Samsonite Turns to Paid Social for APAC Design Competition

Samsonite has turned to paid social media and key opinion leaders to promote awareness of its design-a-suitcase initiative across eight Asia Pacific markets in order to market on a dime.

The design-a-suitcase contest covers Australia and New Zealand, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, India and China. Samsonite is using Facebook and industry leaders to target design, style and travel enthusiasts.The competition invites users to create a Cosmolite suitcase that best reflects their country and go into the running for cash prizes and the chance to have their design produced as a limited edition piece of Samsonite luggage. Fans are now invited to vote for the winning suitcases on Facebook and customized websites across the eight markets.

The promotion aims to build awareness of Samsonite as a design focused brand, in addition to building a design-based community across Asia, according to David Ketchum, chairman of the Digital + Direct Marketing Association Asia.

“What I like about this campaign is that it is not a huge roll out, and instead has the right look and feel to appeal to designers,” Ketchum says. “Samsonite Cosmolite has real engineering and functionality selling points, but it’s a tough market sector and so it’s good to see that they are turning to people and design.”

The competition has received more than 2,000 entries, almost three-quarters of them approved for submission, but the initiative’s real success lies in the brand’s ability to drive votes for the winning design, says Ketchum.

“As long as this campaign is part of a steady stream of activities that reflect Cosmolite’s DNA rather than just a one-off targeted competition, they are on to a concept that could have longer term equity for the brand,” he says.

Samsonite has employed digital agency Red Ant to advise on campaign concept, marketing and strategy. The agency has also designed and built a fully mobile, locally customized website for each market but is still focused on cost-effective social strategies for driving engagement.

“Advertising has been quite minimal and quite targeted,” says Elisa Harca, global client partner and regional director Asia at Red Ant. “The competition was open to all, but you did need to know how to use the design program so there was no point just targeting anyone. Facebook advertising was really effective, cheap to do, and you can target a very niche and specific market.”

Samsonite invited local bloggers and industry leaders to enter the contest based on their interests in style, travel and design. They were asked to either create a design for the competition or promote the campaign to their followers.

Instagram has also been employed to generate design inspiration, with real time image feeds to the websites based on specific hashtags.

The Chinese market is the exception – where Facebook and Instagram are banned, and has relied on blogger outreach and Weibo and Weixin (WeChat) to generate awareness of the competition.

Success is being measured on the number of qualified submissions, votes and the number of likes and engagement generated on Facebook – which will be assessed once the competition closes at the end of the May.

The next phase for Samsonite is taking the entries offline, with popular suitcase designs being displayed through 3D projections or montages at the Affordable Art Fairs in Korea and Hong Kong.

“I think it just goes full circle,” says Harca. “Samsonite does work with a lot of design schools already, and this shows their commitment to innovation and luggage of the future, taking it into an art environment, and taking their user generated content into a physical environment.”