Word: samsung
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Just a few years ago, Samsung was the brand you bought if you couldn't afford Sony or Toshiba. Suddenly it's the name that consumers all over the world--especially young ones--seek out for the most fun and stylish models of everything from cell phones to flat-panel plasma TVs. One of the driving forces behind that transformation is Eric Kim, who was reared by Korean parents in Southern California and returned to his homeland to work as head of global marketing for Samsung Electronics...
...company earned $2.5 billion in net profits last year while many retail-tech stars fizzled. Business in the U.S. has more than doubled since 1999, to $2.8 billion in revenues. When Kim, 48, arrived in 1999, Samsung was already turning out some cool products. But nobody had noticed. Its brand image was fuzzy and inconsistent from market to market. One reason was that it employed a gaggle of 55 ad agencies. Kim consolidated that work in a single shop, assigning Madison Avenue's Foote, Cone & Belding Worldwide to coordinate Samsung's global marketing...
...result was a daring (by conservative Korean standards) $400 million worldwide ad campaign featuring a surreal dream world inhabited by sexy, angelic models and sleek Samsung products. In one cell-phone commercial, a skier carves his way down a pristine slope of powder that morphs into the flowing locks of a white-haired snow goddess. Kim made another smart move by sponsoring big-ticket events like the Salt Lake City Olympics, gaining quick, cost-effective global exposure. "I convinced the company we had to have a single message," says Kim. "We were the new kids on the block...
...confidence in marketing and engineering led Kim to order a redesign of Samsung's Nexio handheld device. It was successful in Korea, but Kim's reading of the market research convinced him that it needed a better screen, a keyboard and a wireless LAN connection before its U.S. debut in December...
...Korean heritage has helped him tremendously at Samsung. An American citizen, Kim left Korea at age 11. But he returned with the language proficiency and enough grasp of the subtleties of Korea's tradition-bound business culture to make his direct-approach, all-American management style palatable. Samsung marketing vice president Park Seung Soo calls Kim "a kimchi-eating American," referring to Korea's fiery national dish...