HTC doesn’t want to be “Quietly Brilliant” anymore. They want people to know about their devices. How do they plan on doing that? By increasing the amount of money they spend on advertising. How much more money are they going to spend this year versus last year? According to Focus Taiwan, the digital marketing budget will go up by 250%. The traditional media marketing budget will increase by 100%.
Will any of this help HTC out? That’s tough to say. The independent analyst Horace Dediu says Samsung is a very unorthodox company that spends a fixed percentage of total sales on advertising. Translation: If sales at Samsung double, so too does the marketing budget. The bigger Samsung gets, the more it blows on marketing.
For HTC to increase their marketing budget, despite being a smaller company now than they were just 12 months ago, means they’re either incredibly confident in their new phone, the One, or they recognize that this is it. This is the year.
If they don’t manage to stop the bleeding, they’ll bleed to death.