Samsung may be Korea’s largest export, but its global HQ can be notoriously reticent on certain matters.
Global media reviews, for instance, are generally kept quiet from regional chiefs until the decision has been made. Which perhaps explains why Jeong-Wook Kim, Samsung Asia’s regional vice-president and chief marketing officer, appeared unfamiliar with the pitch.
Global media reviews, for instance, are generally kept quiet from regional chiefs until the decision has been made. Which perhaps explains why Jeong-Wook Kim, Samsung Asia’s regional vice-president and chief marketing officer, appeared unfamiliar with the pitch.
“Is it already time for a review?” he asks his communications assistant. But Kim quickly downplays the significance of the news, even though he is clearly eager to align the account with one media agency. “We will get economy-of-scale and better service through forging a strategic partnership with one agency. But one agency may be good in some markets and not as good in others.”
Continuing in the same vein, he laments that the wide range of media vehicles available has made his job tougher, since it’s virtually impossible to track the ROI of every channel.
The process gets more confusing, he notes wryly, when Samsung’s media agencies do not take the time to communicate with them: “All they do is show us charts and figures but they don’t give us any explanations.”
But such unexpected candour from a Korean chaebol should not come as a surprise, given Kim’s long tenure at Samsung. He started out in the overseas project division in 1990, where he was responsible for establishing the company’s operations in Slovakia and India.
Afterwards, Kim worked his way up to be the managing director of the Singapore office before taking up his current portfolio.
Beyond an unexpected tendency to be outspoken lies the kind of humility that has characterised Samsung’s ascent.
After all, Kim works for a company that has battled hard to transform itself from an exporter of fish and fruit to a global electronics company that now holds 13.7 per cent of the worldwide mobile phone market, second only to Nokia. Its LCD business also moved past global archrivals Sony and Sharp last year.
Still, Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee recently warned his company of a potential crisis from corporate inertia. Samsung’s second-quarter operating profits were telling - two of its three main businesses, namely semiconductors and LCDs, led to a 36 per cent drop from the year before.
Kim acknowledges that there are still many things the brand can do. “We know we have a gap between us and first-tier brands such as Nokia and Sony from brand surveys. But it’s really difficult to define what a good global brand is.”
When asked if he could name some Asian brands with the potential to become global names the way Samsung has, he jokes, “This question is not in the list that you sent me.”
He ponders for a moment before naming Singapore exports Creative Technologies and Tiger Beer as two that have taken differing routes to becoming “good global brands”.
“Creative had a good chance, but now it’s too sales-driven. I’m rather sorry to see that it doesn’t care too much about its brand image,” he says. “Tiger Beer, on the other hand, has taken a good approach and it is doing very well.”
He concedes that marketing is a difficult job. For one, consumers have the ability to obtain information from the internet. While customers in their 40s and 50s “will only buy Sony televisions and National refrigerators” because those are the brands best-known to them, consumers are inundated by a wide variety of choices.
“Tweny years ago, they had fewer options. Now, even I can’t remember all the models of Samsung mobile phones,” Kim says self-deprecatingly. “Younger consumers are volatile and don’t stick to one brand. Brand loyalty is important; we don’t want our users to say ‘don’t buy Samsung’.”
The one way to build a faithful community of Samsung users is to move into online, he says, as it allows the company to reach their consumers directly. And while the medium may change over time, Kim maintains that it is very important to tell the story of the product to engage the customers.
“When I get the product, I think about what image, perception and message we want the audience to receive,” he notes. “If we don’t communicate the product’s value to the consumer, they won’t be interested.”
