When LG launched its flagship G3 smartphone to the consumer market on the 17th of July, it knew it needed an extraordinary marketing effort. The King of Android, as the smartphone has fast become known, has received universal praise for its intuitive design and ground breaking features.
With the G3 having raised the bar in innovation and user-friendliness, LG set out to do the same in its promotion efforts. The electronics company has set up experiences in all the top malls in South Africa, including Vodaworld in Midrand, where customers can go and try out the phone for themselves before making a purchase.
According to LG General Marketing Manager Thomas van der Linde the thinking behind the campaign was to offer the customer a richer experience by allowing them to interact with the product.
“It’s one thing taking the product to TV and radio, but we wanted to speak to the consumer at an experiential level. They can experience the unique features of the G3 themselves – the innovative technology which no other smartphone on the market offers its consumers.”
These features have garnered phenomenal reviews for the phone. Of special note has been the Quad HD, which offers four times the immersive picture quality than full HD devices, and the Laser Auto Focus feature that allows users to point a camera at any object and take a fully-focused picture within milliseconds.
The challenge that LG faced was to technologically enable the mall campaign to show off all of these features. Being the innovative leader it is, LG empowered its G-Force teams to go out and demonstrate the phone to consumers in an interactive way.
Consumers who visit the campaign booths can snap, listen and compare the immersive quality of the G3’s Quad HD to a normal smartphone. The phones are linked up to a number of television screens. Two of these screens allow customers to compare the G3’s image quality to a competitor brand. On another screen, customers test the easy Laser Auto Focus mode by taking a selfie, which then appears on the screen.
The campaign includes a heavy social engagement element whereby consumers can upload their selfies onto social media. The best selfie, as voted for by the public, will win a G3 at the end of the campaign.
Up-and-coming musician Connell Cruise, who is signed with Epic Records, was chosen as the official entertainer at the campaign launch, and his presence had a big impact among consumers. “When Connell Cruise took selfies at the launch, the public went mad,” van der Linde confirms. All of this has led to incredibly high engagement rates. On average, consumers have taken and uploaded over 1 000 selfies per day.
For the next part of its campaign, LG has partnered with leading fast food brand McDonald’s, which will see 36 lucky McDonald’s customers instantly win a G3 in a scratch card competition.
LG made its decision to create a mall activation campaign on the back of strong research that shows shopping centres feature predominantly in out-of-home recall, particularly among high LSM consumers. According to a Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) study, malls are reaching more than 80 percent penetration against markets earning more than R8 000 a month. The study goes on to say that 36 percent of spend in malls can be attributed to the presence of in-mall advertising and marketing activations.
Van der Linde stresses the importance of the try-and-buy experience when it comes to luxury and premium products: “When you make a choice involving a premium product, you want to automatically be engaged with the right company. You need to know that the money which you pay is well taken care of in terms of articulation and price comparisons.”
LG’s approach to user experience, both in its products and marketing strategy, has paid dividends. The company is recognised as one of the country’s most valuable brands in surveys such as the Target Group Index, where it topped seven categories this year.
It is clear that LG is finding success in its attempts to ensure that the user-friendliness and innovation at the heart of its product development extends to its marketing plans. “For LG, it’s all about engagement right now with our customers,” concludes van der Linde.
