marketing team dined with a delegation of about two dozen executives
from Warner Bros.
Some of the people on Samsung’s side of the table were skeptical.
“I knew immediately what was happening,” Peter Weedfald, CMO of
Samsung North America, who reported to Kim, told me over lunch near his
new workplace in New Jersey. “Warner Bros. smelled huge opportunity and
was surrounding our [global] CMO with executive muscle, smiles, and
hunger.”
Eric Kim called Peter over.
“We’ll have a Samsung product placement in The Matrix!” Kim
exclaimed at the table. Samsung, in return, could use Matrix footage and
references in its phone advertising campaigns.
Introducing himself to me as “the Sledgehammer,” Weedfald was not
the kind of person you could win over easily. “Brand is the refuge of the
ignorant” was one of his sayings. He believed that products, not brands,
were the core of any marketing effort.
Weedfald whispered to his boss that Samsung did not have to give
Warner Bros. any money up front. All it needed to do was promote the
movie through its advertising channels.
Kim, to Weedfald’s surprise, became angry and told him to go back to
his seat.
Weedfald, K.T., and Pete Skarzynski accompanied Kim to follow-up
meetings with Warner Bros. where they planned the look, feel, and build of
Neo’s new phone.
“You could tell pretty quick the bullshit and the rigmarole that was
going on, and how [Eric] wanted to deal so bad he would do anything,”
Skarzynski told me.
The film’s producer, Joel Silver, was demanding and opinionated,
“notorious for squashing people at a moment’s notice,” according to one
advertising executive. Warner Bros. was also secretive and difficult to work
with, allowing only one representative of Samsung’s ad agency to read the
script behind a locked door guarded by security officers. Samsung, it
seemed, didn’t have much leverage in the deal.
K.T.’s team was annoyed at the imposition of brand marketing on his
product unit. Weedfald and K.T. needed to protect their carrier
relationships. A Samsung engineer can’t simply create a phone at the behest