Not content with dominating only the personal computer category, Compaq Computer has set a new goal – and it’s being touted in print and tv advertising set to break in Canada at the beginning of November.

‘Access’ is the initiative that will expand the pc-maker’s borders from hardware into enterprise computing, says John Boyle, director of marketing for Compaq Canada. The company’s objective is to move into the installation, configuration and management of networks for entire corporations.

‘(Compaq has) scaled up quite quickly,’ says Boyle, referring to the company’s climb over the past several years to No. one in sales of personal computers.

Compaq posted global sales last year of us$14 billion. Boyle says the growth that Compaq has enjoyed can’t be sustained by relying solely on the sales of desktops and notebooks. Helping customers get access to information by building network computing environments is the key, he adds.

Boyle predicts that Access will transform the corporation – with the help of partners such as Microsoft – into one of the top three players in the technology field, displacing ibm, nec or Fujitsu.

The first leg of the Access campaign, designed by Ammirati Puris Lintas in New York, will consist of print ads in daily newspapers such as The Globe and Mail, says Boyle. As for tv, two or three 60- and 30-sec. spots will be chosen for Canada. Boyle could not be more specific as the spots were still in production at press time. The Access brand logo will appear in all promotional materials.

The company’s recently announced Workstation Division, in which it plans to develop a family of Windows NT servers, is one element of the Access plan, and pits it directly against ibm’s favoured Unix – a key reason for the branding campaign, according to Albert Daoust, computer industry analyst for Evans Research in Toronto.

‘True to form, there’s usually some substance behind their advertising,’ says Daoust, adding that the company has invested a lot of time and energy into its workstation technology.