Samsung Says Ads Mocking Apple Marked A Tipping Point For The Firm

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.