Context:

There’s increasing competition in the world of smartphones, with new brands and handsets with similar specs.

Samsung believe in using their ‘tech for good’.

Brief:

Earn peoples' love and attention, while highlighting what makes Samsung phones special and pushing its human connection further.

Objectives:

• Highlight the phone’s advanced camera technology to deliver the human connection with the audience

• Drive earned attention through relevant cultural, engaging, authentic and newsworthy stories that genuinely link Samsung phones and people’s passion points when there’s no new product news

• Reach a younger, more consumer-centric, less technical audience, through coverage in news and broader lifestyle media

• Drive appeal and brand differentiation amongst a younger (Gen Z) audience

• Be multi-market: resonate across as many European countries as possible

How could we earn people’s hearts and minds, while getting as many people as possible to discover the camera technology inside Samsung Galaxies?

Insight:.

During Covid, poaching in Africa skyrocketed, because there were fewer tourists to keep an eye on the wildlife. Samsung promotes technology for good, with an upcycling program that aims to reimagine phones into new, beneficial roles.

What if we could fight poaching, while proving that Samsung has the best phones in the world?

Creative Idea:

We created Wildlife Watch: a customised live streaming experience that enables people worldwide to become virtual wildlife rangers, using Samsung phones on the African plains as surveillance devices.

Upcycled Samsung Galaxy handsets planted to live-stream from across the African plains made way for a 24-hour worldwide wildlife watch, protecting the animals and raising awareness of poaching.

‘Watchers’ could move between cameras, report suspicious sightings to all-female anti-poaching unit ‘the Black Mambas’ and share images from the watch on social.

Audience: ‘Younger people’, especially Gen Z

Strategy: Earned

Approach:

To make younger people love Samsung phones beyond tech and price, we decided to break away from just product news and find a purpose-forward creative idea that would live in broader culture and gain their attention and curiosity. The idea had to work across diverse regional countries to engage media and wider audience.

Strategic Thinking:

We wanted to start a real conversation that would generate engagement and earn media, far beyond anything achieved focussing on camera features alone.

We discovered the pandemic had led to increased poaching due to a lack of tourists. We combined this knowledge with our audience’s activist nature, sustainability interest and habit of watching their phones…and came up with ‘Wildlife Watch’.

Wildlife Watch allowed us to engage younger audiences with something that really matters to them, while innovatively demonstrating the phone’s amazing technical features.

We built the livestream with Africam and the Black Mamba Anti Poaching Unit by repurposing Galaxy S20 FE handsets in the Balule Nature Reserve in South Africa, part of the Kruger National Park. The handset’s pro-grade cameras captured live footage, streaming 24/7. While upcycled handsets were redeployed as perimeter fence CCTV cameras.

Improving the rangers’ surveillance and supporting them in their daily tasks and boosting the reach of Africam’s infrastructure by 50% for the 2-month campaign.

Anyone could become a virtual ranger on Wildlife-Watch.com, our campaign hub. Samung.com also directed viewers there.

Photos from the watch could be shared on social.

A 60” film created on shoots in South Africa and Berlin featuring activist, international DJ Peggy Gou, directed young Europeans to take the watch.

A 20” social edit was shared across 30+ European markets.

A live Instagram Q&A brought our audience closer to Peggy and a Black Mamba ranger.

Reach:

• 1.9+ billion impressions

• Activated in 30+ countries

• 195 countries participated

Engagement:

• 148,220+ virtual rangers (https://www.wildlife-watch.com/ for up-to-date numbers)

• 94,545 hours spent watching

• Average watch time: 25min 20sec

• 7.7 million total social engagements (likes, comments, shares)

• 61% of people using wildlife-watch.com are Gen Z or Millennials (high awareness and engagement amongst target)

• £11K+ and 30 phones donated to black mamba rangers

• 3740% increase in Google searches for ‘wildlife watch’

Coverage:

• 800+ pieces

• Featured in the WWF’s teaching materials and Google Classroom

• Coverage across lifestyle (e.g. Mix Mag, Verge), top-tier news (e.g. Reuters, Euronews, Associated Press, Sunday Telegraph) and broadcast (e.g. BBC Radio, France 24, Bloomberg)

• Broadcast on Bloomberg, France24, Nos Jeugdjournaal & BBC Newsround KidsWeek.

• Posted by the UN and NGO ‘Helping Rhinos’.

• Influencers posted without payment, inc. National Geographic photographer Shannon Wild.