Samsung in YouTube 1

Samsung and Their Presence on YouTube

Michelle Luton

Social Media Director

 Samsung in YouTube 2

Table of Contents

Report Overview & Research Methods…………………………………….3

YouTube Basics…………………………………………………………….4

Presentation of Videos………………………………………………….......7

Audience…………………………………………………………………....9

Consumer Engagement Within YouTube…………………………………...10

Conclusion………………………………………………………………….12
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Samsung and Their Presence on YouTube

Report Overview

This report is the analysis of Samsung and how their present themselves on YouTube. Our

teams looked out how they communicate with their consumers and how they attempt to sell their

products to their consumers. How their choices of how they design their videos and who they do

collaborations with is influenced by their target audience. We also look at how the audience

engages with various videos by looking at the likes, dislikes, and comment section.

Research Methods

For this research, my team and I spent two weeks collecting and analyzing YouTube

videos on the Samsung’s Channel. We had also looked at their Instagram to see if there were any

differences in how they engaged with their audience. We collected this data by using a chart to

help guide our thought process and findings for this project. The question we are looking at is

mainly how a technological company like Samsung makes themselves known on platforms like

YouTube.
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YouTube Basics

What is YouTube?

YouTube is a free video sharing service (YouTube: What Is YouTube?) that is accessible

to billions of people around the world. It began in 2005 by three PayPal employees and then

later sold to Google. From there, it began its rise to being one of the top social media platforms.

Understanding the Main Features

There are several features that are available on YouTube. There are the Like/Dislike

buttons, the comment section, YouTube Channels, and so on. Let’s go into detail about each.

Let’s start with the basics, the views. The views are where we see how many has viewed

the video. According to this article called “How do YouTube Count Views?” by Matthias Funk,

YouTube counts views based on two criteria’s:

1. The user starts the video themselves first.

2. The user watches at least 30 secs of the video.

This is done to avoid counting bots as views. This article also notes that they count

multiple views, but they stop counting it at a certain point, which is not specified. Keep in mind

that not everyone who view these videos will subscribe, like, or comment on a video. People

have the option to do all, a combination, or none at all except view the video.

Building off of that let’s discuss subscriptions and YouTube Channels. A user can

subscribe to any channel on YouTube. From there, they can get regular updates of when the
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channel updates. Liking and commenting is another way for users to engage with the channel’s

content, other than subscribing. They can let them know where they are doing good and bad

based off the like or dislike all the videos, or the type of comments that they give.

The channel itself is where the creator keeps all their content. This is where viewers can

find other videos made by the creator. The creator is able to organize the channel enough to
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display what the creator believes is the most relevant.

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How do most companies such as Samsung use YouTube?

YouTube had become one of the most popular platforms for companies to use to

advertise their product. This is because they are not limited to just displaying their products on

photos, short videos, or having to pay for an ad spot on television. YouTube videos are available

at all hours of the day. Anybody with an internet connection can access it.

This is not the only advantage. YouTube allows for a large range of creativity. There is

not really a limit to what they can do on the videos, except there are rules about what they can

and cannot post, but other than that, there is free range.
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Presentation of Videos

The Video Format

Samsung seems to have some sort of format for each of their videos, no matter what

video it is. They seem to always aim for simplicity while sometimes, at the same time, being

over the top. For example in their video “Galaxy x BTS: A Piece of Cake 🍰”, they are over the

top with the various parts of the video, but when it came down to the parts portraying the

product being used in the video, which in this

case is camera feature on their mobile phones, it

is simple. Having the description in corner of the

video and the blur of the background to allow the

audience to fully focus on the phone and its

camera features.

Another one of Samsung design choices can be seen in another video, titled “Galaxy

A71: Official Unboxing.” This video, as stated in the title, is just a simple unboxing of the

Samsung Galaxy A71. Unlike the previous

video, Samsung took a simple approach

throughout the whole video. To highlight the

features, such as the colors and the phone

itself, they opted to use a white background

instead of a busy background.

The one thing we can find that is the same in both videos is that they both use the same

fonts. Samsung is a brand. They want people to know who they are. So, when people see their
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videos and see things like the font, they would know who Samsung is instantly. So, keeping

certain things constant, like the fonts, is beneficial for their channel.
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Audience

The Type of Audience

We understand that Samsung’s Target audience is people who are of the ages 15-45 and are

interested in current technology trends. (Samsung Electronics: First Cross-Screen, Real-Time

Audience Experience App) This makes sense why their videos all seem to be sleek and current. It

would be a whole different advertising if it was geared towards seniors or to children below the

age of 5. This also puts into the perspective of the other choices that they had made on their

advertising on the platform. One choice that was impacted because of who their target audience

are is who they choose to do collaborations with.

Collaborations and the Continual Appeal of Market

We noticed that Samsung does collabs with various famous actors and artists. Some

notable ones are Millie Billie Brown, an actress on Stranger Things, and BTS, a Korean Pop

Group. They had even created limited edition phones with another K-Pop called Blackpink. We

know this is to appeal to more groups of people and not just one target audience. YouTube is

available to billions of people and Samsung wants to take any opportunity to draw in more

people to their platform on YouTube.

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Company Engagement Within YouTube

Looking at Another App

We decided to compare another app that Samsung uses to see if there are differences in

how they use they portray themselves on a different social media. The app we decided to use for

the comparison is Instagram. We understand that Instagram provides many opportunities for

engagement, from the use of the Stories, to the comments on the photos. We noticed was that

they have multiple different accounts, specifically for different countries. We decided to mainly

focus on their USA account, @Samsungmobileusa.

The main thing we noticed is that the company is much more engaging to the consumers

than they are on YouTube. They respond back to customers on photos, post interactive stories,

and so on. This is not seen on their YouTube. On their YouTube, they are much more silent and

they do not respond to comments.

Our team believes that this is because the culture on Instagram is much more different

than it is on YouTube. Like stated earlier, Instagram does provide many opportunities to engage
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with consumers compared to YouTube. It interesting to see how Samsung is able to utilize both

social media platforms to their advantage.

YouTube Comment Culture

Companies like to believe that people who comment on videos would provide helpful

insight that would help them make their products better. This is not always the case as my team

and I have found. Sometimes the comments are a critique of the product, other times, it is about

nonsense. They can range from just people commenting “hi” on posts to someone posting a

whole “This is bob” image in the comments. Anything can happen in a YouTube Comment

section. Sometimes, if the comments are bad enough, companies will turn off comments.

For this reason, this is maybe why Samsung does not reply in the comment section.

Things can easily be lost within the comment section because of the comment section is set up in

general. So, the only thing that Samsung can do is just try to take notes of the critiques and

responses and try to apply it to their other videos.

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Conclusion

There are a few takeaways from what we can see in how Samsung uses YouTube. First

being that compared to how they communicate to their consumers on Instagram, they do not

engage with their audience their audience all that much on YouTube. We can assume because

Samsung is just using the platform to just show the capabilities of their product and just want to

see how the audience reacts to it. The other is that they seem to have some sort of story tell with

every video. Since they have no limit to how long the videos, they are able to portray any the

way they want. Though, the theme they use for each video is different, they do seem to have a

central theme with the design, font, and logo they use for each of their videos. We believe it is to

make sure that the audience knows that it is Samsung from the get-go. We believe that with

these techniques, this is how Samsung portrays themselves as a sleek, technical company.
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References

Anderson, Charles & Johnson (2003). The impressive psychology paper. Chicago: Lucerne

Publishing.;

Galaxy A71: Official Unboxing | Samsung. (2020, September 30). [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTgPl8WV01w&feature=youtu.be

Galaxy x BTS: A Piece of Cake 🍰 | Samsung. (2020, October 6). [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQEL5ltZFcg

Hosch, W. L. (2020, March 13). YouTube | History, Founders, & Facts. Encyclopedia

Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/YouTube

Hughes, B. (2018, March 21). Why Businesses Should Add YouTube to Their Engagement

Channels. Retrieved October 28, 2020, from

https://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2018/03/why-businesses-should-add-youtube-to-their-

engagement-channels/

Samsung’s Channel Page. YouTube. Retrieved October 21, 2020, from

https://www.youtube.com/c/Samsung/videos

SD Card PRO Plus and EVO Plus: The SD card made for pros | Samsung. (2020, October 13).

[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpYQvroBOlc

Smart Home: New Ecobubble Washer and Galaxy S20 | Samsung. (2020, September 25).

[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLvrNgTkplc

Tubics, A., & Tubics, C. (2020, October 12). How Does YouTube Count Views? It's more tricky

than you think! Retrieved October 27, 2020, from https://www.tubics.com/blog/what-

counts-as-a-view-on-youtube/
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YouTube: What is YouTube? (n.d.). GCFGlobal.Org. Retrieved October 21, 2020, from

https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/youtube/what-is-youtube/1/