The Big Interview: Samsung School Of Rio

Benjamin Blanco, head of sport and entertainment marketing at Samsung Electronics UK spoke to Sport Industry Group about the brand’s newest campaign, Samsung School of Rio, ahead of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games…

You recently appointed M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment, what made you choose the BT Sport Industry Awards Agency of the Year?

We had an extensive pitch process at the end of 2015 after the School of Rugby campaign and M&C Sport & Entertainment were who we brought on board.

There were a couple of reasons. Firstly, if I’m honest, it was chemistry and fit, whoever you’re pitching should be the appropriate agency to do the work involved. It was a very good chemistry and fit, we met the team very early that would be working on our account and that was really important to us. I come from an agency background myself and quite often you’ll meet the top level guys, but the people who are actually working on your account, living and breathing your work, don’t come through until the end.

The second point was that Samsung has been focused on sport for a number of years, obviously we’ll talk about the School of Rugby, but there was a big transition into that work with the Chelsea partnership for ten years, but next year, and already at the end of this year, we’ve very much started looking at music, films and some wider entertainment properties. Again, we’ve got M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment really well placed with their expertise to help us in the sporting sphere, but across music and film as well.

We wrote a brief we wanted agencies to report back on, so we got a very good insight into how M&C Saatchi think, the way they approach problems – the process they put against that, their attention to detail and professionalism which came through greatly throughout the entire response process as opposed to just a pitch.

Your Samsung School of Rugby campaign was shortlisted for Campaign of the Year and Best Use of Social Media at this year’s BT Sport Industry Awards, what element of the campaign made you proudest?

Our VP of marketing in the UK Russell Taylor has talked about bringing a little more emotion to Samsung for a couple of years now, giving us a bit of personality and helping us connect with both consumers and fans. I think that the Samsung School of Rugby was the first time we’d done that and for me it was a really brave campaign by Samsung.

I always believed very passionately in it, until you see other peoples’ reactions you never know what’s going to happen. I think we got the talent balance exactly right, you could film those adverts with a number of different people and it’d look different every time. Jack Whitehall was the right person for us and since we’ve filmed those adverts last summer he’s gone even more stratospheric if I’m honest. He’s presented the BAFTA’s, written one of his own films and been cast in a couple of others, one with Julia Roberts and Jennifer Anniston. So, everyone involved, including Martin Johnson and Lawrence Dallagio, it was just really good chemistry on set.

Overall, I’m just proud of the reaction to those videos, hearing people say how great they were and how much they enjoyed them and they were the star of the Rugby World Cup. Outside of the industry as well, we were covered in the art section of the Guardian and in The Telegraph, it really got widespread appeal outside of traditional sport marketing.

Did the consumer reactions make it worthwhile?

I’ve worked on a number of brands over the years and not everyone likes everything, you have to do things differently. If I’m honest, the School of Rugby, we genuinely have not had any feedback that we’ve had to build on for the School of Rio. We’ve changed the narrative slightly, we’ve taken on the content, brought in different athletes and continued the narrative with the teaser video showing Jack leaving Martin and Lawrence behind. It’s just been great with the response we’ve had from people; peers, fans and consumers, who are the most important to us. It really has been positive from top to bottom and we’ve had a great reaction internally and that makes me just as proud when I hear someone say, “wow I love those adverts, it makes me really proud to work for Samsung.”

Was it a risk to change and add personality, was it exciting doing that with someone like Jack who had built a good rapport with the people he worked with?

Something on paper can be done in a number of different ways, it’s a bit like when your favourite book is turned into a film. You could have ten different actors, directors and they’d bring a different spin to it. For us as a brand it’s important that we work with the right talent. We were confident in our idea, in the script and BBH Sport who produced School of Rugby for us. You’ve got to get that talent right, you’ve got to talk in the right way and be in that tone of voice. I won’t name names, but we all know lots of non-credible campaigns where if you ask the actor or athlete what they were doing they probably wouldn’t even know what brand they were working for, they are just reading from a script. Hopefully, what comes across in the School of Rugby and School of Rio is how embedded in the process Jack Whitehall is and how passionately he leads the content and us as a brand – that’s why he helps us write the script. As a partnership we ask him who he’d like to work with, we tell him who we’d like him to work with, and then we come up with a shortlist of people. After the School of Rugby, for the first time in my career, we had athletes and agents coming to us and asking if we are going to do it again and if we were, “we want to be in it, please let us be in it.” We were lucky with the list of athletes we drew up, we got every single athlete and legend that we wanted to work with.

How are you reinventing the campaign for Samsung School of Rio?

First thing you’ll notice is that in the School of Rugby it was Jack with Martin Johnson and Lawrence Dallagio, every part of rugby they explained had a cameo or was slightly different. What you’ll see with the School of Rio is that everything is different, so every lesson is Jack with two different people, there’s nobody that appears again. Jack is the only constant and you’ll see we have amazing venues, the cycling instalment with Bradley Wiggins and Becky James was shot at the VeloPark and the rowing was at Dorney Lake where London 2012 took place. The boxing was in a club that some of the guys train in and featured Katie Taylor and Joe Ward who are two of our Irish contingent and that’s something else I’m really proud of – that we have partnerships with both Team GB and the Olympic Council of Ireland, I’m glad we’ve been able to make this episode for our Irish audience and fans. 

From a brand perspective, what are your objectives for the Olympic campaign and how will they differ from the Rugby World Cup?

The campaign has evolved, the Olympic and Paralympic Games are arguably the greatest global marketing platform that any brand can have, with the spirit of the Games and the stories behind the athletes. Over here, it’s really the only event that the UK can actually come together as one, even at the Ryder Cup we are ‘Team Europe’. Especially coming out the Euros where the focus was on the home nations competing separately, it’s great that this is the one true thing that gets the spirit of the nation all behind our athletes.

I spoke before about Samsung bringing a bit more emotion into our marketing, we are still focused on the technology that we develop, but try to have a bit more of a human aspect and tell a story behind our advertising. Again, that’s what the brand metrics will be on; building brand equity, what people think of Samsung, are they aware of us as an Olympic sponsor and ultimately building that kind of product and brand consideration to greater levels than we’ve ever had before.

The latest deal takes you to 2020, what helped you make your decision to renew as an Olympic partner?

We represent the UK and Ireland over here and we are talking to a very UK and Ireland base, it’s a global deal that has been in place at different levels since back in the 80s. So it’s a really long-term partnership that Samsung has globally with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and more recently with the International Paralympic Committee (IPC). The Olympics is a global event that focuses on the human spirit and has amazing stories of athletes pushing themselves to the limits.

It’s not just those people like Usain Bolt on the podium, the Games are littered with incredible stories and that ties hugely into our brand message and belief – expanding the human capability through technology and creating technology that pushes the boundaries so there’s great synergy there.

There was a lot of reactive content around the Rugby World Cup campaign, what can we expect from the Olympics?

The Twitter campaigns around School of Rugby were really successful for us in terms of a simple insight, that not everyone can watch every single Rugby World Cup game. Anyone who was out and about could get about nine or ten pretty much live tweets directly from the games when there was a try or a yellow or red card. We don’t quite think we need to play that role around the Olympics and the Games in the UK are very different again because it’s on the BBC as opposed to say in America where it’s a huge commercial opportunity around NBC broadcasting.

This time, we’ve got the lead films, but we are focusing more on content through social media and there’s two sides really. One that I’ve mentioned before, is that it’s on the BBC so we can’t put as much potential advertising spend as we say would with ITV and the Rugby World Cup. The second thing is the time difference and I think social media just gives us a narrative really, whether it’s people staying up until the early hours of the morning to watch the 100 metre final, or people getting up early to watch the heats of the swimming. Social media will allow us to have the narrative with the consumers. Part of that digital world is virtual reality (VR) has really increased and kicked-off, even since the Rugby World Cup, so we’ve got some plans to bring fans in the UK closer to GB athletes through the use of our VR. It’s going to be really exciting as the campaign develops.

A lot of brands are picking up on VR, is cutting edge technology always considered when doing campaigns?

It’s going to be part of it, I think our films are the leads of our campaigns as always – they’re what are going to get people interested and give them that water cooler moment. We’ve got a multi-layered campaign going on through PR, traditional media, TV, digital and online. What we do differently from a lot other brands, is when we launched the School of Rio, it was actually done through Jack Whitehall’s social media channels and then Lawrence Dallagio and Bradley Wiggins were talking with Jack through their own social media channels. We’ve got lots going on and VR is one of those pillars that is going to give us really nice opportunities. As an Olympic sponsor and a Team GB sponsor we can bring fans closer than ever before to Team GB houses in Rio and be able to talk to and see the athletes after we have hopefully won a few medals.

Check out the opening video of the campaign on Sport Industry TV.