This is one of the projects that embody our studio’s passion for stimulating encompassing brand experiences. We were given the brief but tenacious task to find out what is considered cool among African millennials. We relished the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the pop culture of the moment in order to better understand African youth’s response to the Samsung brand. Our solution was a multi-pronged integrated communications experience named 3 Star Pow Wow. It entailed a multicultural marketing approach that translated in a better understanding of African millennials’ headspace and their perception of the Samsung brand. The name and #3starAfrica encapsulates the spirit of the initiative: 3 Star being a reference to the Samsung brand name - and ‘three’, in this context, also representing something "big, numerous and powerful".
Fourteen young delegates from across the continent, including South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Madagascar and Angola, were selected based on their qualifications and social media following. During the 4-day event, they attended multimedia info sessions on a list of content relevant subject matter presented by leading opinion and taste makers like multi-platform storyteller Verashni Pillay and trend forecaster Dion Chang. By interacting with these young people for 4 days,we managed to ask all the right questions, get real answers and use the most powerful weapon of all to understand what’s cool to the youth of today: content!
By the end of the event, the 14 delegates had become product specialists and brand ambassadors – inspired to share their experiences with their social media followings. Many of the delegates are still sharing their experiences and thoughts under this hashtag, which means that the event has become an ongoing platform for content creation. This gives Samsung a powerful opportunity to connect with the African youth market in future and created a strong foundation for future interaction with youth through ongoing, meaningful content creation.
3 Star Pow Wow created a foundational platform, where young africans were empowered to create content and tell their stories about their world via social media. More than that, it was a very effective way to harvest valuable research results in a non-intrusive manner – leading to real, honest results and powerful insights. The marketing intelligence we gathered has now been analysed – and the results paint an interesting picture of the youth in Africa: how they perceive brands, how to behave to grab their attention and what not to do. The research findings have equipped us to compile a first version of a African Millennial Youth Marketing Index.
