2015 Silver Best Brand Building Campaign

Starcom

Samsung

It's S6 and You Know It - Samsung Hijacks Search

The Team

Lindsay Rowntree Samira Hassam Jo Pearson

Campaign overview

Samsung launched its Galaxy S6 with an emphasis on innovation and cutting-edge design and needed a campaign that would convince people that spending more would be worth it. Through a disruptive PPC campaign that interrupted user search journeys with playful messaging, the campaign went viral, generated awareness and buzz for the S6 and positioned Samsung as a strong choice in the premium phone market.

Strategy

Samsung’s S6 audience were already bombarded with new products every day and mobile phone launches now struggle to make it onto all but the biggest tech geek’s radar. But the Galaxy S6 was Samsung’s first opportunity to fight back against the iPhone 6, which had made Q4 2014 Apple’s most profitable quarter ever, so this campaign had to grab mass attention. Past campaigns had shown that getting people talking about a new phone at launch is essential to its long-term success, with only a very limited window in which to cut through phone launch fatigue, drive buzz and deliver real interest in the product. With clicks to Samsung.com the key KPI, a unique and innovative opportunity was spotted to get people talking through the medium of search – a channel typically used as a harvesting tool.

Creativity

People might not pay much attention to the latest release any more, but the phone in their pocket holds a place in their heart and no two brands spark such debate as Samsung and Apple. Research showed people were already searching for “iPhone 6S” before its release, presenting a unique opportunity to capitalise on a huge wealth of search volume, in a usually costly market, while there was currently no competition. The iPhone “6S” name coincided with Samsung’s “S6”, offering the chance for some disruptive fun. Cheeky messaging targeted 6S searchers informing them of their “mistake” – obviously they meant Galaxy S6?! This tonguein- cheek approach held real social currency and reignited the age-old debate between Apple and Samsung. Increased budget made sure the campaign appeared in every iphone 6S search.

Results

This creative use of paid search successfully generated a huge amount of interest and buzz around the launch of the GS6. The campaign was featured on Reddit and The Lad Bible, helping the ads go viral with a staggering 2.7 million views on Reddit, 6,000 tweets, 500+ LinkedIn likes, 25+ online articles from 10 countries and 120,000 likes and 3,100 shares on Facebook. Searches for “iPhone 6S” went up 1,300% between the 28th and 29th April – purely from people wanting to see Samsung’s ad for themselves. Importantly, the buzz around the campaign drove real interest in the Galaxy S6, with a 14-fold increase in paid search click-through rate to 9.05% that smashed the click-through and Samsung.com traffic targets. The activity also drove 72% higher consideration than for the previous years’ model.