In the last Social Media Monitoring blog, we looked at the brief history of Samsung and how it has expanded from South Korea into a multi-business organization that is well known worldwide. Specifically, we discussed its mobile department and the Galaxy product line. Since then, the long awaited "unpacking"of the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge was presented on March 1st through Samsung's social media sites.
There has been buzz accumulating in the months prior to March for the new Galaxy as shown in the previous SMM blog, but the event that took place on March 1st answered all of those fans' questions and raised curiosity about its features and the release date. Here is the official video showcasing the 2015 Galaxy phones, which now has over 21 million views.
Samsung vs. Apple
Samsung has for years been in a rivalry with Apple, not only competitively but in the court as well over the replication of "original" ideas. Both parties have accused each other of such act, but Samsung has pointed out in their commercials from time to time that Apple are only catching up to the innovations of smartphones...
for the Galaxy S3 in 2012
the Galaxy S4 in 2013
and for the Galaxy S5 in 2014.
Social Mention
In Social Mention, the Samsung Galaxy has had its measurements of buzz up and down for last several weeks, which is normal. The period of time surrounding the announcement of the new phone was where Samsung was mentioned the most. Here below you will be able to see the many types of feedback through social media about the Samsung Galaxy over the span of 2 1/2 weeks.
February 22 March 4 March 12
Google Trends
This chart on Google Trends shows the measurement of searches in Google between the Samnsung Galaxy S6 and the iPhone 6. As shown, the iPhone 6 was already talked about a lot already and interest skyrocketed by the time the unveiling of the phone was announced in September 2014. The graph also shows the sharp spike in interest for Samsung recently due to the announcement of the new Phone.
IceRocket
This graph from IceRocket shows the fluctuating percent of all blog posts, which come from the growing number of rumors of the new phone, and also shows the huge leap in percentage on March 1 due to the announcement of the new phone. That huge buzz only lasted for a couple of days though before the flow of buzz began to fluctuate again. For Apple, the buzz has been remaining constantly high with a drastic decrease during the unveiling of the Galaxy S6.
There have been no recent social media campaigns to help Samsung with their sales, but they broke ground in 2012 with a campaign that allowed consumers to do most of the online marketing for them. With the days counting down to the release of the Galaxy S4, Samsung and New Zealand marketing agency Colenso BBDO created what was called the "virtual line".
Facebook and Twitter users from New Zealand would log in through their respective accounts on the site getinline.co.nz (currently non-existent) to get in the "virtual line" and would be given content about the S4 to share on their profiles. The quantity of shares, retweets, likes, comments, and reposts would bring the person closer to the front of the line. Pretty much, the person in the front of the line shared the most content and received the most shares, retweets, likes, comments, and reposts and received the first Galaxy S4 in the country. This campaign was not only a smart move on getting people to spread as much awareness about the phone as possible, but it favored those who preferred not to wait in a real line for a phone. After two weeks of the campaign, there were 12,000 people who joined in and 85,000 stories shared to over 3 million people which reached 15 million people. This campaign caused the smartphone market share to go up 12% as well. As shown in the graph, buzz about the Galaxy was high during 2013, especially in April which was when the social campaign took place.
Conclusion
It comes off as common sense (if this blog didn't help enough) that Apple is clearly the most popular brand and it only seems like it will always be no matter what Samsung does. But lets not forget that the iPhone was introduced when Apple dominated the market with MacBooks and iPods. For this reason, Apple users not only have a following with their products already but those users feel like the iPhone is simply a easier and more efficient phone to use than a Galaxy. I really admire the satirical commercials that Samsung make against the iPhone as they create debate and I think they should still be continued. I do believe that the Galaxy has just as much potential as the iPhone but it also needs to capture the attention of America more efficiently. The "virtual line" idea worked great for New Zealand, but I know it would work wonderfully if the entire United States got involved. By implementing more social media campaigns like this, the groundswell would only cause the numbers to increase and create a massive buzz that would change the way we look at these two competing smartphones.
