HTC Promises Bolder Marketing Strategy

By now we should all be familiar with bold smartphone advertising. You only need to look at Samsung’s catalogue of ads taking aim at Apple and its consumer base to a) have a chuckle and b) see the direction the smartphone advertising battle has been going in. HTC has now announced that it will be pulling the pin on its own grenades, taking a bolder more aggressive approach.

Dumping the old tagline of “Quietly Brilliant” HTC has already put their philosophy shift into practice when they sent out teams to the Samsung Galaxy S4 launch to demo the new HTC One. HTC even took to twitter openly mocking the S4 as the #theNextBigFlop. This is the first time I can recall that HTC has taken direct aim at one of its competitors. This is an obvious push to bolster confidence from investors and customers as sales were down 41% in the fourth quarter as compared to a year earlier.

If this ramps up as it appears it is going to, we should see some very interesting and more importantly entertaining ad campaigns in the near future. We will soon see if HTC’s marketing department is up to the task of competing with Samsung’s battle proven team. My deepest hope is that Apple gets sucked into some mudslinging and we get to see what happens when three tech giants engage in an advertising war.

I should also mention that HTC’s Marketing Director Benjamin Ho commented on the delayed launch of the HTC One citing component shortages for a camera that is designed specifically for the One. He did not offer any more information on the One.

[WSJ: Digits]