Samsung's Hope Relay Anti-marketing

I usually write new articles on Tuesday evening, but this time I had more important stuff to do. I am participating in Samsung Hope Relay charity. For every three kilometers of running or cycling, Samsung donates 0.94 EUR / 1.17 USD to SOS Children's Village Croatia. All you have to do is to download application that will track your run.

I am too old to think that any company will do that for purely charitable reasons. It is nice opportunity to market yourself to your future customer, and what's even better, you present yourself as good guy. I'll skip tax deductions this time. However, it is not enough to throw some money; campaign should be enjoyable experience for participants so they feel good about company. Here is what Samsung managed to do so far.

Invitation

I noticed ads on TV on Sunday ten days ago. Croatian Olympic medal winner, Martina Zubčić (bronze medal, Beijing 2008), and actress, Doris Pinčić, invited me to join. So I did.

I thought that Hope Relay started mid of August, when announcements started to appear in news and on the TV, however Samsung's site claims something else, that it will start on 14th of May, and that I should return soon?!

Installation

I went to Google Play and installed app. No Croatia. Apparently, there is Samsung Hope Relay app and special, Croatia-only Samsung Hope Relay Hr. Oh, well. Uninstall and try again. It seems that this is fixed now as I can only see Hr version.

Day One

I played with the application a bit. It is not full-blown sport tracking application, but it will serve the purpose. I was eager to use it on one of my evening tours around Osijek. On second start, it showed only Samsung ads and no tracking menu. Useless.

Day Two

After many people complained, Samsung fixed something and menu appeared again. Distance and Time indicators didn't work, but after finishing, I got right numbers. I was able to track my route and earn some money for the kids. Nice.

Rest of the Days

On two occasions application got confused and didn't tracked anything, claiming at the end that I passed less than a mile and cheered me to continue. After 27 kilometers and no record of it I was kinda not in mood for such cheering.

Sharing is Caring

What would be any modern marketing application without Facebook integration. Each run can be shared, but for some unknown reason, it generated three posts for single run. As I don't want to spam people, I decided to post status updated manually.

iPhone

What about iPhone guys, which are candidate converts from competing platform? Samsung should please them even more, right? After you download application from iTunes, where Croatian is listed as supported language, you will find out that there is no Croatia in the application. My colleague, who makes a lot of kilometers on his bike, is now collecting charity for Hungarian kids. Imagine his feelings about Samsung.

Dishonorable Mentions

It seems that Samsung started to advertise weeks after charity started. They also forgot to say when it will be finished. Many people thought it is over week ago while it lasts until 9th of September. There are also some public events in all major cities, but you cannot find that information on Samsung's site nor Facebook page (at least not in an easy way).

It was also announced that there will be giveaway for participants every day; so far, only one guy got reward because he cycled for 11 km.

Let's not forget that nobody tells you that run resets if you are faster than 40 km/h, which made some downhill bikers unhappy.

For all these little bits of information I had to fish around from unofficial sources.

Show Me the Money

Ads claim that Samsung will pay 7 kuna per 3 kilometers (2.33 kuna/km), but applications shows only 1 kuna/km! Another application error?

Wrap-up

Here is a little questionnaire why this mess happened:

1. Samsung become sponsor one week before Olympics and they didn't have time to develop proper application.
2. Something stopped them from licensing one of the existing, even more multi-platform apps (think Sport Tracker or Endomondo).
3. Somebody in management said: "Hey, we should monetize this more. Make on of those application thingies and connect it with our Facebook page. Nothing fancy, just something quick and dirty."

What's your guess?

If people start to judge Samsung products by execution of this campaign, they should better be cheap because no one will believe in their quality. I will continue to take part in Hope Relay because it is more important than giveaways or me being annoyed with junk application.