Presenting “Stand Apart”

The Chinese market presents an ocean of opportunities for the mobile sector. Competition is stiff as established foreign tech giants such as Samsung and Apple have already taken a big slice of the pie. For local tech companies, it was almost natural for them to set their sights overseas rather than stymie themselves winning Pyrrhic victories at home.

ZTE Mobile entered the industry during this difficult period while its parent company ZTE was transitioning from a B2B to a B2C model. It was crucial for ZTE to execute a well-designed communications plan to support its change, to break through the clutter overseas to secure ZTE’s bid to become the best Chinese mobile company.

Key objectives:

• Improving and building a new brand for ZTE Mobile
• Establishing good media relations with overseas media and KOLs
• Expanding ZTE’s marketing share in the overseas market

Backed by consumer insights uncovered by WE’s Insight and Analytics team, WE customized an overseas communication solution plan with the theme to “Stand Apart”.

From making a mark at Mobile World Conference (MWC) 2015, the most popular international exhibition to the launch of ZTE Axon, its first high-end flagship, WE worked closely with ZTE to ensure that each step was well-executed and tied to measurable results.

The efforts paid off:

• The MWC 2015 event garnered 8000 pieces of overseas media and it included in-depth articles related to one-to-one key management personnel interviews while the launch of ZTE Axon secured over 70,000 mentions of ZTE during IFA event and over 3,000 pieces of coverage.

• ZTE’s popularity in the US has outperformed all the competitors with media exposure of ZTE up by 70% by the end of December 2015. Overseas media hold significantly more positive feelings towards the ZTE brand, understand ZTE and complimented its brand strategies while Xinhua News Agency, China Daily, WSJ, Reuters and other key media have conducted detailed coverage on ZTE

• ZTE Mobile's year-over-year growth is 16%, outperforming the global growth rate of smartphones at 11% while the year-over-year growth rate in Asia-Pacific was 120%. The output of LTE increased by 150%. Likewise, Europe, Latin America and North America markets showed significant growth.

“ZTE has launched the first flagship model packed with global competitiveness in the U.S., this move is far ahead of others even for Xiaomi, the most innovative company in China.”- Eva Dou, The Wall Street Journal

Here’s to a well-planned and globally executed campaign that lived up to its name.