Going Head-to-Head. Daring or Desperate?
Samsung is using the same strategy as Mitt Romney. It seems to be working for them.
I was skeptical when I read about Samsung’s new ad campaign poking fun at Apple enthusiasts waiting for the new iPhone 5. (I know they did the same thing with the iPhone 4, but it didn’t generate nearly the buzz of this new campaign, which was fueled by the patent battle between Samsung and Apple.)
My initial reaction was to echo the thoughts of Ken Segall, a creative who worked on Apple’s brilliant Think Different campaign and has written a book on Apple called, Insanely Simple. “It seems an odd way to seduce them because you’re basically calling them idiots,” Segall said in a Sept. 18, 2012 New York Times story on the strategy.
Right, I thought, why insult the people who you want to buy your product? Smells of desperation.
Then I saw the first TV spot, a full, 90-second commercial parodying Apple customers waiting in line for the iPhone 5 while simultaneously suppressing their envy of Samsung Galaxy S III users outside the line. Like the PC vs Mac spots that Apple produced several years back, it is one of those commercials that I just can’t fast-forward through no matter how many times I’ve seen it. Every time I come across it, I pause the DVR and watch. The casting is perfect, it is shot beautifully and the script is knowing and nuanced. I can’t get enough.
Watching it over and over, I realized the commercial doesn’t make me like Apple any less; but it does make me like Samsung more. That, I think, is the key to Samsung’s strategy.
Interestingly, it is the same strategy Mitt Romney espoused when he was caught on tape saying that 47 percent of voters were going to vote for Obama no matter what he did, so he wasn’t going to waste his time on them. He was focusing his energy on those voters who are undecided.
I am not qualified to judge the merits of that as a political strategy; certainly Romney wishes he wouldn’t have been caught on tape stating it. Strategy is more effective when it stays behind the scenes. But, I do think it can be effective as a product strategy. And, while marketers can certainly learn from political campaigns, product marketing and political campaigns are fundamentally different in at least two ways.
- Product decisions are made every day, not once every two or four years. (In that way brands are more accountable than politicians.)
- In an election, there is only one winner. In the marketplace, there is almost always room for more than one brand to succeed. In a crowded market like smartphones, a challenger brand can separate itself from the masses by positioning itself against the leader.
That is exactly what Samsung is doing with this spot. They aren’t trying to convert iPhone users to the Galaxy. That is a waste of resources. Instead, they are positioning themselves as a viable alternative for all those people who are moving into the smartphone market. So whether or not the strategy works for Romney, it seems to be working for Samsung. A Sept. 26 story in Ad Age noted that:
While Apple conversation dominated consumer and tech media when the iPhone 5 was announced the week of September 12, Samsung upstaged it the first week it was on sale. Samsung’s campaign for the Galaxy S III, a phone released in June, beat out Apple on Viral Video Chart this week. The Galaxy S III campaign snagged 13.2 million views. And although the campaign had been on the chart for three weeks prior to this one, the iPhone launch helped it increase its views more than seven times and jump from No. 5 to No. 1.
And, as if to prove there doesn’t have to be just one winner in this battle (at least outside of the courts), the 13th Annual Interbrand study, which ranks brands by their value, was released on Oct. 1. It shows two brands making the biggest gains: Samsung and Apple. Apple rose from No. 8 last year to No. 2 this year, while Samsung shot from 17 to 9.
For now, it appears the question of who is winning in the battle between Apple and Samsung may be: both. The losers are the brands we aren’t even talking about.
