How do Apple react to a ‘Next Generation’ Challenger?
By Jude Bliss, 21/09/2012
Samsung released their latest viral from their ‘The Next Big Thing is Already Here’ campaign this week and its being billed as their most provocative spot yet.
Samsung are clearly following a strategy of positioning themselves as the ‘Next Generation’ brand by implying that Apple and the iPhone were perfect for a time gone by, but that was then, and Samsung is for now (a message summed up most strongly in the film when mum and dad join the iPhone queue).
It’s a strategy that worked very well for Audi in taking on BMW and Lexus in the States, when just before launching the A8, they too depicted their competitors as being out of touch, and out of date.
As Audi CMO Scott Keogh said to us in an interview at the start of the year “What that [strategy] does is it de-positions instantly your competitors, and it puts them into an archaic place, and archaic times.”
Adopting a ‘Next Generation’ strategy only works of course if you can back up those claims and with the Galaxy GS III having had 4G a year ahead of the iPhone plus Near-Field Technology it seems as though they have the technological upper-hand to do just that.
The campaign is effective as its pinpointed Apple’s two biggest weaknesses; the incremental upgrades in their product development and their often mocked sheep-like consumers, and makes fun of them but in a light-hearted and un-patronising way. By keeping it light and entertaining they manage to keep consumers on their side and not be seen to take themselves too seriously.
Apple have been at the top of the consumer electronics category for a good number of years and it would always be a struggle to stay there as the market leader often adopts a ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach and can become complacent.
The campaign is clearly a statement of intent from Samsung and as they now have the products to match this just could be start of a sea-change in Samsungs favour. It will be interesting to see how Apple react, and I sense that they’ll now need to adopt a new narrative themselves if they are to stay at the top of the pile.
Will they react at all to Samsung? Will they ignore them and continue their current iteration of their product-line? Or can they return to delivering the Game Changing innovations that made them so successful in the first place?
Read more about the Challenger narratives here.
[...] they continue to make inroads vs. the iPhone? Will they solidify their position as the Next Generation challenger in the same way Apple did to Microsoft and Intel in 1997? Will Nick ever persuade us that his [...]
[...] they continue to make inroads vs. the iPhone? Will they solidify their position as the Next Generation challenger in the same way Apple did to Microsoft and Intel in 1997? Will Nick ever persuade us that his [...]