Digitas Shoots For Photo Enthusiasts With Samsung Camera Phone Campaign

by Tameka Kee, Dec 19, 2007, 7:00 AM

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Digitas is at the helm of a recently launched Euro-centric campaign for Samsung's G800 mobile phone--a promotion aimed at showcasing the phone's 3x optical zoom camera and its ability to get up close without degrading image quality.

To court photography enthusiasts and a demographic Samsung has deemed "trendsetters," Publicis' digital boutique tapped JPG Magazine to add rich media, video and social networking elements to the campaign. The trendsetters were defined as communicators, bloggers and online content creators: "People who want the next cool thing because of what it can do for them with the features it has, not just because it's cool," according to Christopher Ray, vice president and associate director of marketing for Digitas.

Digitas chose JPG Magazine, a print and online publication geared toward amateur photographers, because the magazine fosters a community that is enthusiastic about taking high-quality pictures--pictures that aren't typically associated with camera phones. Members submit their pictures for various categories or themes on the site, and the community chooses which ones will be featured in the next print issue.

Since late November, Samsung has been a featured sponsor of several themes on JPGmag.com. Ray reports that the first theme they launched garnered over 1,000 new submissions within the first few days.

Although JPG Magazine doesn't offer the reach of a photo-sharing site like Flickr, the site's focus on passionate photographers outranked Flickr's critical mass.

"Flickr is great, but users can take it as seriously as they want, which means that both the demographics and the image quality run the gamut," Ray says. "JPG Magazine is for people who like to take great pictures, but it's not as intimidating as an established brand like Popular Photography."

The experience extends beyond JPG Magazine. When users click on the Samsung banner, they're taken to a microsite where they can craft text and picture emails to send to their friends. Dubbed the "Emotion Translator," the site features images submitted by JPGmag.com members that focus on specific emotions and can be paired with messages.

For example, users can send an "I'm sorry" email, complete with a black-and-white shot of a pensive man at the beach or a broken vase with water, flower petals and stems smashed on the floor.

WPP's London-based GHI & Partners was the lead agency behind the initial TV and print campaign, an effort that heralded the camera phone's ability to help consumers "express [their] emotions perfectly" through premium-quality pictures. Fellow WPP shop Mindshare was the agency behind the campaign's search execution and media placement.

According to Ray, Samsung and Digitas will use multiple metrics for evaluating the online campaign's effectiveness, including number of emails sent, time spent on the site and return visits. But raising brand preference and purchase intent are the main goals, and those metrics will be measured through research and questionnaires conducted by Dynamic Logic (the research arm of WPP's Millward Brown).

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