H-P to reinvent itself as Net company

A $150 million image advertising campaign, a search for a high-powered chief executive and a slew of announcements meant to turn the Internet on its head. Those are just a few of the steps Hewlett-Packard - a day after announcing plans to spin off its $7.6 billion-a-year measurement business - is taking to reinvent itself. Think H-P, the fast-moving Internet company. That is the idea behind the ad campaign that veteran agency Saatchi & Saatchi is creating, says J. Bauer, CEO of Saatchi of San Francisco. The decision to run a branding campaign is evidence of H-P_s attitude shift, says D. Dunn, general manager of the executive committee of H-P. Over the next few weeks and months, H-P also plans to roll out several products, including software that will be able to link several Internet applications, says Dunn, who declined to be more specific. But ultimately, the key to H-P_s reinvention might rest in its choice of a successor to CEO L. Platt, 57, one of the most respected men in the Silicon Valley. E. Zander, chief operating officer of Sun Microsystems; R. Lane, president of Oracle; and H-P veteran R. Belluzzo, CEO of Silicon Graphics, are among the executives that crop up as possible contenders for H-P_s top job. The company will consider insiders and outsiders. The key will be to find someone who can bring a new perspective and, most important, "someone who is going to be able to give H-P a human face," says T. Scott, managing director at AT Kearney, an executive search firm. The trick will be to maintain H-P_s standards for treating people well, a reputation that has earned it one of the lowest employee turnover rates in the technology industry, Scott says.