The TV category faces three big challenges. First, inertia, with the average shopper replacing a six-year-old set because they think their current TV is good enough. Second, seasonality, when people are ready to upgrade, they wait for Black November/December deals, around 40% of our volume sales. Third, commoditization, when people are finally upgrading, they struggle to differentiate brands & products, from the advertising sea of sameness (every ad an abstract metaphor for color with technobabble VO) to products that all look the same, even when compared side by side. So our brief is to give people a reason to upgrade sooner, to cut-through the Black Friday retail carnage, and to ensure people arrive online or in-store with an unshakable desire for Samsung. Our ultimate objective is to increase market share of Samsung QLED TVs.

Partnering with Cyberpunk 2077 we built a one-off Cyberpunk QLED TV. We then locked it in a high-tech container and dared gamers to hack into it - just as they would in the game. To find it they had to work together to decode clues hidden all over the internet. The first 5 to crack the code then had to hack the container live on Twitch.

Players were connected to the experience through a remote gaming platform and each received a webcam to stream their live reactions on Twitch. Viewers followed along as players went head-to-head to hack their way into the system back-end, disabling security components like trip-lasers, GPS systems, coolant tanks, digital locks, and a fully automated ‘Plasma Cutter’ one by one against the clock. The first to break through the container's defences then watched as it unlocked in spectacular fashion, revealing the custom Cyberpunk QLED TV.

Our strategy is to shift from specs to spectacle. Rather than advertise picture quality innovations people don't understand, instead we create spectacle in fan culture. So we segment based on interest in sports, shows, movies, and gaming. We plan for moments when our TVs make the biggest difference to people’s experiences e.g. football playoffs, season premieres, AAA game launches. And we use fans’ passion for those moments as an irresistible reason to upgrade, to make the experience of what they love even better.

For gamers, our moment was the coinciding launches of Xbox’s Series X console and CD PROJECKT RED’s Cyberpunk 2077, the most hyped game in years. We wanted to defy expectations of the difference our TVs make to those gaming experiences, not just by advertising features but by contributing to culture, getting gamers pumped about our brand.

We launched two weeks before the release of Xbox SeriesX & Cyberpunk, when conversation was at its peak, with a single post on the /Cyberpunk/ Reddit thread, which promptly drew attention from gamers nationwide.

To find the container, would-be hackers had to decode clues hidden all over the internet over a two-week period - from .zip files hidden on Reddit, to images on Instagram that required users to uncover code using audio stenography and even a “leaked” product page on Samsung.com & BestBuy.com.

The first 5 to crack the code then gained entry to the final event where they would have the chance to hack the container live on Twitch. The final hack required a combination of skill and intellect to unlock various digital and physical elements of the container, which would finally reveal the contents - a custom Cyberpunk QLED TV, Xbox SeriesX, and copy of the game.

Rather than a nonsense impressions statistic, we’re most proud of our 903,000 grand finale livestream views, 7.5x Twitch average. We also had 11,000 engaged players, with 1,100 playing all 8 clues. We saw a 2.7x increase in our gaming search, driving 281,000 visits to our gaming TVs page on samsung.com. And most important of all, we increased dollar sales market share YOY.