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Campanie
JM
The smartphones market is extremely crowded. Every month a new product is launched and the differentiators between the new models are less and less noticeable.
Samsung is the most prolific brand in terms of smartphone models launched every year. This is how they maintain their position as market leaders. But it is precisely this business strategy (“There is a Samsung smartphone for everyone.”) that generates a negative impact on the brand perception among one of the most important target segments: the youngsters.
Due to the fact that young people seek uniqueness and feeling special through the brands they use, their preference for the Samsung brand is decreasing every year. If Samsung is for everyone, it means that it is not for them. Many of them may own a Samsung, because of the accessible prices, but they long for something cooler, that would reflect their personality.

It is in this context that Samsung launched the A Series Smartphone, intended to be marketed for youngsters. Being an entry product, addressed to young people, the products’ features were quite average, so not highly appealing for a generation that aspires to high end smartphones, even if they cannot afford one.


Marketing challenge

Position the A Series smartphone as a cool desirable model designed for the youngsters, in the context of their overall low perception of the Samsung brand and lacking core differentiating features.

Target audience:
Like most of the cool and wannabe-cool brands on the market, we had to address Generation Y “in a relevant and engaging manner”.
This target’s description is well known or at least intuited by everyone by now: fun loving people, heavy users of social media, use products that express their values and lifestyle, experiences are most important for them, the way they are perceived and “approved” shape their social status.

Overall campaign objectives:
Awareness for the target group – 50% coverage.
Users actively engaging in the campaign – at least 30,000 users.
Give our target something they need and can user even after the end of the campaign.
General Information:
Strategy:
Strategy: Even though there are hundreds of brands targeting Generation Y every day, only few of them succeed to play a role in their lives, to actually bond with them.

Why is that?
Maybe one of the most important reasons is the fact that Generation Y per se is not an actual target – they are extremely heterogeneous. For youngsters from 15 up to 34 there are very few things that they actually have in common - and these are the insights “at first hand” which have been over abused in last years’ advertising.

We realized that the first step that we had to take was to narrow our target in order to come up with something relevant and striking. We would not talk to each and every person in the Generation Y, but with the ones that matter: the ones that set the trends among their group of friends, the cool guys that the others want to be like, dress like, act like.

We were actually looking at a specific target group, a new “generation” that cannot be named either Generation Y, or Generation Me; it is a new generation that defies all the rules and has its own life philosophy. The ones that don’t care what people say about them, the ones that decide what is cool and what isn’t, the most difficult target to be lured by brands and advertising. A generation that is defining itself without us perceiving it, but it defining as we speak.
We decided that it was high time that someone should introduce to the world this new generation and it’s life philosophy. And we decided that it should be Samsung. And that they should be given a name:
So we introduced the A Generation! And Samsung A Series would be the smartphone of this new generation.
But how do we make people identify and relate to this generation? And what is the role of our product in this undertaking?

By doing what no advertiser in Romania has had the courage to do.
Making the exponents of A Generation the heroes of our marketing story!

The youngsters we were targeting don’t care about awards winning advertising. They also don’t care if Smiley or Andra are photographed holding our product. All they care about is “where am I in this story?”

So we delivered exactly what they were expecting – a campaign with and about them.
Execution:
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