Harte Hanks Expands in the Philippines

Manila – March 29, 2016:  – Harte Hanks (NYSE: HHS), a U.S-based leader in customer relationships, experiences and interaction-led marketing, helped Samsung grab attention and build engagement when it launched its Galaxy Note 4 in 2014.

Harte Hanks is well-known for creating many brand success stories for their clients that include Hewlett Packard Software EMEA, Microsoft UK Enterprise, Sony, and Samsung, will be opening a BPO-call center at the Mall of Asia Complex, in Pasay City on April 21.

Now, the Samsung campaign has been awarded Direct Marketing News’ 2016 Marketing & Tech Innovation Award in the Mobile Marketing category.

The campaign, directed at an under-30 audience, focused on using social media to turn someone’s bad day into a good day.  The campaign dubbed #NoteMyDay, helped turnaround bad days for those young people who tagged social media with #NotMyDay.

“Research tells us, millennials use social channels to share everything, even the bad things,” says Alan Kittle, creative director at Harte Hanks. “But we'd never seen a brand take direct action and find ways to make the bad days better, even though turnaround stories are popular. Using smartphone features to create happy endings felt so unusually emotional.”

To boost Samsung’s profile with this group, Harte Hanks teamed with Vine personality Rudy Mancuso and Snapchat artist Shaun “Shonduras” McBride.  The two ended up turning around bad days for 18 people in 10 countries over a three-day period.

The campaign generated 1.3 million interactions with the two social media stars; 15.2 million YouTube video views; 226,000 tweets of #NoteMyDay, which trended on Twitter in six key global markets. Most important the campaign helped Samsung sell 13.5 million phones in the fourth quarter of 2014.

#NoteMyDay has also been awarded by the Direct Marketing Association’s International Echo Awards and the Drum Dadi Awards, an award-giving body in Great Britain that celebrates excellence in digital, for “Best Consumer Campaign” and “Best Use of Video.”

“Our vision is to be the leader in smarter customer interactions,” said Jonathan Bondoc, Site Director of Harte Hanks Philippines, the US firm’s affiliate in Manila. “Our job is to bring companies closer to their customers through engaging and effective interactions no matter what channel or device they are using. For many brands that incudes call center solutions.  We are excited to be opening the new facility and growing Harte Hanks’ services here in Pasay City.”

The April 21 opening signals the integration of the secondary locations with Harte Hanks’ BPO-call center at 5E-com Center at the Mall of Asia (MOA) Complex. Harte Hanks Philippines currently employs about 2,000 people in its main and secondary locations in Metro Manila.

To see the campaign case study with a 2 minute video to:
http://www.hartehanks.com/work/case-studies/case-studies-samsung-mobile


ABOUT HARTE HANKS

Harte Hanks partners with clients to deliver relevant, connected and quality customer interactions. Our approach starts with discovery and learning, which leads to customer journey mapping, creative and content development, analytics and data management, and ends with execution and support in a variety of digital and traditional channels. We do something powerful: we produce engaging and memorable customer interactions to drive business results for our clients, which is why Harte Hanks is famous for developing better customer relationships, experiences and defining interaction-led marketing. For more information, visit the Harte Hanks website at www.hartehanks.com, call 844-233-9281, email pr@hartehanks.com or follow us on Twitter @hartehanks or Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/HarteHanks.


FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements about the company's leadership transition, services and clients. A number of risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from currently anticipated results. Additional important factors and information regarding Harte Hanks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements are set forth in our Annual Report on Form 10-K, as filed with the SEC and available in the "Investors" section of our website under the heading "Financials & Filings." We specifically disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the future even if circumstances change and, therefore, you should not rely on these forward-looking statements as representing our views after today.  

As used herein, "Harte Hanks" refers to Harte Hanks, Inc. and/or its applicable operating subsidiaries, as the context may require. Harte Hanks' logo and name are trademarks owned by Harte Hanks. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective owners. 

*This is Press Release

Three Industry Leaders: PLDT SME Nation, Samsung Philippines and Microsoft Philippines forge a Partnership to Empower SMEs with Broadband and Digital Solutions

The Philippines’ fast-growing digital, social and mobile users definitely creates unprecedented opportunities for the 800,000 strong small and medium enterprise (SME) market segment. However, the challenge today is how SMEs can efficiently tap and engage this community. Today, there are over 34 million Facebook users, over 10 million Twitter followers and with over 44 million Filipino internet users and counting.  

With this, PLDT SME Nation partners with Samsung & Microsoft Philippines to create innovative business solutions that will enable entrepreneurs to run their business better, grow faster, be more globally competitive and engage with the country’s digital, social and mobile population.

SMEs can now enjoy the benefits of having PLDT SME Nation’s premium and faster fixed and wireless broadband solutions running on our latest fiber and LTE network. These broadband offerings provide unlimited access which give entrepreneurs the ability to continuously conduct online activities without the fear of bandwidth throttling. Our services also feature committed information rates or CIR, which guarantee minimum bandwidth speeds for businesses and a static IP used to power up their websites and enable faster inter-office data transfers.

Second, PLDT SME Nation boasts of its most robust network and nation-widest reach for its fixed, wireless and now satellite service, ensuring that entrepreneurs will have the best broadband service suited for their business wherever they are.

Lastly, these new broadband packages come with supercharged flexible freebies ranging from relevant and business enabling Cloud Solutions such as Microsoft Office 365 and PLDT Cloud apps for video monitoring, asset tracking, POS, infrastructure and more. SMEs will also be able to get for free and choose the latest array of smart devices from Samsung Philippines and High Definition (HD) TV content from Cignal.

In an event entitled “Growing your Business in the Digital Age”, PLDT SME Nation together with two other industry leaders, Samsung and Microsoft, announced this partnership to create and introduce groundbreaking technologies and tools that will enable SMEs to efficiently manage their businesses anytime, anywhere.

In his welcome remarks, PLDT Executive Vice President and ePLDT President and CEO Eric Alberto highlighted the significance of the partnership saying, “This collaboration and synergy among today’s leaders in the telecommunications industry ushers in a new era of enablement for the small and medium enterprise market segment.

Through this strategic partnership, SMEs will have access to game-changing business tools such as faster and nationwide fixed and wireless broadband solutions, latest gadgets and devices and relevant collaboration cloud applications which should ultimately lead to higher levels of operational efficiencies, expanded market reach, higher profit margin levels, and in the process create higher economic multiplier for our country” Alberto adds.

PLDT SME Nation showcased some of this technology’s capability during the event, inviting several bloggers from Cebu and Manila to virtually take part of the press conference from remote locations using Microsoft Office 365.

To signify the formalization of the partnership among the three companies Alberto was joined on stage by PLDT First Vice President and Head of SME Business Kat Luna-Abelarde, Samsung Philippines Managing Director Harry Lee, Samsung Philippines Business Manager James Kwon, Samsung Philippines Enterprise Director Irene Catane, Microsoft Philippines Director for Small, Midsize Solutions Partners Diana Tibbs and Microsoft Philippines Business Group Lead ToviaVa’aelua for the push-button inauguration.

In her closing remarks, Abelarde pledged PLDT SME Nation’s commitment to provide SMEs with the best broadband and digital solutions saying, “PLDT SME Nation reaffirms its support for Filipino SMEs as it continues to innovate and form partnerships with industry leaders to provide our country’s aspiring entrepreneurs with only the best broadband solutions for their businesses.”