By Kim Yoo-chul
Television commercials for Samsung Electronics’ latest Slate laptop and Note products — mid-way between smartphones and tablet PCs — are enough to distinguish themselves from others.
The Slate commercial, with an all foreign-cast and dubbed in Korean, reminds people of a scene from hot American TV shows such as “24” including cloak-and-dagger elements compressed into a 30-second slot, making the viewers sit on the edge of their seat in anticipation of what will come next.
“We put an element of drama into it,” a senior company official said in a telephone interview.
One notably missing element is a kind of racial balance; some may feel tempted to say.
For the Note, a Western person holds the device up in the air against the background of skyscrapers in Manhattan, New York City, with an emphasis on the use of a stylus.
Samsung ad people say they are being strategic because it also uses plenty of Korean athletes and actors for commercials, pointing out that the advertisements for the Note and Slate don’t include famous celebrities from abroad, meaning a stepped-up confidence for the firm that has become the largest smartphone maker ahead of Apple and Nokia.
Olympic gold medalist Kim Yu-na is a standard bearer for Samsung.
In a new TV advertisement aired in Korea for Samsung’s new “Series 7 Slate PCs,” several unnamed foreigners rave about the product’s details.
Their conversations are provided with Korean translations. It looks quite strange for ordinary Koreans who are accustomed to seeing well-known local celebrities in Samsung ads since appearing in one is regarded as a barometer to gauge the popularity of that star among the public.
“You’ve made the right point. When you see the ad for the Slate PC, you can see different colored faces. By hiring ordinary non-Koreans, Samsung aims to embrace global customers regardless of race and region,” said Samsung spokesman Lee Seung-joon, Wednesday.
This type of advertisement is looking good, literally, though that’s also been challenging to Samsung as ordinary people in its home-turf of South Korea are not ready to fully understand such new concepts.
But shouldn’t Samsung Electronics push this concept consistently as it is a company that generates over 80 percent of its total annual revenue outside Korea?
A surge in the popularity of social networking services such as YouTube and Twitter is also pushing Samsung to continue its aggressive move in the hiring of ordinary foreigners and not pricey celebrities to promote its products.
“It’s true that Samsung is expanding its vision even for ad copy. We can’t focus only on a single market as Samsung is a multinational company that has manufacturing and customer bases in all continents,” said the spokesman.
In a recent ad, Samsung takes a very clear shot at Apple’s customers who are blindly loyal and queue up outside stores for days prior to a product launch.
It’s clever at selling a “counter image” that the only product features briefly mentioned are larger screen, lighter weight, and 4G capabilities.
Apple’s very successful “1984” ad promoted itself with what it was not, and Samsung is doing exactly the same here. The company’s intention looks clear — it just wants to undermine Apple’s mystique and its hold on customers with Samsung Galaxy SII ads.
The ad strategy isn’t the first time Samsung has directly taken a shot at Apple. Samsung recently ambushed the launch of the iPhone 4S in Australia by providing $2 smartphones in a temporary shop just meters away from the official Sydney Apple store.
This advertisement, which then hit TV during Thanksgiving in the United States, clearly doesn’t mention Apple or the iPhone 4S by name. Instead, fans are shown lining up outside an Apple Store-like location nine hours before it opens.
“We are applying different customized strategies for Samsung products for an effective ad campaign. Samsung will also use top-level celebrities to promote our strategic products. However, we will also use more non-Koreans in upcoming commercials for television,” said another Samsung official.