Sorry ... another busy week in Seventy Seven has left precious little time to be blogging. Still, one account win and a shortlisting for the Children in Need pitch makes it more than a little worthwhile.
Anyhoo ... the lovely folk at the Viral Factory have been at it again with their on-going and apparently pretty successful work to change perceptions of Samsung.
The lord god alone knows what the Korean electronics giant has put into this campaign, but it's doing some really interesting things to my perceptions of them.
First of all, I love the fact that there is no need for consistency in the creative. All of the work looks different. All of it is lovely content in its own way.
It's a brand that has realised that if it is going to play "media owner" or try to get its work aired for free by other media owners then it needs to play by the rules that apply to a producer of content, not the rules that apply to a purchaser of media space.
Samsung are created interesting content.
Second of all, they're doing something quite brave. TVF (who have made this work) are far from cheap (in PR terms, maybe not so in ad terms). They barely get out of bed for less than £20,000 and this kind of stuff feels like nearer £50,000 or more.
That suggests that they are putting £100,000-200,000 a year into the creation of content. Relative to an advertising campaign, that's a small sum of money. Relative to the millions they could be spending on media, it looks good value.
But it also means that they are spending that £100,000+ on a bet that the work will be good, because if it's shit they don't get free space on blogs like this and the Tweets that it will trigger and the email pass-ons that will be created. And that is quite a brave move, if you ask me.
That makes me feel better about them as a brand. I like brave.
Congratulations James
Posted by: Ged Carroll | 27 May 2009 at 10:08 AM
Hey James - congrats!
RE: Samsung, you're forgeting about the viral seeding costs, which I'm guessing would be at least 4x the production costs, if not a lot more... and of which of course are a MEDIA cost.
There's no such thing as a free lunch...
Posted by: Robin Grant, We Are Social | 28 May 2009 at 02:57 PM