CASE STUDY: Samsung tops Japan's mobile phone market

Background

Japan's mobile phone market has been dominated by domestic brands for decades. 

Aim

International brand Samsung Galaxy set out to become a respected and loved brand within the market and No. 1 in terms of sales and brand recognition.

Execution

In partnership with Hakuhodo Japan, Samsung created the world's first live communication challenge set in space, and involving everyone in the country. 'Space balloon project' saw the Galaxy S II attached to a meteorological balloon and the following 90-minute flight to space streamed live.

During the flight, more than 3,000 messages sent in from social-networking sites, many live, were displayed on the screen of the spacebound phone and viewed by a live video feed.

Results

After the Galaxy S II went on sale in Japan, sales increased 200 per cent over the previous model on the day of the launch. In the same month, Galaxy S II captured No. 1 share in Japan.

Within a month of the launch, the campaign site recorded more than 1.22 million page views.

More than 380,000 unique viewers watched the Ustream live stream of the balloon's flight, setting a new Ustream Asia record for a short-term show.

89,000 tweets relating to the project were sent.

The project received coverage on many Japanese TV shows, ABC, KXTV, and 300 web postings.

Credits:

Title Space balloon project
Client Samsung Telecommunications Japan
Agency Hakuhodo, Tokyo
Creative director Takeshi Nozoe, Tsubasa Oyagi, Kampei Baba (Bascule)
Copywriter Tsubasa Oyagi, Nobuhiro Arai
Web director Kampei Baba (Bascule)
Art director Shin Takeuchi (Bascule)
Director Masaya Yamamoto (Taiyo Kikaku)
Producer Inutake Hiroharu (Taiyo Kikaku), Hidekatsu Nagasawa (Taiyo Kikaku)
Music producer Koji Mito,Katuya Yamada (Aiin)
Technical director Masami Onodera (Bascule), Kenichiro Tanaka (Bascule)
Engineer Kazuhisa Maekawa (Bascule), Yuki Anzai
Interaction designer Takayuki Watanabe (Bascule)
System engineer Seiki Nakayama (Fishgrove)
Account supervisor Tsutomu Yakushijin, Kota Takaichi
Advertiser’s supervisor Changmin Oh (Samsung)
Creative adviser Masayoshi Boku (Bascule)
PR Ryunosuke Goto
Production company Taiyo Kikaku