jet MFPs.

The $2,500 figure: Where did that come from? Even if we assume that the difference between printing on a cheap ink jet is four times as much as on a high-end Laser MFP (really stretching it, in our opinion) and that you print nothing but color pages (at around 5 cents on HP’s lowest-cost-per-page laser MFP versus up to 20 cents on a few cheap ink jets), we are talking about over 15,000 color pages a year on a single machine to approach the $2,500 mark in savings.

Is anyone idiotic enough to print that many pages on low-cost ink jet MFPs, which normally have duty cycles of under 1,000 pages a month? Are we to believe that these $79 – $129 devices are working night and day cranking out marketing materials, with harried users endlessly swapping ink cartridges, which often have a capacity of under 1,000 pages apiece?

While we think that HP’s color laser MFPs are very good (especially the higher-end ones) and certainly preferable to ink jets for serious business work, we don’t understand what this campaign is about. Are there really major businesses so lame-brained as to be unaware of the cost advantages of just about any laser printer or MFP over its ink jet equivalent? Isn’t HP admitting also that its ink jet division is charging too much for ink cartridges? And while HP LaserJet MFPs offer better operating costs that ink jets, do they want potential buyers to start noticing that there are competitors that offer even better costs per page than HP in the laser area?

The campaign, which will be supported by point-of-sale literature and through gripping ROI stories on social media, will soon spread worldwide.

Our advice: Kill the few ink jets still remaining in your office, look closely at costs per page of all machines whether made by HP or others and replace where you can have an advantage. Finally, make an effort to print fewer pages — and print in color only when really needed. After all, most printers and MFPs print many pages that never get read.

Tags: HP, LaserJet, marketing campaign