Sponsor Spotlight - Samsung Leverages London for Stronger U.K. Sales

(ATR) TOP sponsor Samsung tells Around the Rings the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics are about rebooting its presence in the British marketplace.

"The U.K. has always been the toughest market for us because of the market competitiveness," Jaehoon Lee, director of Samsung’s sports marketing group, said in London.

"Everyone comes competing, coming in for very severe competition. Quite frankly, with the U.K. being one of the biggest markets in the world, Samsung has underperformed to our expectation.

"But through the Olympics, through the Torch Relay, for the first time in the U.K. we are making very good progress in both our brand and sales, which I believe the Olympic campaign has contributed towards."

Lee said there's no specific figure that Samsung hoped to reach in terms of mobile phone sales or revenue during the Games.

"We don’t set a goal like that anymore. Maybe we have done it before with Beijing but, again, it’s really a tough market so we’re not ready to set a certain goal, but our mobile sales are really going well.

"Thankfully we can compete with our competitors, so we are making very good progress and you will find out from the market that the Samsung mobile product and sales are going up as well as the corporate brand awareness, and sponsorship awareness is ramping up very high."

Samsung, which has the IOC's mobile phones sponsorship category, is also one of the key sponsors of the Olympic Torch Relay. Samsung is the world’s largest mobile phone company.

"I just talked to the CEO of Samsung U.K. and he’s very happy about the campaign," Lee told ATR. "It’s been very appreciated for the Olympics being hosted in this market."

One of the new features of Samsung’s campaign for London 2012 is its partnership with Visa for contactless payment systems within Olympic and Paralympic areas. Using apps on Samsung phones, customers can pay for purchases by waving their phones in front of special devices that read the phones' data.

Lee said that sort of cross-sponsor collaboration might be seen again at future Games.

Samsung sought to capitalize on London 2012 as the "social media Olympics" with its phones at the centerpiece.

"Everyday lifestyle is changing and also the Olympic spectator behavior is changing," Lee said. "If we can make these changes and have this available for as many people around the world, it is a very meaningful job to do.

"It’s just my personal experience that you have friends all over the world and you don’t know where they are and you miss them. Here you are with your phone with applications, and you get to see all these old friends going into the same area and just have a small reunion on this convenience."

He mentioned that having a sponsorship category on the cutting edge of technology is a challenge, as that requires Samsung to come up with new ways to activate every two years.

"Every Games are so different, especially more so in recent Games. I can never expect what’s going to happen in two years, four years, and that’s quite challenging but it’s a good challenge, a good stress. Wherever we feel there’s a clue we are going to go after it and make it available as much as we can."

Samsung will be under pressure to innovate with Sochi just 18 months away.

"I just had a meeting with the Sochi team yesterday and we have a preliminary discussion on how to prepare," he noted.

"But at the moment we’d like to just kick back and enjoy the London Games first and make it successful and we’ll discuss with them upon this success."

When asked if Samsung would acquire a potential future broad-ranging technology category for the IOC's flagship TOP program, Lee was mum on the prospect.

"I’m sure the IOC is looking into these categories. We’ll take a look at how the situation changes and then we will have to decide our position to address this subject."

Written by Ed Hula III.

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