doomed to fail at executing Chairman Lee’s vision of creativity and global-
mindedness?
It was at that point that, years later, I met Todd Pendleton. Pendleton
strode into Dallas’s Stoneleigh Hotel full of energy, with a big smile on his
face, wearing a chain necklace and bracelets and slightly spiked hair,
holding the hands of toddler twins.
“I’m Todd!” he exclaimed, “and these are my little ones!” He sent his
son and daughter, accompanied by his wife, up to their hotel room.
Todd was the chief marketing officer for Samsung Telecommunications
America at the time, where he had become a legend. It took me two years
to convince him to sit down and talk. Now living in Los Angeles, he would
initially exchange emails with me, and then he’d go dark for months at a
time.
“He likes to be mysterious and keep a low profile,” a former employee
told me. “Despite his energetic and optimistic personality.”
I’d heard a lot about Pendleton from his colleagues.
A South Korean Samsung employee, speaking to me in violation of
company media policy, told me, “I didn’t like Todd’s team. But man, they
accomplished a lot. He was our guy in the Samsung-versus-Apple wars.”
His tenure as CMO of Samsung Telecommunications from 2011 to
2015 was unusual. He was clearly no Samsung Man in the traditional sense.
His stories about Samsung tended to be overwhelmingly positive, and in
fact he was known for his incredible optimism. His employees sometimes
remembered things differently.
—
STUDYING THE TESTIMONY FROM the Apple v. Samsung trials, and
speaking with dozens of his colleagues and employees, I learned the story
behind the Samsung war on Apple under Todd’s watch.
“We need more creativity!” Dale Sohn, the CEO of Samsung
Telecommunications America, the Texas mobile phone office, had
exclaimed in a meeting in 2010, according to a senior manager who was
present. Dale reported to mobile chief J.K. Shin. He had been tasked with
turning things around in America, Samsung’s toughest market, given the
iPhone’s huge popularity. “I want someone who’s got tattoos all over his
arms and earrings!”