HTC this week launched a new marketing campaign that aims to raise awareness and consideration of the company's brand and highlight some of the innovations (change) it has pioneered over the last decade. The "Change" campaign will be HTC's largest-ever investment in marketing, with an estimated spend of $1 billion across cinema, online, and digital media. 

The campaign opens with a video advert featuring Robert Downey Jr. that plays with the idea of what the initials HTC stands for and what HTC means to different people. The second phase of adverts will highlight specific HTC features - like BoomSound, Video Highlights, and BlinkFeed, while third phase will focus on how HTC products "empower individuals to drive change in their own lives".

The major focus of the campaign will be of HTC's Android devices, which currently make up around 90% of the company sales by unit volumes, but the new campaign is about the HTC brand as a whole and should have a positive impact on the company's Windows Phone devices, both now and in the future.

In the opening video of the campaign Robert Downey Jr. is shown arriving by helicopter to a board meeting, and subsequently suggesting some possibilities for what HTC might stand for: "Humongous Tinfoil Catamaran", "Hipster Troll Carwash", "Hot Tea Catapult", "Hold This Cat", and "Happy Telephone Company".

The new campaign is a noticeable change from HTC's usual product and technology focused marketing campaigns of the last few years. The campaign may not resonate with technology early adopters, but they are not the target for the new campaign. Indeed, the new approach can be see as a direct result of HTC's mismatch between critical success and sales success. Products like the HTC One and HTC 8X are highly rated by reviewers and are well regarded from a technical point of view, but have not enjoyed sales success to the level that might be expected.

A new marketing strategy can alter this mismatch alone. However, growing awareness of the HTC brand and what it stands for, is undoubtedly going to be a key constituent of any attempt to rebuild HTC's market share and sales numbers.

In an HTC press release, Ben Ho, HTC's CMO, comments:

“HTC’s innovation, authenticity and boldness have made us the change-makers in the mobile industry and led us to launch what influencers regard as the best phone in the world, the HTC One. Our original and playful Change platform is different to anything else out there and aligns our brand with the same qualities our phones are already known for. With this campaign, we are affirming what HTC’s role is in the mobile market which is to define change and to lead the industry in developing the newest and most innovative technologies.”