Samsung's Collab Galaxy is a romp through pop culture and high fashion to drive extraordinary growth

Samsung, like many tech companies, has a long-standing strategy of using brand collaborations to develop and enrich relationships with their customers.

Brand collaborations have become a go to strategy for any company looking to achieve outsize growth goals across nearly every industry. 

Whether it’s Nike collaborating with the hottest artists and athletes to create new sneakers or Apple collaborating with other tech companies to compete in new verticals, collaborations, as compelling as they often are, are also serious business.

Brand collaborations are not advertising or sponsorship. They are a distinct marketing channel that communicates a depth of customer engagement that goes beyond “gun for hire” endorsement to reach customers and advocates emotionally.

Collaborations happen when two or more brands/companies come together to create something new - could be a product, service, communication or an idea - that creates genuine surprise, excitement and increased appetite in customers. Rather one brand paying for placement on another platform or leveraging and arbitraging the fame of a person or brand.

As one of the biggest players in tech, Samsung has consistently used collabs as a central plank of their marketing strategy. Collaborating with other brands - both inside and outside the tech industry - for some unique offerings. 

To make the point we’ve pulled some of their seminal collabs out of the archive and reflect on what has changed…and what stays the same.

Samsung x Hugo Boss

Here’s one you may have forgotten. In 2008, Samsung and Hugo Boss teamed up to create the Samsung F480 Hugo Boss. A primitive-looking smartphone by today’s standards, the F480 Hugo Boss took Samsung’s base model and added a few bells and whistles from the fashion world. Given the limited capability of smartphones circa 2008 differentiation came from visual and style cues both on the outside and inside of the handset.

The iconic fashion brand had a hand in designing the operating system’s user interface and had some exterior branding. They even incorporated some custom, fashion-inspired ringtones. While these all sound a bit odd by today’s standards, this was 2008 when RIM/BlackBerry still owned a considerable share of the smartphone market, and there were countless operating systems in use. It couldn’t happen today…But this early example demonstrates that these devices have always lent themselves well to collabs.

Samsung Galaxy Phone Collaborations

Staying in the phone space, Samsung has continued to use their popular phone and device models to partner with the pop culture world.

Samsung has leveraged its Galaxy device line - including phones, watches, earbuds, and related accessories - to partner with culturally-relevant people, brands, and events.

Their Galaxy collaborations include the Olympic Games in Bejing, lifestyle brand Maison Kitsune, popular k-pop band BTS, and fashion icon Thom Browne.

Samsung x Laneige

Here’s a Samsung brand collab that even the heaviest Samsung users may have missed. In 2021, Samsung partnered with Korean beauty giant AmorePacific for a limited release of their Galaxy Buds Pro.

This unique pairing included Galaxy Buds Pro and Laneige’s Neo Cushion Foundation. Both items were finished in Samsung’s signature Phantom Purple. The final product was encased and packaged beautifully, fusing cosmetics and consumer technology to create a genuinely new experience.

Samsung x Pokémon

Showing that Samsung brand partnerships extend to many, many different brands under the pop culture umbrella, Samsung partnered with Pokémon earlier in 2022 to produce another unique piece of tech.

Pokémon has certainly extended into so many aspects of 21st-century pop culture: Games, movies, collectibles, and now technology. Among one of the most unique of the Samsung brand partnerships we’ve covered, this partnership yielded a Pokéball-shaped Galaxy Buds 2 case. And to add a collectible aspect to this pairing, the package included small, circular stickers featuring popular characters Pikachu, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, MewTwo.

Samsung x Decentraland

We can’t talk about tech industry giants in 2022 without mentioning the metaverse.

Earlier in 2022, it was announced that Samsung would be partnering with the Decentraland metaverse platform to open a digital version of their brick-and-mortar New York City location. The digital location was to be dubbed 837X after the physical location’s address, 837 Washington Street in New York City.

837X was to be “one of the largest brand land takeovers in the history of Decentraland,” according to a Samsung spokesperson. In a recent update, Samsung added what they’re calling the You Make it Quest to the experience. As users make their way through this experience, they’ll be building their own one-of-a-kind NFT(non-fungible token).

In conclusion

These Samsung brand collaborations span many years, showing that for Samsung collabs are an important piece of their overall marketing strategy. Also noteworthy is their appetite to connect with so many parts of pop culture. These brand collaborations pay both short and long-term dividends for Samsung as they continue to compete for attention, reach and relevance with other tech giants.