This article was published on August 14, 2013

Hipster Troll Carwash: HTC’s strange, first full ad spot with Robert Downey Jr. leaks out


Hipster Troll Carwash: HTC’s strange, first full ad spot with Robert Downey Jr. leaks out

Well, that was quick. One day after HTC broke the seal with a teaser for its new $1 billion marketing campaign starring Robert Downey Jr., the first full TV ad has leaked out via this low quality recording that was spotted by Android Police.

See below for your 1:45 minutes of Downey Jr. making a splash in the boardroom and then lauding it up at a hipster troll carwash, a catamaran and other odd places. RDJ was supposed to bring the cool factor, this is just plain weird and misguided, in our opinion.

(Spoiler alert: Leave your ‘Iron Man’ expectations at the door.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdO3ETcCPTk

The Taiwanese phone-maker has shown it can produce quality devices, like The One, but is struggling to turn things around financially. The new campaign pitches HTC as “anything you want to be,” embodied in the endless and unfunny variations of its acronym: Hold This Cat (which gets a laugh from our watching audience), Humongous Tinfoil Catamaran, Hipset Troll Carwash, etc.

Sadly there’s no reference to Help This Company, Heading To Calamity, or the other humorous alternatives sprouting across the Web this week.

Will this get people talking about HTC? Possibly. Will this get people buying HTC phones? Unlikely.

Headline image via CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP/Getty Images

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