ARCHOS, the French consumer electronics company has hired Harvard PR, part of the Bell Pottinger Group, as it’s corporate, consumer, and trade UK PR agency after a competitive tender. Harvard’s brief is to help in shaping and delivering a new PR strategy for ARCHOS that will take it out of the technology pages and engage lifestyle audiences with the brand and its products. Harvard managing director, Lee Brooke will lead the account. The fee is undisclosed.
Founded in 1988, ARCHOS’s heritage lies in portable entertainment devices and it can lay claim to the worlds’ first portable media player in 2003. Its portable video player products regularly win plaudits from the technology press thanks to a very high quality, small screen viewing experience. The company has also recently expanded into portable computers including Netbooks and Internet Media Tablets while continuing its focus on the portable entertainment experience. ARCHOS has offices in the United States, Europe and Asia and is in retailers across the globe.
ARCHOS UK Marketing Manager Matthew Knight said: “Famous for both its technology and innovation, ARCHOS has changed substantially as an organisation in the past few years. We continue to focus on delivering high-quality portable entertainment products but now have a wider product range and a host of additional content services and other mobile tools to offer consumers. We have a different brief and needed a different approach to PR that would engage us with a much wider audience. Harvard demonstrated that it can help make the ARCHOS brand famous as a lifestyle choice, as well as a technical choice.”
Lee Brooke, Harvard managing director, added: “ARCHOS devices offer a superlative small screen movie and TV viewing experience and the company already has a very loyal following within the business traveler and early technology adopter audiences. However, the portable entertainment market has grown substantially over the last few years with new competitors and new converged devices, such as the iPhone. Our challenge lies in defending ARCHOS’ premium position in the technology and AV markets while convincing a wider audience of the benefits of its products.”
About Harvard
Harvard Public Relations specialises in PR for clients in the TMT (Technology, Media and Telecoms) sector including Adobe, Vodafone, PENTAX, Arqiva and Fujitsu. The company is part of Bell Pottinger, the UK’s number one public relations group (Source: PRWeek) www.harvard.co.uk
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For further information:
Lee Brooke
Tel: 020 8564 6329
Email: lee.brooke@harvard.co.uk
