Meet & Greet the Future—Live from CES 2013 with Samsung

What’s the next game-changing innovation? Chances are it will make its debut at CES — the largest consumer electronics show in the world.

Every year the electronics industry gets together for an event in Las Vegas to unveil their latest products and technology. Members of the press, bloggers, industry insiders, technology lovers, and the chicest geeks flock to the desert to get a first-look at the newest gadgets before they’re released to the public. It’s all designed to showcase innovation, generate buzz, and launch the next wave of electronics products. A lot of the electronics you find in your home, or in your pocket, had their debut at CES, including the VCR (1970), Compact Disc Player (1981), HDTV (1998) and OLED TV (2008).

As you can imagine, CES is big event for Samsung.

But how can you use it as a marketing platform? Our answer – Live from CES 2013 – It’s Samsung.

We partnered with Samsung to give customers live coverage of the show across all their social media channels. The idea was to serve up a real-time, boots-on-the-ground P.O.V of everything Samsung — we’re talking front row seats to product launches, the latest buzz, and behind-the-scenes access. The campaign dispensed with heavy-handed marketing, in favor of a more authentic voice, positioning Samsung as a real and credible source of information.

Customers could watch CES 2013 come to life across Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Instagram – newly launched to showcase yet another unique perspective on the show. We also created a “Live from CES” Blog to aggregate content and give customers a destination where they could go for complete, up-to-the-minute coverage.

So how did it go down? Weeks prior to the show, we created a teaser campaign to build awareness and drive deeper engagement. The show kicked off with a live stream of Samsung’s Press Conference, which featured Live Chat functionality, so customers could join the conversation and be a part of the buzz in real-time.

Our onsite team hit the showroom floor, generating original content in the form of product announcements, hands-on video demos, product photo galleries, on-the-floor coverage, innovation close-ups, behind-the-scenes stories, and more. Meanwhile, the offsite team scoured the web for third-party content, like reviews and demos from Engadget, CNET, NY Times, and more. The result was a living, breathing social experience that actively engaged customers to be a part of the show.

Speed and flexibility was a big part of our strategy. In addition to capitalizing on existing social media channels, the blog was designed and built to be responsive – a first for Samsung USA – so that it would be optimized across mobile devices. This turned out to be a crucial strategy, as almost 50% of all traffic came from mobile devices. With over 370K page views and 150K visitors, the blog surpassed all expectations and anticipated numbers.

“Live from CES” is a powerful example of how a live event can be covered with a smart, integrated social media campaign. By using existing social platforms and real-time channels of communication, Samsung was able to engage customers with new products and innovations, while reinforcing their position as a visionary of the electronics industry who is committed to enriching customer’s lives with new possibilities.

Learn more about our recent work with Samsung, check out our list of clients or get in touch about a project.