Samsung marketing boss reveals how mocking Apple made it a market leader

Samsung Australia’s chief marketing officer, Arno Lenior, has revealed the important role ads mocking Apple have played in the tech giant becoming the world’s largest smartphone maker by volume.

In an interview with AdNews, Arno Lenior said the company’s ads mocking Apple marked a turning point in the smartphone market.

“That really did mark quite a tipping point for us globally. We were able to tell a cheeky story – if you think about it, we’re a Korean company starting to really mess with the order of things.

“We’ve been able to do some good things from that [campaign]. The interesting thing about it from my perspective is that some of it is not the best work you’ve ever seen, some of it is the best work you’ve ever seen, but it’s getting people talking, that’s what I really love about it.

“You’ve got [Apple] fanboy after fanboy going, ‘You can’t put that out there’, and then the Samsung fans saying, ‘Yes, you can’, and they’re starting to have that conversation, which is brilliant. So that piece of content has been amazing for us, both globally and here in Australia.”

Before joining Samsung in September 2012, Lenior was the marketing director of premium brands for Lion Nathan, where he oversaw the Boag’s ‘Pure Waters’ and Speight’s ‘Great Beer Delivery’ campaigns.