Samsung were launching their latest iteration of the flip phone, the Galaxy ZFlip3. As usual this phone would be launched with a traditional feature-led campaign. However, the Australian market has long been apathetic towards Samsung’s launches and this phone is anything but traditional. Beyond rational reasons of camera or battery, people buy this phone for the unique folding form-factor. There is nothing else quite like it on the market. This was on the cutting edge of fashion.

Our brief was clear: add an element to the launch that would stop thumbs, get people talking, and increase sales - particularly among the exceptionally loyal female Gen-Z and Millennial Apple users. We needed to take the phone away from functional and make it desirable.

To do that we would need bring the key benefit of a folding phone in a relevant and unexpected way.

When people search ‘my phone is too…’, ‘big’ is the number one query, so to launch the phone, we launched jeans that celebrated its small, folding form. So, we partnered with Australia’s most popular denim brand, Dr. Denim. The result was a limited-edition pair of ZFlip3 friendly jeans, selling for a provocative $1,499 (including a free phone).

This wasn’t going to be a ‘nice’ fashion launch. It would be an F-you to outdated and unfunctional fashion. The Galaxy ZFlip3 literally broke conventions, so in turn we destroyed and reinvented traditional jeans.

The jeans were redesigned with a bold ‘Z’ stitching across their front pockets sealing them shut and the back pockets were removed completely. With only a custom tiny pocket, we could prove that the Galaxy ZFlip3 was the perfect size for every pocket.

And created a disruptive film to launch the line and seeded it into fashion-focused publications.

Our core target audience were fashion conscious Gen Z and Millennial iPhone users, they want to stand out from the crowd, value personalisation, and consider themselves trend-setters.

There were two distinct functional advantages to a folding phone.

1) A big screen made for smaller hands.

2) the ability to comfortably fit into any pocket.

For the fashion focused Gen Z+M audience, the latter struck a nerve, after all, big phones and small pockets were a pain point they experienced almost daily.

But they currently see Samsung as a functional, feature led brand, hence why Samsung’s launches experience much less fanfare than Apple’s, especially in spaces beyond the tech publications. We knew we needed to be bolder and more aspirational to garner their attention and reconsideration. We needed to create something that would spark conversation and desire.

Taking cues from high fashion, we launched the jeans with conceptual films and stills. Small format OOH and street posters were used to support the launch in CBD and urban locales in both Sydney and Melbourne, just as a real fashion brand would launch.

We included Retail OOH as an effective reach and awareness play for the campaign. By hand-selecting centres with a fashion focus, we reached our audience in a contextually relevant space.

We featured notable Gen Z and Millennial local influencers to showcase the limited-edition jeans and folding phone to their audience.

We also targeted iOS users, with messaging that cheekily called out that these pockets “don’t fit them apples”, to ensure they knew there was a new trend-setter in town. Apple have no comparative device and a history of taking swipes at us, this was our chance to hit back.

“$1,499 jeans by Samsung for the Z Flip3” had the desired effect, instantly getting the internet talking. A tech brand selling designer denim proved to be novel and unexpected enough to capture attention.

The 3 weeks after the campaign (Nov 1 - Nov 21), visits to the ZFlip3 webpage increased by 118% with a key 170% proportionate uplift in Apple visitors.

In the 2 weeks after the campaign there was a recorded 51% uplift in ZFlip3 eComm sales.

Local earned media coverage in Australia accounted for $3,077,00 million in reach. The global audience increased this with an earned social reach of $11,188,451 across 12 countries.

We saw big numbers for paid social and YT, with 19.8M impressions, 8.8M view, with a majority positive engagement recorded.