Samsung Canada kicked off the marketing efforts for its latest smartphone, the Galaxy S4, with a concert series Thursday in three cities featuring Feist (in holographic form), Dragonette and Walk Off The Earth.
Held concurrently in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, the events come ahead of the device’s Canadian retail release on May 3.
Created by Toronto PR firm North Strategic and experiential agency Mosaic, the concerts also debuted Samsung’s new brand positioning, “Live In A World of Infinite Possibilities,” which the company is using for the Galaxy S4 (GS4) in the Canadian market.
Jason Partridge, creative director of Cheil Canada, which handles the Samsung Canada account, explained the positioning is meant to express the breadth of things consumers can to do with the new product. Though the brand will continue to use its “The Next Big Thing” tagline in some GS4 marketing materials, Partridge said “Infinite Possibilities” is the main marketing message for this market.
Cheil hosted a series of casting calls in April as part of a national search to find a broad array of talented Canadians that reflect the “world of infinite possibilities” — from fashion design to magic and music. Eventually, Samsung Canada will select three winners and tailor prizes to their talents. Cheil also created a GS4 microsite, Galaxys4Possibilities.com, in-store signage and creative for social media accounts.
To compliment the local work, new TV ads by the brand’s American agency, 72andSunny, are expected in early May. Ken Price, Samsung Canada’s director of marketing for mobile, said the media buy for the campaign, handled by Starcom, is slightly larger than the buy the company made last year when it debuted the phone’s predecessor, the S3, in June 2012.
Since that last launch in June 2012, Samsung has made significant gains in the mobile market, which Price said has led to changes in its communications. While Samsung previously focused on hardware specs to appeal to tech enthusiasts, it’s now concentrating on a wider market, which means making a shift towards lifestyle branding.
“What you’ll see now in the advertising is that it’s more about the experiences than hardware elements,” Price said. “We don’t have to establish ourselves anymore as a credible hardware provider.
“People are now very comfortable with the [Android] platform, understand some of Samsung’s differentiators and are confident in Samsung as a brand. That doesn’t always show up in the advertising, but it does show up in the below-the-line tactics.”
New Faces
Andrew Barett
The launch follows two major personnel changes on Samsung Canada’s marketing team. In January, Cheil parted ways with creative director Joe Musicco and appointed Jason Partridge, previously associate creative director at Venture Communications and a writer at Grip and Publicis. One month later, Samsung Canada parted with its vice-president of marketing, Andrew Barrett.
A rep for Samsung Canada said the company is “constantly evolving its organization structure” and is currently in the recruiting process, hoping to soon make an announcement about a new chief marketing officer.
Barrett told Marketing he is proud of the progress Samsung made in Canada during his tenure, noting it made significant headway in the transition from a product-based brand to a consumer brand.
“A lot of what I went to Samsung to accomplish was achieved more quickly than anyone would have thought possible,” he said. “With that framework, Samsung decided to take an alternate course of action and hire someone different for the next phase of their business.”
Since departing Samsung, Barrett has spent time in South Africa working on branding strategy with Commonwealth Games Canada on SportsWorks, a program that assists the Commonwealth Games network abroad.
