The challenge
Across Central and Eastern Europe, Canon was facing growing competition from lower-cost, non-genuine consumables. On price alone, those alternatives could look attractive.
The problem was that the purchase price told only part of the story. Lower print quality, increased servicing, higher energy use and greater risk to customer relationships could all create costs long after the initial transaction. Canon needed to make those consequences more visible.
The campaign also had to work across two different commercial audiences. End users needed a clearer reason to look beyond the upfront saving, while channel partners needed a stronger case for protecting customer value, recurring revenue and long-term performance.
The opportunity was to change the frame of the decision itself: from what a consumable costs today to what that choice can cost a business over time.
Our solution
We built the campaign around one central idea:
“The real cost of a lookalike isn’t what you pay today. It’s what it costs you tomorrow.”
That gave Canon a more commercially powerful way to talk about genuine consumables.
Instead of leading with technical specifications, the creative connected product choice to the consequences buyers and partners were already managing: operational cost, service risk, print performance, customer trust and sustainability.
Four concepts developed that idea from different angles.
“You can’t see the true price of lookalikes” exposed the hidden costs behind an apparently cheaper purchase.
“Contract risk” focused on the commercial exposure for channel partners when unreliable consumables affect service and customer relationships.
“The science behind every page” brought Canon’s engineering expertise forward as evidence of the performance built into genuine equipment.
“Cheap in. Expensive out.” made the total cost of ownership easier to grasp, connecting short-term savings with longer-term operational and sustainability costs.
Each concept worked as part of the same visual and strategic system, giving Canon a consistent story that could travel across markets, audiences and campaign touchpoints without losing its core argument.
The outcome
Canon now had a stronger commercial case for genuine Original Equipment across the CEE region. The campaign moved the conversation beyond unit price and gave partners and end users a clearer way to evaluate value across performance, servicing, customer relationships, sustainability and total cost of ownership.
For channel partners, that created a more useful sales story: genuine consumables could be discussed in the context of protecting service quality, recurring revenue and customer trust. For end users, the choice became easier to understand in business terms, with the apparent saving of a cheaper alternative placed alongside the costs and risks that could follow.
The integrated campaign carried that argument consistently across markets and touchpoints, reinforcing Canon’s premium positioning while making the value behind that positioning more tangible.
The result was a clearer basis for purchase: not simply what goes into the printer, but what that decision means for the performance and cost of the business around it.