Amy Lou

EMEA Marketing Manager, HTC, London & Taoyuan, Taiwan

Amy Lou’s role at HTC is not for the faint of heart. She is achieving what many would find daunting, if not impossible. Amy Lou is taking a niche brand, best known to either mobile professionals or the truly tech savvy, and making it mainstream by competing in the same arena as Nokia, RIM’s BlackBerry™ and Apple’s iPhone. And she’s doing it with a much smaller budget.    

 Amy Lou also has little difficulty crossing borders. Originally from Shanghai, she works for Taiwan-based HTC, and lives mostly in London now when not on a plane. When asked if there are any challenges as an Chinese national working for a Taiwanese company, her response was, “Challenges? I’m just so happy to able to speak Mandarin more often! We are a global company and welcome talent from everywhere.”

Just one year ago, Amy Lou started at HTC, or High Tech Computer Corporation, manufacturer and marketer of state-of-the-art Smartphones and innovative PDA-Phone devices. Founded in 1997, HTC is best known for its Research & Development capabilities and for its creation of state-of-the-art Smartphones for mobile operators and distributors in Europe, the US, and Asia. The products are available as HTC-branded devices, as well as individually-customized PDA-Phones for operator and device partners, like Orange.

HTC is now one of the fastest growing companies in the mobile device market, and Amy Lou’s assignment in July was to launch the HTC Touch Smartphone, which uses their patented TouchFLO™ Technology with an easy-to-use touch screen and user interface that many now compare to the Apple i-phone. She is quick to point out that HTC was the first company to officially launch a touch-screen product.

Amy Lou recognizes her challenges. “All of the big players are so well established that we had to differentiate ourselves by building a destinctive brand personality and image while facing the reality that we couldn’t match them on ad spending.” Most creative in the telephony field is device-centric; however, HTC intended to create emotional resonance with the consumer. The Touch campaign theme of “Remember Your First Touch” is accompanied by highly-visual black and white photography designed to work across markets globally. The stylish and smart brand attributes communicate with an aspirational and sophisticated consumer target.

Much of the media strategy is focused on reaching consumers on the go, and then encouraging them to interact online. Amy Lou, working with Just Media, came up with bus wraps in the Netherlands and France, Tram Wraps in Italy, and T-shaped bus units for London’s double-deckers. HTC also included high-impact outdoor sites in key European capital cities, such as Moscow, Barcelona, Warsaw and Paris.

So has the program worked? Amy Lou proudly states, “We have doubled all HTC sales in Europe and we should sell more than 1 million units in just 6 months. That exceeds our target.” Contact: Amy_Lou@htc.com

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