Warc, 13 August 2013
NEW YORK: The launch this week of an ambitious $1bn brand
marketing campaign for HTC, the Taiwan smartphone maker, featuring the
Hollywood actor Robert Downey Jr, is the latest in a wave of promotional
efforts from smartphone manufacturers.
Last week, Samsung began a marketing blitz ahead of the
planned unveiling of its Galaxy Note III "phablet" at the IFA
consumer electronics show in September, while the launch of Motorola's new
MotoX is being backed with a $500m advertising budget. And a new iPhone launch
is also rumoured for next month.
With the high-end smartphone market becoming increasingly
crowded, companies are having to make greater efforts to draw attention to
their flagship brands and Larry Chiagouris, a marketing professor at Pace
University, suggested to E-Commerce Times that marketers "need to focus on
smaller segments and satisfy each one to a greater degree than they have in the
past".
HTC is planning to achieve cut-through with its new
strapline "Here's to change" in a campaign that is being billed as a
way to talk about HTC One, the smartphone launched in April.
Discussing the campaign, Martin Kang, vice president of
marketing for EMEA, admitted to Marketing Week that the brand "did not
stand for that much" in the past.
Kang noted that HTC had made great products "but we
were not really communicating at a brand level".
The use of Downey Jr in the campaign aims to position HTC as
an unconventional brand that stands for change.
Unusually, the actor himself has been heavily involved in
the creative. "This is a not a normal endorsement deal, where he holds the
product in his hand and says something stupid about it," said Kang.
"He has contributed a lot to the final ads [and future
creative], this is a long major two-year deal that he would not have agreed to
do if it was cheesy."
HTC's use of a Hollywood A-list figure follows fellow
Taiwanese tech company Acer's campaign last year with stars including Megan
Fox, the actress.
Data sourced from MediaPost, Marketing Week, E-Commerce
Times, Business Week; additional content by Warc staff
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