http://adage.com/print?article_id=129497
Samsung Chases On-the-Go Workers
Hopes Comedy and DJ Game Will Draw Attention to Q1 Mobile PC
By Beth Snyder Bulik
Published: July 09, 2008
YORK, Pa. (AdAge.com) -- Over-the-top comedy and mixing beats anchor Samsung's new branded-entertainment strategy for its Q1 Ultra, Samsung's offering in an emerging category of mini-computers called ultra-mobile PCs.
Samsung chose to create viral videos instead of TV ads to help raise awareness for its Q1 Ultra because of a smaller marketing budget.
To help raise awareness of the entire small touch-screen PC category, Samsung and the Woo Agency set out to target two different groups of consumers with online videos. Samsung, which has also used traditional advertising for the Q1, has found that when people can see the way the small but fully functional computer works, they have an "ah-ha" moment. (The Samsung Q1 looks like a Sony PSP or eReader, although a bit larger than both, and has a qwerty keyboard split on either side of the touchscreen.)
Samsung also chose to create viral videos instead of TV ads because of a smaller marketing budget. The marketer declined to disclose spending on the project.
Mobile professionals targeted
The first group of consumers targeted will be mobile professionals, for whom Samsung created comedy videos that go online next week (at TheMoPros.com) to make key points about the Q1's uniqueness.
Three different videos feature mobile professionals with wacky made-up job titles such as a private fireman, a carousel booking agent and brother's brother. The professionals -- co-created for Samson and Woo by Bob Odenkirk, an actor, comedian and former "Saturday Night Live" writer -- use the Q1 Ultra to convince people they need to hire siblings, reserve a particular carousel horse or employ an assistant to put out fires. But the videos also show off real-world uses for the mini-PCs, such as running up a flight of stairs -- something you can't easily do with a laptop -- and useful features such as GPS, e-mail, instant messaging and video conferencing.
"When you target mobile professionals, [the ads are] really expected to show 'Here's what a medical professional does with the device' or 'Here's what a salesperson does.' ... It's just so boring," said Bret Berg, senior product marketing manager at Samsung. "We really wanted ideas that haven't been done over and over again."
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TheMoPros.com is not up, but you can watch Brother's Brothers here:
http://gizmodo.com/5029316/mr-show-a...diculous-video
There's a shot in the opening that makes it look like Paul F. will be in another episode of "Mobile Professionals."
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