Samsung’s connected devices are truly amazing, and empower people to use

home technology in a whole new way. However, these products, along with the technology that connects them, can seem techy, complex and unrelatable, meaning that the opportunity afforded by this innovation is lost on most consumers. Furthermore, advertising for smart home devices often features bland portraits of perfect nuclear family homes, complete with 2.5 kids, making it difficult for Samsung’s Millennial audience to relate to the technology or the setting in which it is shown.

Our brief had one clear objective: enable a Millennial audience to actually experience Samsung’s smart technology in a unique, exciting and innovative way that is both entertaining and educational at the same time, making use of the latest cutting-edge digital technology.

How do you explain Samsung’s smart home technology to a notoriously hard to engage Millennial audience? Not just by talking about products - that’s pretty boring. No, you do it by inviting them to experience the technology and see its benefits firsthand. Where better to do this, than in a home Millennials already know and love? Samsung partnered with Family Guy to open the door to one of the world’s most famous households and bring the possibilities of the Intelligent Home to life. Using Google AR core, we mapped a virtual 3D version of the Griffin home to the real world for the first time, allowing users to walk around and fully immerse themselves in every detail, experiencing Samsung’s connected technology along the way. Through a funny, interactive narrative co-written with Family Guy’s writers and featuring characters from the show, we demonstrated how Samsung’s amazing connected home products really work.

Two key insights impacted the planning of this project: 1) Our millennial target audience increasingly crave entertainment over education, and 2) the best way to understand Samsung’s connected technology is to experience it firsthand. Therefore, our solution was to create a live experiential IoT showcase. However, to make it truly entertaining, we wanted to elevate the experience beyond the real world and invite users into a home they actually wanted to visit. When it came to choosing the entertainment property, there were two key requirements: popularity with the target audience and relevance to the product story. Family Guy has over 25 million viewers worldwide and the widely recognisable Griffin household has been appearing regularly on screens since 1999. Furthermore, the juxtaposition between the smart world of Samsung devices and the not-so-smart Peter Griffin proved creatively rich and comedic ground, because if he can have a smart home, anyone can right?

The app, preloaded onto Note9 devices at IFA 2018, used AR Core to map the physical to the virtual. To open the door and step into the Family Guy world, users simply had to scan a marker. AR gave users the feeling of immersion without having to gear up with heavy headsets.

With innovation at its heart, Samsung is always looking for new ways to engage customers. AR and Family Guy gave Samsung not one, but two, great ingredients to engage their Millennial audience. AR was also a first for the Family Guy IP, allowing them to tell their stories in a new way - one that places fans at the heart.

To tell the story of a connected home, we first had to turn the Griffin house into one. We replaced all household appliances with Samsung smart appliances, and to make it feel authentic we had to make sure it looked like one world. As part of the narrative, users were tasked with making connections between the newly-upgraded products.

To tell the story, we used large 2D animated characters on top of the 3D world, this gave us the freedom to include lots of characters without jeopardising the very tight deadline. Hidden easter eggs enhanced the narrative, and we made sure all the core interactions were actually fun to do, gamifying the experience.

To emphasise the innovative nature of Samsung’s devices we visualised the brains behind the tech, voiced by Bixby, so that users understood what was happening “under the hood” - making it not only fun but also informative.

By partnering with the Family Guy production team we crafted a truly bespoke experience. An entertaining narrative, custom animations and hand-drawn artwork made this into something truly unique. Production on the experience took 4 weeks from start to finish.

The activation at IFA engaged over 3897 people over 7 days - that’s over 60 people an hour, and a further 4,280,534 impressions from a video of the experience online, increased the activation’s reach beyond just the physical audience at IFA. The experience received incredibly positive feedback on social media - 70% of online conversations about the activation were joyful. Most impressive, however, was the fact that visitors to the experience spent an amazing 6.5 minutes on average interacting with it, an astounding period of time to maintain interest in content through any medium, and especially at a frenetic tradeshow. 88% of users agreed that the activation made Samsung’s smart home devices more interesting and the partnership gave Family Guy the unique opportunity to create a 3D Augmented Reality version of the Griffin household, engaging fans in the European market in a new and exciting way.