Our challenge was to sell the S20, Samsung’s most expensive ever S series phone, at a time when excitement around new phone launches was rapidly dwindling. As a result, the hype has evaporated from the category, with lines of starry-eyed consumers now being measured in mere meters, rather than blocks.

As phone sales significantly decline, competitor 'switcher' and out of contract 'dormant' audiences become a major area for growth. However, to these audiences launch advertising is invisible - simply because they don’t identify with Samsung or feel the need to upgrade. Within the confines of the heavily dictated HQ playbook we needed to find a new pathway of persuasion where we engage, not just explain features.

At the outset we had two very simple objectives: achieve a revenue ROI of 3:1 ($900k in sales) and provide positive proof that our local activity was disproportionately successful in activating 'switchers' and 'dormants'.

Like all major Samsung launches, price, product, placement and promotion were all directed by global playbooks. The key visuals and TV sang about the new features, but how could we get Australia to notice our ads without changing the HQ assets?

With 100x zoom, the Samsung S20 has the best camera in smartphone history.

So we did something massive by doing something tiny:

Microcodes: find the code hidden in our ads, to win big.

As the 300+ HQ assets landed, we ‘intercepted’ them and hid a microscopic alphanumeric code before setting them to air. The fastest person to register the correct code would win an S20. With 100x zoom, seeing them clearly would be a breeze, without - you’d have to resort to extremes. Perfectly showcasing the S20’s superiority over other devices, whilst engaging a nation to become obsessed with every pixel of our ads and drive local hype.

Upgraders, are the dutifully loyal customers who buy the latest and greatest every two years. These groups are responsible for the majority of sales but ‘autopilot upgrading’ has dramatically slowed with trade suggesting the entire category is down 15%.

To close the gap left from the declining upgrader audience, Switcher and Dormant audiences have become more important. ‘Switchers’ are consumers moving from Apple or Android to Samsung. ‘Dormants’ are existing Samsung customers who have held their current device for more than 30 months, a rapidly growing group.

Yet Samsung advertising is invisible to these audiences due to lack of need or want. To ‘open’ Dormants and Switcher audiences we had to engage them in the value of S20, not just tell them about it. Product testing revealed Dormants and Apple audiences were most interested in the 100x Zoom feature, armed with this information we set out to persuade.

Samsung Microcodes: find the hidden codes in our advertising, to win big.

As the 300+ assets came in from HQ, we ‘intercepted’ them, hiding a tiny code prior to airing in March.

We then announced the hunt via a launch film, focusing all of our $150k paid media on Facebook and YouTube to reach 2+ 80% of 18-54 Australians, with ~15m impressions.

The first person to register a winning code gets their own S20. With Space Zoom, seeing them clearly would be a breeze, without - you’d have to resort to extremes. The experience of even considering participation perfectly demonstrated the advantage of the S20 over older / competitor models.

To stay fresh for four weeks, we dropped clues via owned social and earned PR and Samsung's influencer tribe to continue to engage our audiences and drive local hype.

At the outset we had two very simple objectives: achieve a revenue ROI of 3:1 ($900k in sales) and provide positive proof that our local activity was disproportionately successful in activating competitor ‘Switcher’ and out of market ‘Dormant’ audiences.

Starting with competition performance we achieved over 275,000 microsite sessions, 27,000 individual entries (vs. original KPI of 5000) and 15 million+ earned media impressions across 70 publications (vs. original KPI of 10)

Linking competition entry to subsequent sales we can attribute 2,271 units, smashing our incremental revenue and revenue return targets, with $3.49m in sales and an ROI of 5:1.

14.0% more Dormants visited the S20 pages in comparison to last year and drove the lion share of Switchers to site (31.9%) - the most effective activity of all the paid channels, accounting for more sessions than paid search and social channels combined.

Microcodes has achieved and exceeded all commercial expectations.