Marketing Strategy: Samsung Electronics Company

In this fast-paced industry, Samsung Electronics Company (SEC) has done a remarkable job in turning the company around and reaching a top-of-mind brand awareness over the past few years. The Samsung brand identity and values were poorly regarded up until the early 90s. The brand was positioned as a low-end electronics company that was mainly manufacturing consumer televisions and VCRs. Samsung was not able to compete with the industry’s leaders (i.e. Sony) in the global market. A positive change was needed to reinvent the company’s culture and brand position at that time. As a result, SEC’s Chairman, Kun Hee Lee, launched the “new management initiative” in 1993 to shift the company’s emphasis from providing low-end commodities to high-end premium

The company had a number of marketing implications including the lack of market segmentation, the fragmented and inconsistent brand messaging, and the skepticism faced internally about marketing in general. As a result of the new management initiative in 1993, the direction of the brand started to change. Eric Kim was hired as the right person to take Samsung global. However, aside from changing the brand perception globally, he needed to change it internally among Samsung employees first, and once he achieved that, he started working on repositioning the brand externally. First, he formed the “Global Marketing Operations” (GMO) team to research and manage the new brand. The team developed new logo and product presentation guidelines and consolidated advertising efforts using one global advertising agency. At that point, the brand began getting great exposure, especially after placing a Samsung device in the movie “The Matrix Reloaded” and becoming an Olympic

He had the right leadership and executive vision to take the brand globally, despite the different challenges he had initially faced. Kim’s very first achievement started by educating the importance of marketing among Samsung employees and get their buy-in to drive the necessary changes, which he has accomplished astonishingly. Following that, and since the brand was creating different impressions in the different markets, due to the 55 different advertising agencies used in each market, Kim succeeded in consolidating all those efforts to be assigned under one agency, the Foote Cone & Belding (FCB), and that to maintain a consistent image of Samsung across all markets. Subsequently, Kim’s annual marketing budget grew to 400 million. He also started exposing the Samsung brand by sponsoring global events, such as the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics and many others, in an effort to improve their brand image. In addition to the product placement in the Matrix Reloaded movie as well as the successful DigitAll campaign, Samsung was able to get back on the radar and appeal to “generation Y” consumers, especially in the mobile device