How do you convince the most down to earth people on the planet that the Samsung Galaxy Note is ‘the most social’ phone on the market.

At the time of the product launch, Dutch astronaut André Kuipers was in ‘in the galaxy’. To the Dutch audience André Kuipers is a true hero. He has always been very active and popular on social media and during his stay in the galaxy he provided his fans with unique insights of his daily life in the ISS.

We came up with the idea to create an unique opportunity for the Dutch audience to honour André Kuipers. By combining forces, the Dutch were able to create a giant real-life greeting to André Kuipers. A greeting so massive, one that he could see from space. When visitors landed on the Samsung Mobile Facebook page, an artist made a colourful portrait of their profile picture. All these portraits together formed the mega-greeting to André.

It wasn’t long before we got a message back from space. When André looked through the window of his space station he saw Dubai, Manhattan and… himself! Of course he shared this discovery with his 250,000 followers and fans. This resulted in hundreds of thousands of people to get to know about the new Samsung Galaxy Note.

The Galaxy Note made it possible for the Dutch audience to thank and show appreciation to the man, who connected them to the real galaxy – Astronaut and Dutch hero, André Kuipers.

1.Communication goal; increase awareness Samsung Galaxy Note in the Netherlands by increasing Samsung Mobile Facebook fans by a minimum of 30,000 new fans/likes.

2.Campaign goal: gain a minimum PR value of €200,000.

Target-audience: Young-minded consumers who are active on social media (18 - 40 yrs). They are innovators and early adapters who are always on the lookout for new gadgets. Samsung aims to fulfill their needs and has proven to be able to do so. This underlines the relationship between the target-audience and Samsung.

The campaign was widely picked up by the media (TV, Print, Radio and Online), resulting in €320,000 PR value and significantly raised awareness of the Samsung Galaxy Note. The number of fans (likes) of the Samsung mobile Facebook page grew by 44,441 (target: 30,000 likes) to 195,300.

We kicked off by notifying online influentials (bloggers) about the initiative. Giving them a scoop three days prior to the launch. During launch paid media was used to generate extra traffic to the app. After a week, traditional media was also informed and we started producing the canvas, which was completed in three weeks. We invited the press to take a look at the canvas during a live event. After a few days, Kuipers replied with a tweet from space after seeing the canvas from space. Again this was notified and picked up by the press. During the campaign we used Google-Analytics, Facebook-Insights and the Alterian-SM2-tool.

The campaign mostly ran according to plan. We did some optimisation within the app in the first few days (loading time issues). During the live event, one of the biggest Dutch news broadcasters (RTL4) even flew over the canvas with a helicopter.

The campaign is created for Samsung Electronics in the Netherlands. Samsung Electronics leads the global market in high-tech electronics manufacturing and digital media.

Situation/Problem: Convincing trendsetting, young-minded and socially active consumers that the Galaxy Note is the most social smartphone and tablet in one on the market isn't an easy task. Besides the fact that this is a very large target group, we also faced the problem that they are hard to reach via paid media. A PR campaign that would reach out to them via channels they visit daily therefore seemed to be the best solution.

Our strategy was to take advantage of the popularity of Dutch astronaut André Kuipers in the Netherlands. By honouring Kuipers in a unique way, we embraced him and his followers. This automatically led to PR. We started by notifying online influentials in the target group’s environment and extended our reach by addressing more and more press of various backgrounds. Ending with a big bang that would attract the attention of everyone including all kinds of media: a 9,600m2 canvas visible from space, located between a landing strip at Schiphol airport and one of Holland’s busiest highways.