Samsung Discusses 'Relentless, Aggressive' Pursuit of Apple in its Ads

In a lengthy new interview with Adweek (via CNET), Samsung's top marketing executive Younghee Lee addressed a few topics centered around how the company "embraced innovation to become a global master of brand marketing." Its accomplishments in the media space have earned it the 2016 Marketer of the Year award at the Cannes Ad Festival.

One of Lee's soundbites of the interview is particularly interesting, given Samsung's history of negatively focusing on Apple in some of its advertisements over the years. When asked about how the company manages to stay above Apple with the largest global smartphone market share in the world, Lee detailed a marketing strategy that emphasizes what the team believes to be right, and then they "pursue it relentlessly."

We always relentlessly pursue what we think is right in technology. Our communications program is no different. If we think it is right, we pursue it relentlessly. In North America, we were aggressive with our marketing toward competitors—we went at them head on. If you think about the "Fanboy" and "Wall Hugger" (Galaxy S) campaigns and the approach we took there, we tried to be flexible, relevant and bold.

The virtues of our brand are engineering, openness, freedom in mindset, purposeful innovation, multiculturalism, vibrancy, being inviting and inclusiveness. My goal is to help our consumers understand our values and support how the brand can be attached to them.

Lee's comments are referencing two ads that present a focus on Apple's iPhone -- Fanboy (video above) and Wall Hugger -- and then introduce Samsung's alternatives with a few features that were improved over Apple's handsets at the time, including a larger screen and better battery life. The company will keep its market-winning strategy going forward, according to Lee, while also attempting to focus on her biggest challenge: "to obtain more share of mind from millennials" in order to keep Samsung and its Galaxy brand "as a young and fresh mindset."

Check out Adweek's full interview with Lee here.