The reviewers loved HTC’s One smartphone when it came out last year. But HTC had trouble selling them:
Although its HTC One smartphone last year was lauded by reviewers – and indeed was judged as the best smartphone at Mobile World Congress in February – the company still struggled with sales.
The Taiwanese smartphone maker lacks the budget to inundate the airwaves like its larger competitors such as Samsung. It has also found it difficult to strike a chord with consumers.
“When we looked into why we weren’t selling more phones, given that fact and the fact that we won practically every award as the best smartphone, we discovered that we weren’t communicating as well as we should have been,” said HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang in a telephone interview ahead of the launch of the company’s new flagship smartphone, the HTC One (M8), on Tuesday.
“We needed to communicate better – in advertising, marketing, digital and social media and with the more traditional tech, general, specialty and business media. We will be communicating better this year.”…
If anything, the reviewers love the new HTC One (M8) even more. They’re practically raving about it:
Down but not out, HTC is back this year with a new and improved model. That’s right, the best phone of last year is even better, by many counts. But will anybody care?
So to overcome the sales hurdle, HTC hired cult movie idol Gary Oldman to be their pitchman. And his pitch? “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…” interrupted by the brief message that it doesn’t matter what he says, you should go “ask the Internet,” where you’ll learn just how good the phone is.
In case you find the blah-blah ad confusing, there’s another (below), in which Oldman makes the pitch in a somewhat more transparent manner. But the message is the same — never mind what we say; ask the Internet.
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