Samsung: A Case Study in Social Marketing

Many companies are still to stick a toe in the waters of Social Marketing, while others clumsily belly flop in without knowing what lies beneath the waves. Samsung on the other hand, perform aquatic acrobatics to the point of showing off.

First and foremost, Samsung have a thriving presence in the holy trinity of social media Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Their twitter account is in many ways like any other; at time of writing they are geeking out to announcements at the South by SouthWest conference (mixed with the occasional promotion). Their facebook page runs competitions for fans of their products and share photos taken on Samsung devices, while their YouTube channel hosts user reviews and other Samsung related nonsense. Notably absent are snoozy press releases and recycled TV adverts.

But while wielding these tools successfully is to be admired in itself, it is overshadowed by their massive triumphs in the world of viral marketing. As those in Online Marketing know, viral videos are notoriously challenging, their success being almost entirely dependent on the whims of a billion and a half internet users. Samsung however, have had not just one but numerous success stories, the most recently this entertaining skit about photos on Social Media sites.

So far the “Angles or Angels” video has received over a million views (spread across several YouTube accounts) but this is dwarfed by their other successes.

• The Samsung SSD Awesomeness video – in which Samsung engineers nerd out over combining SSD cards in a RAID drive (don’t ask) - has had nearly 3 million views.
• The extremely creative Samsung Omnia (i900) Unboxing has had over 3.5 million views.
• Their breakout LED sheep Art has clocked over 11 million views and counting.  

What differentiates Samsung from its rivals is not so much the tools it uses, but the underlying philosophy with which it approaches social media. In a recent  interview with The Social Nerdia, Samsung’s social media strategists Matt Moller and Keith Swiderski explained how Samsung Staff are allowed almost total autonomy in engaging with customers and importantly, in engaging blogs, which according to Moller “have become as important as traditional media, if not more important in our space”.

He added that “it’s about building communities, engaging with customers who have expressed an interest, and talking to them in a real, transparent way.” So rather than sticking to brand identity and vetting all of the communications with customers, they let staff communicate with customers on a person-to-person basis. The upside of this direct engagement with customers is the increased capacity to crowdsource material (the aforementioned photos and video reviews) from their employees and customers. This in turn has led to new kinds of experimental promotions. In 2008, Samsung asked fans to post videos about their favourite Superbowl memories on their website, where they could be voted on by visitors to the site. The winning entries were aired during the Superbowl – the premium real estate of US TV Advertisting.

“The best advice I can give a company that isn’t sure about social media” says Moller “is to get online and type the name of their brand and see what people are saying. I defy them to wait a day before they get on to start talking.”

Jamie Stanton