Samsung TX1

Samsung’s 2020 Texas #1 (or TX1) campaign had a simple but momentous ask: catch up to and overtake Apple in the Lone Star State, Samsung’s home in the USA. Our strategy was built on hyperlocal, hyper-contextual creative that spoke to individual Texans where they were. This being such a diverse state, we couldn’t win hearts and minds with a one-size-fits-all approach.

We had a plan for everything: Promotions, sports partnerships, OOH, OLA, OLV, social media, and an ambitious always-on experiential component attending live events 7 days a week and 52 weeks a year. The week TX1 launched, SXSW canceled due to COVID — and everything else soon followed. My team and I quickly reworked our entire strategy to face our new reality, and one of those pivots — sports partnerships to gaming activations — ended up being the biggest success story of TX1 in 2020.

I helped oversee or had a direct hand in the creation of nearly all creative in all channels across TX1 in 2020. Not only did we succeed in spite of COVID’s challenges, we simply succeeded, period — outperforming the previous year’s efforts of more conventional marketing by a substantial margin.

The following video details the story and features creative from all aspects of TX1. It’s a few minutes long, but worth the watch.

(Yes, I scripted the video and directed the V/O, too.)