Background

The Samsung Galaxy A Series phone is a mid-tier, but extremely powerful phone, perfectly placed to appeal to both the budget conscious and younger audiences, who typically have their parents buy a device for them. To get the phone on the consideration list for Gen Z, we were tasked with launching the phone using influencers - people our audience defer to. But we also knew that Gen Z are extremely dismissive and sceptical of branded content and fake endorsements. So we needed to find a way to be authentic while also providing them what they crave most (which also happens to be primary thing that makes them open to advertising disrupting their day): Entertainment.

Describe the creative idea

We found Gen Z’s typically used their phones to cure the boredom of their monotonous lives – school, work, friends, family, repeat – leading to them using their phones for 3 main reasons: content creation (on social), content consumption (Netflix, YouTube, music, social, gaming and more) and connection (with friends and family). To reach this audience, we had to position Galaxy A as the antidote for their boredom. Discovering that Gen Z were becoming desensitized by all the inauthentic sponsored posts by influencers, we decided to use social media influencers in a funny but unexpected way that embraced and poked fun of the whole idea of #SponsoredPosts, with the Galaxy A Series at the heart of everything.

Describe the strategy

We found Gen Z’s typically used their phones to cure the boredom of their monotonous lives – school, work, friends, family, repeat – leading to them using their phones for 3 main reasons: content creation (on social), content consumption (Netflix, YouTube, music, social, gaming and more) and connection (with friends and family). To reach this audience, we had to position Galaxy A as the antidote for their boredom. Discovering that Gen Z were becoming desensitized by all the inauthentic sponsored posts by influencers, we decided to use social media influencers in a funny but unexpected way that embraced and poked fun of the whole idea of #SponsoredPosts, with the Galaxy A Series at the heart of everything.

Describe the execution

We created a social media influencer campaign that embraced and poked fun at the whole idea of #SponsoredPosts, with the most unsubtle posts and music video social media has ever seen. Teaming up with a local comedy group (Aunty Donna) and four popular influencers, we created a music video, teaching influencers how to do a sponsored post… in a not so subtle way. This video was cutdown into edits promoting phone feature for a range of platforms used by Gen Z: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok - designed specifically for the platform – the right aspect ratios, sound off/on and all the other platform best practices. We got our influencers to do their own ‘organic’ #SubtlySponsoredPosts and created a Snapshat filter that transformed anyone into an influencer so they could unsubtly promote the phone themselves. Gen Z could also do an #unsubtle Tik Tok challenge to win a phone.

List the results

From a creative standpoint, we have seen through brand uplift studies, that exposure to the campaign is creating a 7% lift in Favorability of the brand and a 13% lift in Purchase Intent of the product. This is supported by an extremely high 16.33 average VTR across all platforms. This campaign launched in June 2019 and Samsung are seeing extremely positive results as the Galaxy A has become the undisputed #1 mid-tier smartphone brand in Australia with 42% market share, with Apple its closest rival at 22%. Sales beat expectations by over 125%.