HTC wants to be seen and heard

London: HTC, the Taiwanese smartphone maker known for its “quietly brilliant” tagline, is hoping to raise the volume of its marketing alongside the launch of its new flagship device.

HTC plans to double its media budget as it aims to become one of the top three brands in the smartphone market this spring,

“We always create great products and we just need to let the world know about it,” Peter Chou, HTC’s chief executive, told the Financial Times. HTC One will be available towards the end of March through 185 mobile operators in 80 countries, the group’s biggest-ever launch.

Its latest HTC One boasts an aluminium unibody design, external stereo speakers and Zoe, a new camera app that automatically creates photo and video montages from the phone’s image library.

While HTC said last year it would improve its marketing efforts, including the use of high-profile influential users. The previous range of One phones was undermined by the big budget launch of Samsung’s best-selling Galaxy 3.

Analysts say that even an improved marketing budget could struggle with the large number of launches just this month, with BlackBerry only just starting on support of its long-awaited smartphone relaunch, while other manufacturers plan to unveil new devices at next week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

But backing the company up, says its new chief marketing officer, are mobile operators who want to be able to offer consumers more than just market leaders Samsung and Apple.

Operators are “pretty dominated by Samsung and Apple, each telling them what to do” in terms of unit volumes and handset subsidies, and so “reducing the mobile operators to a dumb pipe”, says Benjamin Ho, who joined the company in January from Far EasTone, a Taiwanese mobile and telecoms operator. “Mobile operators around the world have told us they need a third brand of choice.”

For the latest One smartphone, HTC will double its media buy, and increase its digital marketing budget by 250 per cent, in addition to the funds operators contribute for marketing. That, he says, will by this spring rank HTC the second or third-largest advertiser in its category in terms of ad dollars spent.

“Let’s not make the operators do too much of the work for us —let’s do it more for ourselves,” says Ho. “We will be spending a lot more money on devices, and digital, and take our devices to stores to do our roadshows there, before we even put it on to the shelves.”

HTC’s ad campaign will focus more on the device itself than last year’s skydiving spot, and stress HTC’s “authenticity” and “innovation” - a contrast with what Ho suggests is the “copycat” approach taken by some rivals.

But amid the renewed branding push, the tagline will remain. “Quietly brilliant’ doesn’t mean quiet, it means you are smart and you really understand what you are doing,” Chou says. “Humble and dynamic and innovative and quick - that is the company’s DNA.”

The Financial Times