While speaking with Ad News, Samsung’s chief marketing officer Arno Lenoir revealed that the company’s ad campaign mocking the industry-leading iPhone marked a tipping point for the Korean tech giant. The executive added that the campaign has sparked conversation and pushed Samsung’s brand forward.
Samsung is currently the top handset maker in the world in terms of overall units sold, though it significantly lags Apple in terms of profit from those devices. the Korean manufacturer has seen its stock value grow steadily as it has focused more on mocking Apple’s products.
In 2012, Samsung took 34% of smartphone profits, 43% in the first quarter of 2013 and almost 50% in the second quarter. According to Lenior, Samsung’s fear of failure is the reason the Korean manufacturer is now number one. Despite overtaking Apple in smartphone sales in Australia and globally, it still sees itself as a “challenger” and invests heavily in R&D to stay ahead.
Lenior said the ads mocking Apple, ‘The Next Big Thing Is Already Here’, signalled Samsung’s coming-of-age as a brand. “That really did mark quite a tipping point for us globally. We were able to tell a cheeky story – if you think about it, we’re a Korean company starting to really mess with the order of things.
“We’ve been able to do some good things from that [campaign]. You’ve got fanboys after fanboys going, ‘You can’t put that out there’, and then the Samsung fans saying, ‘Yes, you can’, and they’re starting to have that conversation, which is brilliant. So that piece of content has been amazing for us, both globally and here in Australia.”
However, Lenoir still sees his company as a “challenger” in the industry, saying that he doesn’t think the public sees Samsung as a market leader just yet. “And I quite like that. I like being thought of as a challenger brand”, he said.
Want to see more of our stories on Google?
P.S. Want to keep this site truly independent? Support us by buying us a beer, treating us to a coffee, or shopping through Amazon here. Links in this post are affiliate links, so we earn a tiny commission at no charge to you. Thanks for supporting independent Canadian media!
I remember seeing this ad and thinking Apple lost it’s cool factor.
That’s exactly it. Apple was no longer the clear choice with the general public after these ads came out. I think they did enough to make a lot of people question things, and most importantly, they gave Samsung users the courage to be proud of their purchases, which shifted the playing field quite a bit.
so basically they are saying they think they did better because they made fun of another product? Yeah, a bit full of himself thinking that them make a good product really had nothing to do with it. (although, i guess at the time every little thing to make it seem less of a copy helped)
I’m really not a fan of companies who target their whole ad campaign about bashing their competitors–it really just leaves a bad impression with me. I didn’t like it when Pepsi did it with Coke, when Samsung did it with Apple, or when Apple did it with Windows.
Agree. Specially if they are clear copycats. So much like Hyundai. Oh wait, they have something in common. Coincidence or what? A cultural thing? I dunno.
And this is something to be proud of?