Make Your Marketing Useful, Like Samsung and Charmin†

Take a Small Chunck Out of Those Billion-Dollar Budgets and Help Provide a Free, Helpful Service

Advertising Age, May 26, 2008 — After about half an hour of staring at the space where a plane should've been, we're granted the announcement we knew was coming: The 3:30 p.m. out of LAX is now the 4:50 p.m., which we all know means it's really the 6-something p.m. There's a brief period of eye-rolling before everyone goes back to their business, which in my case means huddling with a dozen other worshippers around the Samsung totem pole to which our BlackBerries and laptops are attached.

If you have the misfortune to run the gauntlet of America's airports with any regularity, you're all too familiar with this scene and may even know the totem I'm referring to. It's an eight-foot, electrical charging station with a little shelf about halfway up its length where devices rest and... continue reading

Italy's Hot New Couturier Has An Unfamiliar Ring†

Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2008 — In a recent advertising spread in Italian Vogue, a model poses while the contents of her handbag — including several cellphones — spill into the street. A caption explains that she is wearing "tutto Derercuny."

Not quite "all Derercuny." There is Samsung in there, too. Unbeknownst to many followers of high fashion, Derercuny, a three-year-old Italian label that is garnering attention during this week's Milan fashion shows, is part of South Korea's sprawling Samsung Group. Best known for Samsung Electronics Co., the world's largest seller of televisions and second-largest seller of cellphones, the group also includes Cheil Industries Co., a huge textile and chemicals concern that owns Derercuny directly.

In Aisle Three, Couch Potatoes Trying the MP3s

New York Times, March 18, 2007 — FOR its first store in the United States, Samsung, the Korean electronics company, took an unconventional route: it refused to sell anything. Having leased 10,000 feet of astoundingly expensive real estate in Midtown Manhattan, it instead encouraged customers to commune with its products — to check e-mail on Samsung computers, watch reality shows on Samsung flat-screen televisions and make long-distance calls on Samsung cellphones.

Similar Search Results: Google Wins

Global: Bow to Your Google

Brandchannel.com, January 29, 2007 — Google hogged technology headlines and spread its ubiquity (which is a nice way of saying "world dominance") throughout 2006. The dust barely cleared on its US$ 900 million deal with News Corporation to provide service to sites such as MySpace when it purchased video site and workplace time-waster (as well as third-place finisher) YouTube for $1.65 billion.

2007: The year of mobile TV

Providers are scrambling to let consumers take the boob tube to go - but are we willing to pay up for the privilege?

Business 2.0, January 11, 2007 — Will 2007 be the year American consumers can finally watch live football wherever and however they want? Judging by the onslaught of mobile TV-related announcements and demos (the majority of which made reference to the current football season) at this week's Consumer Electronics Show, the answer is a resounding "Yes."

Raising the Bar at Samsung

New York Times, April 25, 2006 — So why is Kim Byung Cheol, a senior executive at Samsung, so anxious about his company's future? Because, Mr. Kim and others fret, Samsung still has not mastered one crucial factor: originality.

Korea's LG, will it be the next Samsung

BusinessWeek, January 24, 2005 — It was hard to miss the ambitions of LG Electronics Inc. at the giant Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January

Brand new†

Economist, January 13, 2005 — Samsung's success shows the value of brands even in a world of new digital gadgets