Following a competitive pitch, Shine has won the Huawei account and will now take charge of the tech company’s creative and strategy in New Zealand.
At this stage, it’s still unclear which other agencies were involved in the pitch, however it’s thought that Huawei will release an official statement within the next few days. And given that the company has still not officially announced the win, none of the parties involved were willing to comment on further details regarding the pitch.
Hauwei media spokesperson Nick Wilson would not be drawn into commenting onto any of the specifics of the pitch, but he did say that Hauwei did not have an incumbent on the account.
Shine’s appointment comes off the back of the launch of Hauwei’s first smartwatch at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona last week.
The android-powered watch is initially set to be released in about 20 countries—United States, United Kingdom, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Norway, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates—but the company has not yet specified when the watch will be available in the Kiwi market.
By appointing a creative agency in New Zealand, the Chinese company seems to be signalling its intent to become more active in the market—something also indicated by the increase in ad spend over the course of 2014.
Late last year, Huawei signed a partnership with Spark with the aim of collaborating with the local telco to develop technological products and services that are geared specifically for the Kiwi market.
Over the course of the last year, this Huawei’s technological nous has been integral in helping to expand Spark’s 4G network to the extent that it has now almost as big—if not bigger—than that of Vodafone. What’s more is that Huawei is currently a key contributor to the 5G projects in the European Union, and a founding member of the 5G Innovation Centre in the UK.
Across the world, the company has over 144,000 employees, of which 44 percent are said to be working on research and development. And this committment to innovation has led to the company filing as many as 47,000 patents over the last few years.