Tech-Geeks are a tough crowd to please. They want the latest and greatest and they can be rather anti advertising (they are too cool for that, right!?)

So we needed to find a way of engaging them with a new range of HTC handsets in a way that was cool enough to deserve their time and attention.

We knew traditional bought advertising wasn't enough so we had to give this a big PR platform up front to give us the best chance of cutting through the Samsung and Apple noise and try and get the cool kids on our side.

We hosted an event and got along the cool kids at MTV to get us access to the coolest talent.

We gave 500 attendees NFC enabled wristbands and gamified their evening - every time they engaged and learned something new about the HTC range of handsets, they earned points. The wristbands were tapped over 4,000 times in 2 hours. The top 8 participants of the night won prizes with the top 4 winning a HTC One X Phone and the next 4 winning Beats Headsets.

The client was overwhelmed by the interaction, engagement and positive buzz from the event. Most importantly, combined with a well planned bought media element the campaign as a whole met brand consideration score objectives.

We embedded entertainment through every touch-point, starting with a PR launch event attended by some of the most influential tech-geeks in Australia.

In a national media first, we used ‘tap it’ technology to showcase the Near-Field Communication (NFC) capabilities of the handsets (a highly anticipated new feature) and created a social gaming experience where attendees scored points using NFC-enabled wristbands at entertainment zones across the event, learning about the handsets while they played.

We held a DJ Competition in the lead up to event to increase engagement and excitement, we leveraged MTC - on of our key broadcast partner and ensured the geeks were entertained all night with the super trendy Bag Raiders and Some Awkward Dancers.

Paid media efforts kicked-off the day after, with national TV, mobile and online, as well as a partnership with MTV, using their on-air talent to promote the handsets’ entertainment features.

We entertained over 500 attendees at the launch event using the NFC-enabled wristbands, they tapped over 4,000 times in just 2 hours – every tap they were being educated and entertained about the new range of handsets.

We grew the brand’s Facebook fan base 58.4% and the Shazam integration with TV commercial entertained 26,000 unique individuals who engaged with the competition mechanic, driving almost 35,000 entries.

Most importantly our campaign proved by finding a better way to entertain Tech Geeks with HTC personal touch instead of just advertising to them, we shifted the all-important brand consideration metric by 5%.