It's no secret around these parts that we find HTC's advertising to be a little lackluster. Which is a shame because its hardware is not. For what it's worth, the company's CEO agrees and plans to ditch the "quietly brilliant" slogan for the One and instead shoot for the themes of "bold," "authentic," and "playful." Which, by a strange coincidence, also happen to be Peter Chou's list of the top three traits he's looking for in a woman on his OK Cupid profile*.

The "bold" theme, as HTC's media chief Ben Ho explained (any good marketing campaign has to be explained, you know), refers to how the company will market itself. So, it's not really about the One at all, but about the ads themselves. It's sort of a self-referential, postmodernist expression of the sins of the father... or something. The second theme of being "authentic" is indicative of the manufacturer's intention to create its own features and not copy other ideas.

Finally, the third theme will be "playful." This is all about creating interesting features based on consumer demand. When I think "playful," I definitely think "focus group testing," so I think this will be a fantastic idea.

[EMBED_YT]https://youtu.be/QTS-1aNTn-s

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German ad for BoomSound

Regardless of the new themes (which are admittedly easy to poke fun at, but might actually do well if done right), the more important detail we've learned today is that HTC is doubling its marketing budget for traditional media, and ramping up digital advertising money by 250%. This, more than anything, is the boon we've been looking for. It's unclear yet if the ads will be good, but that's a matter of subjectivity. What is indisputable is that the ads are more absent than they should be.

Hopefully the situation will get better. In the meantime, here's one of the newest ads for the HTC One, highlighting Blinkfeed. What do you think? Better or worse than fake actors and Engadget quotes?

[EMBED_YT]https://youtu.be/rcLmZMwPoCg

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*This is completely false.

Source: Focus Taiwan