Samsung's hubbub on Habbo

Case study of the brand's U3 MP3 online campaign launched in Habbo Hotel on 23 July 2007.

Samsung has successfully leveraged on virtual community Habbo Hotel to promote its U3 MP3 product. It generated 136,700 visits from youth to a Samsung U3 branded room in Habbo in eight weeks, as well as 6,481 sign-ups for a contest and 10,410 stickers and wallpaper downloads.

"The campaign performance figures improved steadily throughout the campaign mainly due to the fact that we released the campaign in different phases starting with the survey, downloads, Music Trax games, Samsung branded room etc. We are happy with the performance figures especially in terms of downloads and number of visitors to the branded room," Peter Lim, strategic marketing manager, SET division, Samsung Asia, said.

Armed with a budget of $40,000, iHub Media was tasked to complete Samsung objectives which were promoting its new MP3 product targeted at teenagers, and to conduct a survey able to raise the awareness of the product and better understand users' preferences.

According to Lim, it was discovered that young adults and teenagers spend their time online at places such as Habbo Hotel so it was the perfect choice despite Samsung never having used the platform before.

"Our key objective was not only to create awareness but also engage our target audience who are teenagers. Obviously in terms of raising awareness, we did consider other popular sites, however, we believed the synergy between our target audience and Habbo gamer's profiles made it the choice for the campaign," he said.

The Samsung U3 branded room did particularly well, introducing the user to the product and brand, and its creation was borne out of observations on Habbo users' habits such as visiting public rooms while playing games and socialising. With the bulk of cost going into in-game advertisements, online banners and the branded rooms - it was the latter which Lim says got the target audience to the discover the product and brand through engagement with the brand in a fun environment, projecting Samsung as fun and entertaining and the MP3 player as a funky product.

In line with the second objective, a survey able to raise the awareness of the product and better understand users' preferences had to be done. The psychographic survey asked things such as users' most preferred MP3 players and colour, and although prizes such as HMV vouchers were given away to encourage participation, Lim said answers did not show any strong biasness towards Samsung and incentives did not affect participant's truthfulness in answers.

MindShare was also involved in the campaign.

 

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More results

 

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Habbo Hotel - 4,380,190 delivered impressions