People who like new things were treated to the live-streamed unpacking of Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. And, instead of referencing its main competition Apple with its long-running ‘the next best thing is already here‘ campaign, it’s changed its tune slightly, backed its more stylish metal and glass-laden new phones and gone with the line ‘next is now’ for its early promotional clips.
As per usual, there’s lots of soaring music and spinning phones. And with those flashing green lights on the edge, there’s a definite resemblance to KITT.
Samsung says the Galaxy S6 and the S6 edge incorporate “vastly enhanced processing power; a high quality super-fast loading camera to catch all the important moments; charging that’s 1.5 times faster than the Galaxy S5 [it also features wireless charging] and, what’s more, they come in an elegant glass and metal design.”
Many have pointed out that the more aesthetically pleasing phones look and feel more like Apple’s iPhones, which helped the company to record revenue and profit in the first quarter (its $18 billion profit was the largest in corporate history).
- Check out how Apple promoted its latest toys here.
Apple is also backing the quality of its cameras with its ‘Shot on IPhone 6’ campaign. As well as its World Gallery, it has rolled out a campaign involving “77 photographers, 70 cities and 24 countries”, that puts some of those shots on billboards, in print ads and online. It is also getting set to launch the Apple Watch soon and its first advertising for that was a 12-page spread in Vogue.
Samsung has also announced the launch of Samsung Pay, a new mobile payment service that works with both NFC (Near Field Communication) and MST (Magnetic Secure Transmission) and Barcode technology. Samsung Pay is not expected to be available in 2015 in New Zealand. But Samsung has a partnership with Semble, a New Zealand industry collaboration that brings together Paymark, mobile network operators (2degrees, Spark and Vodafone) and banking partners (ASB and BNZ) to offer an integrated mobile wallet experience to Kiwis. The Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge and more than 700,000 Samsung devices will be able to make smartphone payments using Semble. This is set to launch early 2015.
Samsung is set to launch the phones in New Zealand in April. It’s not clear whether there will be any locally-made marketing activity created for it, but Samsung has been doing a pretty good of localising its mobile products with online videos by Augusto featuring Naveya & Sloane and Jimi Hunt.
So for all those rabid consumers who feel completely out of date with their perfectly functional smartphones, bow down to the combined power of planned obsolescence, global capitalism and FOMO and get one immediately!
