It’s been all hands to the pumps over the past few weeks for the team on HTC as we’ve been helping the Taiwanese technology and design company to launch their all-new HTC One (m8), the latest and greatest iteration of their award-winning smartphone.
The programme has been gruelling for all concerned, with over 40 journalists put through pre-briefings, hands-on reviews, video and photography sessions before the phone was confirmed. The list of media who got to see the new HTC One (m8) in action read like a who’s who of national, consumer and consumer tech media as all of the great and good tripped through the office to see the handset in action.
Then – the centrepiece of it all – there was yesterday’s showcase media event.
Olympia saw over 600 journalists from across Europe head in to see Phil Blair (EMEA head), Cher Wang (founder and Chair) and Scott Croyle (HTC’s Head of Design) take to the stage to present the new phone. With over 100 UK media, we had the world and it’s wife present to see the official launch … from The Guardian, Evening Standard, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mirror and The Times to ITV News and all the major broadcasters to every one of the major onlines that matter. Alongside a fair smattering of lifestyle and design media – from Dezeen, Core77, Wallpaper* and co to Esquire, ShortList and Mr Hyde.
Having filled (and nearly over-filled) the main hall at Olympia, the media were able to get their hands on the new phones with hundreds of demonstration models available to enable the assembled media to get up close-and-personal and feel the beauty of the design, experience the radically revamped Blinkfeed, experience the power and elegance of BoomSound and see all that the dual-lens camera enables from a creative perspective.
It was pretty awesome to see.
And, as you might expect, as the handset was revealed, the news and reviews hit the web.
So far, we’ve had over 300 pieces of coverage from the launch – with all of them wildly positive about the new phone.
There were stunning write-ups in The Guardian, Daily Mirror, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail. The handset has cropped up on the front cover of both Stuff and T3 Magazines (not a bad little feat and some fancy footwork required to pull that one off). Stuff named it the best handset in the world in a belting two-page review, while T3 gave glowing feedback and made it number two in its Hot List of the best tech in 2014 (one place behind Google and five ahead of Samsung, ten ahead of Apple – can’t say fairer).
To say that there has been some pretty extensive coverage from the consumer tech folk would be an understatement on an epic scale. From Digital Spy announcing it’s a “design that puts its rivals to shame” to Pocket Lint‘s five stars to top-class coverage across Mashable, Wired, Gizmodo, HuffPo, The Verge, CNet (another five stars) and quite literally hundreds of others besides. It’s been epic.
So there you have it … a rather successful launch altogether. And one that we couldn’t have pulled off without the epic talents of the EMEA team at NBC and all the other lovely people who were involved.
