How consumer data and ‘techstyle’ drive new Samsung campaign

Bangkok, Thailand – April 27, 2014: Exterior view of a Samsung shop in the Siam Square area of Bangkok, Thailand. People can be seen inside the store. Some are outside the store. The picture is taken from the sidewalk.

Data is one of the most powerful drivers of PR campaigns today, whether that’s finding compelling stories to pitch to the media or adjusting strategy based on consumer behavior.

But Samsung’s new campaign has data as its very foundation, helping to understand how customers interact with its products to, in turn, draw new customers. This impacts everything from commercials to journalist interaction.

At Samsung, the big data team and PR both sit on the marketing team, enabling the entire function to benefit from the insights of the company’s reams of data.

“When we can sit with those insights, the rich data that we’re being fed by our data team, and then sort of crystallize, marry it with what’s happening in culture, I think then it gives way to these really interesting almost like tech-style, tech integration with lifestyle opportunities that then enable us to story tell across 15 second spots, but also in more long form formats in editorial and beyond,” said Katie Stratakis, Samsung Electronics America’s head of corporate communications.

Here’s how the new “Your Home Speaks to You” came together.

Fitting technology around life

The overarching campaign, designed to tout high-tech home appliances that adapt to your life, centers around a series of new ads. Two are available now, while two more are set to debut in June.

For instance, the spot dubbed “Lucky” centers around a man who comes home to get ready for a date, only to find that his dog, the eponymous Lucky, has laid on his outfit. But the Bespoke AI Laundry Combo comes to the rescue, washing and drying his clothes in one machine in just 68 minutes. He even gets a notification when the clothes are done. As he heads out the door, he uses his phone to turn on the TV and set the mood for his dog’s night in.

Data informed the decisions on what features were included in the spot, based on what consumers use most.

“We dug into what are the most used features on SmartThings, for example,” said Allison Stransky, CMO and vice president of corporate marketing at Samsung Electronics America. “There are a lot of things that SmartThings does that are cool, but let’s be less niche about it. What’s the thing that’s actually going to get you to adopt?”

It turned out one favorite feature was simply getting a notification on your phone when laundry was ready, which is why that aspect features prominently in the commercial.

“I don’t think those are really complex insights, but they’re valuable,” Stransky said. “And so, when data informs those actions and that builds into a creative idea, it all works together.”

This data was used from the very beginning of the campaign, including briefing the creative partner, Crispin, for the ad. And PR was in the room from the very beginning of the advertising process to ensure they were in full alignment.

“Certainly, gone are the days where we can just be handed something to PR,” said Stratakis. “We are deeply embedded in the process, and then it just makes the output that much stronger across all of our channels.”

The convergence of lifestyle and tech

PR’s involvement in the campaign extended to what Samsung calls a “seeing is believing” approach to its products. Stratakis’ team worked to invite journalists and influencers to be hands-on with the products at centers scattered across the country.

“It’s been critical for brand and PR to be in lock step, because it’s critical to have partners through PR to tell the story in their own voice and then also tell the story in different formats,” Stransky said. “So, it’s great that we figured out how to get this into a series of 30s and 15s, but there’s a lot of richness that isn’t there.”

Samsung didn’t limit its outreach to traditional tech influencers. Stratakis dubbed the emerging vertical “techstyle,” or the combination of tech into lifestyle spaces.

“Techstyle is incredibly important because it creates the space and the availability of how the product works and connects in life,” Stratakis said. “So, whether that’s a cooking influencer showing us live in their kitchen how things are working together, you can sort of understand how you could take these use cases then apply them very specifically to different influencer expertise based on their specialties or areas of interest.”

This overall strategy allows the PR team to work with journalists and influencers to tell stories that are “real, practical, educational but also entertaining content,” Stratakis said.

And it all started with a deep dive into the data.

“We think there was real power in the process, which was going into the data to unpack the biggest insights, briefing the agency with some tangible insights to work with, and then getting ready to work through the process of how we take a really complex story and bring it down into something that is really digestible and, we think, fun,” Stransky said.

Allison Carter is editorial director of PR Daily and Ragan.com. Follow her on LinkedIn.