A two-page newspaper advertisement shows an overhead view of a huge, empty parking lot with the words, "You're dying in Baltimore," superimposed in large type.
It's a bleak picture. And one that has made a local economic development group hopping mad.
The Hewlett-Packard Co. ad portrays Baltimore negatively, the Greater Baltimore Alliance complains. The GBA has launched a letter-writing campaign against HP because of the multipage advertisement that has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today.
The ad targets sales of HP's e-services, an Internet inventory management program. The Wall Street Journal version identified the product on a third page, while the other newspapers had ads that covered only two pages.
In the Journal, a banner headline across two pages says, "You're dying in Baltimore." Smaller type follows and runs to the edge of the second page saying, "Oddly enough, you're killing" before picking up on the third page with "them in Milwaukee. What you can't give away in one place is flying off the shelves in another. Enter something called e-services."
"Our competitors are probably laughing themselves silly about this," said Lois C. Yates, vice president of marketing and work force development for the GBA. "I don't think anyone considering Baltimore is going to say forget it because of this ad. But perception is so important in the economic development world, and sometimes perception can keep you from finding out what the reality is."
Members of HP's advertising and marketing team for e-services did not return phone calls yesterday. They worked with New York-based Saatchi & Saatchi to develop the advertising campaign, according to an HP spokeswoman.
"We think the company should acknowledge that this was a faux pas," Yates said.
So far, GBA officials know of about 25 letters of complaint from local officials or businesses that are either completed or in the works. Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski and M. J. "Jay" Brodie, president of the Baltimore Development Corporation, are among those sending letters, Yates said.
"While this ad's purpose is to sell a product, it essentially portrays Baltimore as a poor place to do business, while also making a thinly veiled reference to Baltimore's high murder rate," the GBA said in a newsletter.
"As a responsible citizen of the corporate community Hewlett-Packard should be embarrassed for allowing such an ad campaign to go forward.
"It is extremely irresponsible for a company that places such a high priority on values and morals to stoop so low as to deliberately misrepresent Baltimore's business climate," the GBA newsletter says.
GBA recently launched an edgy advertising campaign to challenge the people who decide on business locations about their knowledge of the metropolitan Baltimore area.
Yates said her group is considering taking out an ad in answer to HP's, to appear in the same publications, that would feature a list of Baltimore-area businesses that say they're thriving.
Pub Date: 3/31/99