In the past 3 years, Samsung have reinvigorated the mobile category with foldable phones, reintroducing the flip-phone and updating it for the twenties by meshing it with touchscreen technology.

Although Samsung have been pioneers and have started to see global sales success, foldable owners so far have been niche, more premium buyers. Foldables overall still represent a small proportion of total category sales. In 2021 we were given a clear challenge: it was time to take Samsung foldables mainstream.

But the challenge wasn’t that simple. We needed to do this in a way that grows Samsung’s overall smartphone share, and does not significantly cannibalise their other lines. In simple terms, this meant we needed to win younger phone buyers who have increasingly defaulted to iPhone over time.

For this generation, ‘flip’ phones sit in a nostalgic place in consumers’ minds, synonymous with past generations in the 90’s and early 2000’s. Leading with the new Galaxy Z Flip 3, we set out to make the flip-form factor relevant to a new generation of Gen Z buyers, and to do it in a way that injected a cool factor to the Galaxy foldable range.

TikTok was an obvious place to focus. It is the social app of choice for Gen Z, a platform where they find inspiration and express themselves creatively. It is is also a cluttered space, with intense competition for attention in the feed, and an increasing number of brands running activations.

We set about showing how the Galaxy Z Flip 3 form factor is perfectly in tune with how young people now use the platform. We went beyond conventional dance challenges and mimicry, focusing instead on how the Z Flip fuels new, individual forms of creative expression in Tiktok.

We put the Galaxy Z Flip3 front and centre of TikTok by giving users the platform to express themselves through one key idea: “Unfold your World”.

We gave TikTok’ers the chance to grab their own moment to shine and express themselves, literally unfolding a moment that provides a window into their world. We created a Branded Effect that invited TikTok users to unfold their talents through the lens of the new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3.

We knew that to get people unfolding their world, we had to give the initiative a spark that earned their attention in the feed and gave them a reason to get involved. So we kicked things off by inviting Samsung’s Team Galaxy ambassadors, like actress Millie Bobby Brown and K-Pop global sensation BTS to tease how they unfold their world, inviting others to “Get ready to Unfold”.

Shortly after, timed to coincide with the official launch announcement the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3, we coordinated TikTok creators across countries to use the Branded Effect to show how they would unfold their world.

This created a chain reaction that would see millions of others doing the same, bringing the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 into the feeds of billions of others, in a way that was totally in tune with why people like TikTok.

Danielle Marcan from the UK showed her creatively amazing make-ups. Sundy Jules from France showed off his latest fashion creation. Plastique Tiara from the US created her own distinctive music-video moment. Pablo Broton from Spain showed off his acrobatic dance skills.

Dozens of other creators did the same, inspiring all users on TikTok to do the same, with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip giving them a platform to show their own world and their own creativity.

Just like the phone would do for those who might choose to own one.

Unfold Your World achieved exactly what we set out to do, capturing the attention of a global Gen Z TikTok audience. The challenge generated 2.8M video creations using the Branded Effect, which in turn created serious reach – more than 7Bn views across all countries.

This drove the highest ad recall results (across all markets involved) of all previous Samsung branded challenges on TikTok, driven by the strength of the creative and the carefully phased campaign roll-out, which produced uplifts in campaign performance against past TikTok programmes.

Our paid in-feed media performed well above historic benchmark, with average engagement rates 600% higher and tap-rates 850% higher than previous TikTok benchmarks.

This produced brand uplifts across the key countries, which have historically been iPhone strongholds: product awareness (+6.5% uplift in Italy), brand favourability (+5.5% uplift in France, +4.6% in Spain) and positive brand association (+2.4% uplift in UK).

Ultimately, Unfold Your World ignited the launch of the Galaxy Z Flip 3 (and other Samsung foldables) to drive a considerable step-change in sales. Global sales of Samsung Foldables jumped 400% in 2021, selling four times more than 2020.

Samsung has seen a 150% increase in consumers who switched smartphone brands for the Galaxy Z Flip 3 when compared to previous (non-foldable) Galaxy devices. This meant that Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 sales were an astonishing five times higher than the previous model.

Unleashing the collective creativity of TikTok’ers has helped to propel Galaxy foldables exactly where we want them to be: an unmistakably desirable phone choice for a new generation of mainstream buyers.