Samsung pushing ‘product porn’ to build market buzz

In a bid to “smash” sales targets, Samsung is adopting a ‘product porn’ marketing  strategy to provide a gust of wind behind its flagship Galaxy S5 smartphone.

The new direction is a change from its current lifestyle-focused approach, which is hoped to “smash” sales targets.

Speaking to Marketing Week, Samsung’s UK and Ireland marketing director, Ines van Gennip said that the brand is embarking on an internal philosophy of “people inspired innovation” to lead a new strategy behind the launch of the new smartphone.

The media spend on S5 is expected to rival the S4’s USD 1bn global budget. Gennip thinks consumers “will be a bit surprised” by the creative in the forthcoming campaign.

“We have always been very lifestyle focused and that is very important, but we know that people like to see the new device as the device itself is important. We’ve focused on making sure we have amazing product imagery at the heart of this campaign and making sure product is the real hero, [something we call here] ‘product porn’: amazing product that looks absolutely stunning, showing all the different angles because the device itself is beautiful,” she said.

She believes the new approach to marketing will “smash” the 40 million sales of the, Samsung Galaxy S4 last year, which this lifestyle-led advertising approach below helped to generate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgGRklW6QAk

Van Gennip admits that the initial ‘product porn’ approach is a titillating tactic, which will be switched back to a lifestyle-led approach once the brand firmly seeds itself into healthy market awareness levels.

Samsung’s move to open 31 retail stores across Europe in the coming months, as announced in February, will also help bring the “S5 story to life”, van Gennip said.

What’s clear is that marketers are moving away from a 2-D marketing approach, employing multi-faceted approaches to engage consumers at different stages of a products life. Fingers crossed for something like this for the new launch.