Samsung Galaxy 11- Football Will Save the Planet Xiaowei Lu Introduction Digital Marketing Nowadays, the first thing when you wake up in the morning, is probably to check your cellphone for texts, or to open Facebook page or other social network for new posts, or to browse internet or to turn on television for global latest news. Those online means of communication, information conveyance, and collaboration through internet connections of people, organisations, and communities supported by technological capability and mobility, are all social media (Tuten & Solomon, 2013). There are always two major different interactions in today’s social networks such as Facebook, twitter and youtube: synchronous interactions, which are interactions with immediate communications and responses such as texting live messages online with friends; asynchronous interactions, which are communications without instant replies such as posting photos and news online (Tuten & Solomon, 2013). Digital marketing focuses on generalising marketing campaigns through taking full advantage of digital social media, in other words, achieving marketing objectives by digital technologies, since in today’s society it is the most Immediate, direct and effective way of business promotion. Samsung Samsung Group is the largest multinational conglomerate company from south Korea founded in 1938, operating various subsidiaries and affiliated companies and business. One of the most remarkable subsidiaries under the Samsung brand is Samsung Electronics, which is the largest information technology organisation based on the revenue assessment in 2012 (Dhaka & Shibaloy, The economist, 03/11/2012). Samsung Electronics Co.Ltd. is a international leading company in technology, devoted itself to ongoing innovation and discovery in developing new technology of smartphones, televisions, personal computers, cameras, digital devices, LTE systems, medical devices, home appliances and LED solutions, with over 270,000 employees from 79 countries and annual sales revenue of $187.8 billion (Samsung official website, 2014). The fourth quarter of Samsung Electronics‘ operation profit last year in 2013 for the first time in last two year has not reached analysts‘ forecast. The operation profit is $7.8 billion, 18 per cent less than the profit of the third quarter. Although Samsung Electronics has sold the most smartphones in the second and third quarter last year, and has won Apple in the market share at the pricier end, the large number of inventory of smartphones left and the increasing competitions from cheaper phones finally led to the decrease in profit. (The economist, 11/01/2014) Therefore, more attentions are drawn in how to do better business promotions to stimulate consumption. Galaxy 11- Football Will Save the Planet Background Samsung has been exploring crossover values from football since 2005, by building up obvious and famous relationships with Chelsea Football Club, Real Madrid Football Club, Bayern Munich Football Club, Juventus Football Club, Brazilian National Football (CBF), Korea Football Association(KFA), Asia Football Confederation (AFC), Confederation de African Football (CAF) and other national teams (Samsung official website, 2014).

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Samsung Galaxy 11- Football Will Save the Planet Xiaowei Lu In 10th December 2013, Samsung Electronics announced the participation of Manchester United and England national team striker Wayne Rooney to Samsung’s all star squad of world’s most outstanding football players in its latest campaign Galaxy 11- Football will save the planet. The star-studded footballer list includes names of three FIFA Ballon d’Or winner Lionel Messi, Real Madrid captan and Spain national team goalkeeper Iker Casillas, Bayern Munich and Germany attacking midfielder Mario Götze, AC Milan’s Italian striker El Shaarawy, Chelsea and Brazil national team midfielder Oscar, Nigerian player Victor Moses, Shanghai East Asia and China midfielder Wu Lei, Bolton Wanderers‘ South Korean midfielder Lee Chung-Yong, Atletico Madrid’s goal scorer Radamel Falcao from Monaco, and the current FIFA Ballon d’Or holder Cristiano Ronaldo from Real Madrid. These excellent footballers all over the world will try best to save the planet by competing with alien domination to determine the fate of earth with a “#winner takes all” football match on the pitch because Aliens have invaded and challenged earth. If the Galaxy team lost the match, the aliens are going to destroy the planet. (Samsung official website, 10/12/2013)

Every player’s selection for the Galaxy 11 line-up squad was made into a short video and together as Samsung’s first complete Galaxy 11 promo video. For weeks, Samsung has been releasing teases of individual segments for this new campaign featured how every footballer in the all-star team has been selected. For example, the video of how Wayne Rooney was selected to join the Galaxy 11 is named as “Rooney joins #GALAXY11”, which shows the England striker practising boxing for match preparation when received call from the Galaxy 11 team (Video available: http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=2bhT-5BTSyk&feature=youtu.be); the short segment of “Cristiano Ronaldo joins #GALAXY11” shows the recruitment for the earth's ultimate football team, in which Cristiano Ronaldo was playing volleyball for fun when called up for the squad to save the world. (Video available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86wGkXjgEjI) Wayne Rooney considered his selection for the Galaxy 11 as a great honour to cooperate with some of the greatest footballers in the world. In the year of the World Cup 2014, the Galaxy 11 as well as other presenting stage where he can show his qualities and English spirit for his country and club. Moreover, Franz Beckenbauer, who is a football legend and has won World Cup as both player and manager for Germany, will be the coach of the Galaxy 11 in the battle with mysterious alien

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Samsung Galaxy 11- Football Will Save the Planet Xiaowei Lu aggression. All the football superstars in the Galaxy 11 team will be presented in the roster online website (www.theGALAXY11.com.), and through Samsung mobile social networks and channels. Andy Griffiths, the managing director of Samsung electronics UK and Ireland welcomed Wayne Rooney’s participation to the epic Galaxy 11 campaign, as his talent in football and inspirational personal spirit made him a perfect choice for this campaign and match the brand value of Samsung. This will encourage all Rooney’s fans to follow this Galaxy 11 campaign by playing an important role in supporting the ultimate team through different ways. “Galaxy 11- Football Will Save the Planet”, which is a global and multi-platform supported marketing campaign, has been promoted through all Samsung Galaxy devices, online platforms, social network and media channels to provide all the fans with new immersive ways to follow and participate in this multi-layered and comprehensive campaign, ever since the first chapter of the epic story was revealed. Objectives The direct objectives of this eye-dazzling marketing campaign is to present and promote Samsung’s Galaxy phones and devices including Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy Gear, Galaxy Note and Galaxy S4 camera, which are listed in the team tech page (The galaxy11.com, 2014). But if think further, this intense promotional campaign has also provided massive impression of Samsung brand itself on audience. Samsung states that the aim of the campaign is to attract more football fans’ attentions to the Samsung brand and its products through various social interactive initiatives during the coming year. Tools & Techniques TV advertisement: The first episode “Galaxy 11: The Beginning” has been released in December 2013 as the introduction of the “football will save the planet” followed by the recruitment showed that how players have been “unexpectedly” called up to join the Galaxy 11 team with presenting their unique skills and abilities off the football pitch (Video available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC-zB2aSXXM). This 3:52 advertisement video creating an epic and tense atmosphere has fully applied special digital effect, movie-standerd action shots, dramatic description and conceptual futuristic football uniforms. All football fans around the world can watch and follow the wonderful, fierce and dramatic story of the Galaxy war. Although the basic method of marketing promotion is to implant advertising with brief glimpses of relevant products such as Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Gear, this campaign has actually intuitively given audience an impressive feeling of Samsung’s massive capability of marketing production and budget with the movie-quality advertisement shooting and outstanding players involved. Social Media advertisement: Fans can follow the story and support the team of GALAXY 11 by visiting: • Microsite: www.theGALAXY11.com • Tumblr: www.theGALAXY11.Tumblr.com • Facebook: www.Facebook.com/SamsungMobile
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Samsung Galaxy 11- Football Will Save the Planet Xiaowei Lu • Twitter: www.Twitter.com/SamsungMobile • YouTube: www.YouTube.com/SamsungMobile • ChatON: www.samsungchaton.com/galaxy11 • Call-to-Action: #GALAXY11 (Samsung official website, 10/12/2013) According to Social Media Zones and Example Vehicles, this campaign has wildly applied in social communities, social publishing, and social entrainment. In terms of social community, the call-toaction #GALAXY11 has been broadly used online in facebook and twitter, moreover people have kept talking about this campaign online in different social networks since each famous footballer was announced to join the campaign. Besides the official microsite of the Galaxy 11 released, this campaign has also applied other social publishing means such as youtube channel with a series of relevant videos. Also Samsung introduced the function of “suit up now for galaxy 11” on its microsite, in which people could fit their pictures in different roles in this Galaxy 11 story.

(Tuten & Solomon, 2013) Procedures During the last year, a number of teasers and adverts have been launched by the Galaxy 11 marketing team in Samsung to create stunt and story concept for this futuristic fantastic multi-layered global marketing campaign. Meanwhile, Samsung has introduced the alien symbols and mysterious messages at football matches in the UK, America, Brazil, Germany and Italy, for instance hiring actors to dress custom such as black robed with cryptic symbols in the front to appear at matches with a great job in eye-catching.

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Samsung Galaxy 11- Football Will Save the Planet

Xiaowei Lu

Then the real formal first step of presenting this campaign in a TV advertising form is an approximate four minute cinematic video ‘Galaxy 11: The Beginning’ unveiled the full list of the ultimate team players selected to play against the aliens and save the planet. Activities Utilised Besides the online “suit up” and social network communication, this campaign also can take advantage of the coming World Cup 2014 for more attentions. Key Messages “Football Will Save the Planet.”

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Samsung Galaxy 11- Football Will Save the Planet Xiaowei Lu Audiences The players selected in this campaign have over 200 million fans in social network to share content, pictures, news and show interest and awareness of Samsung’s products.

Evaluation This global epic campaign of storytelling and branded entertainment is very impressive and radical, because the all-star cast budgets of this campaign cannot be afford by most of nowadays brands. Besides Nike, Adidas, Pepsi and Coca-cola, there is no other brand has even attempted to launch such a ‘epic blockbuster’ advertisement. The first episode features ex-footballer and coach Franz Beckenbauer and his team of 13 world class players including Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Mario Gotze and Iker Casillas and so on. Even in the year of the World Cup 2014, this highly star-involved campaign is adventurous for a brand, which its products are not self related to sports. Effectiveness The effectiveness of this campaign is hard to defined, because unlike those fast moving Consumer Goods such as Pepsi and Coca-cola, which are mostly relied on eye-catching marketing campaign especially during years of world sports events, the sales results Samsung electronics cannot be directly and quickly influenced by actually any marketing campaigns. In terms of the Galaxy 11 campaign, the first episode has mainly introduced the concept with brief glimpses of relevant products, therefore the intuitive effectiveness could be low. Hopefully, the campaign will be kicked off a new phase as the team starts to prepare for the match. Beckenbauer has implied that the training will be different from anything happened before and the form of this football team ought to be unique and no way of ordinary on earth with more high technology involved. Reach The reach of the campaign has definitely inherited Samsung’s football legacy, and even widened its audience's brand awareness among football fans and other customers who are also impressed by this star-studded campaign. Audience Response Audience response to this fascinating campaign is reasonable. From the very beginning audience has been attracted from the dressed-up aliens appeared in stadiums to the star-studded episode 1. But there is a potential problem of the durability and continuity of audience’s attentions, and the real pertinence of promoting the product rather than transitory massive focus on stunts. Improvement Recommend Till now this campaign has just started to present the whole story, but the problems have already occurred. Actually, interactive initiatives of this campaign till now are not active enough. During the very first days when the campaign came out, people have been attracted and kept talking about it online, but after that, this topic has faded away. Probably with the coming of the next following
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Samsung Galaxy 11- Football Will Save the Planet Xiaowei Lu episodes, attentions may be drawn again, but the competitions of other digital marketing campaign which will come with the World Cup 2014 should not be ignored. Therefore, more interactive initiatives ought be introduced, for example, developing relevant online games instead of only avator roles design, and introducing assorted application on Samsung devices.

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Samsung Galaxy 11- Football Will Save the Planet Bibliography

Xiaowei Lu

Books • Chaffey, D. & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2012), Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice.

• Ryan, D. & Jones, C. (2012), Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation.

• Tuten, T. & Solomon, M. (2013), Social Media Marketing, Essex: Pearson Education Limited.
Website • Mundy, Simon. 21/02/2014. Investor expectations low for Samsung Galaxy S5 Financial Times [Online] (Update 23/02/2014) Available from: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/55a7d46c-9af6-11e3b0d0-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=uk#axzz2uClCvwZp

• Samsung Official Website, 10/12/2013. Wayne Rooney Recruited to Join the Samsung GALAXY 11
Campaign. Samsung Official Website. [Online] (Update 23/02/2014) Available from: http:// www.samsung.com/uk/news/presskit/wayne-rooney-recruited-to-join-the-samsung-galaxy-11campaign

• Samsung Mobile, 18/12/2013. Galaxy 11: The Beginning. YouTube [Online] (Update 23/02/2014)
Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC-zB2aSXXM

• Samsung Mobile, 09/12/2013. Rooney joins #GALAXY11. YouTube [Online] (Update 23/02/2014)
Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bhT-5BTSyk&feature=youtu.be

• Samsung Mobile, 13/12/2013. Ronaldo joins #GALAXY11. YouTube [Online] (Update 23/02/2014)
Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86wGkXjgEjI

• The Galaxy 11 Website, 2013. The Galaxy 11: Football Will Save the Planet. The Galaxy 11 Website
[Online] (Update 23/02/2014) Available from: http://www.thegalaxy11.com/

• The Economist, 03/11/2012. The path through the fields. The Economist [Online] (Update
23/02/2014) Available from: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21565617-bangladesh-hasdysfunctional-politics-and-stunted-private-sector-yet-it-has-been-surprisingly

• The Economist, 11/01/2014. Samsung Fluffed lines The South Korean giant has a lousy start to the new year. The Economist [Online] (Update 23/02/2014) Available from: http://www.economist.com/ news/business/21593488-south-korean-giant-has-lousy-start-new-year-fluffed-lines

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Samsung Galaxy 11- Football Will Save the Planet Xiaowei Lu • The One Centre, 09/01/2014. Samsung to play intergalactic football. The One Centre.com [Online] (Update 23/02/2014) Available from: http://theonecentre.com/bar/blog/samsung-spends-big-onglobal-alien-football-campaign

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