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HTC attempts turnaround after missing the boat on HTC One launch

After failing to get its new HTC One phone into the stores before the Samsung Galaxy 4, and seeing its sales fall 41 percent last year, HTC has told the Wall Street Journal that it will make big changes to its marketing approach.

HTC’s new chief marketing officer Benjamin Ho said the company would withdraw the ‘Quietly Brilliant’ tagline that was symptomatic of its whole approach to marketing: low-key, product-focused, and refraining from head-to-head challenges to its competitors.

The first evidence of this switch in strategy was seen in its response to Samsung’s launch of the Galaxy S4. HTC tweeted that it was #theNextBigFlop and did demos of the HTC One to journalists queuing to attend Samsung’s press launch …
However, its attempts to get the HTC One into stores ahead of the Galaxy S4 failed due to component shortages for the camera. The company believes that a bigger and more aggressive marketing campaign now holds the key. HTC is doubling its traditional media ad spend and increasing its digital ad spend by 250 percent.

“We have a lot of innovations but we haven’t been loud enough,” said Mr. Ho, a Singaporean who is HTC’s third marketing chief in less than two years. The new approach, he says, will be bolder.

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