COURTESY OF GETTY IMAGES ENTERTAINMENT, PHOTOGRAPH BY NEILSON BARNARD. OCTOBER 24, 2012.
Todd Pendleton, the Samsung Telecommunications chief marketing officer,
who led the advertising war against Apple.At office talks and public events, he’d show up with an earring, stubble,
jeans, and an untucked button-down shirt inside a sport coat, sometimes
featuring checks and eccentric colors. Bright-red sneakers and other zany
patterns made appearances in the office from his prized collection of six
hundred pairs of Nike shoes. But he also brought a refreshing sense of
creativity and insight to the team. At ad agency meetings, “he would point
out things which, me watching [the commercial], I wouldn’t really think
about it,” said the marketer. “It just was very clear that he was thinking
creative on a different level.” Sometimes, however, he got too creative for
his own good.
“He was a total conspiracy theorist,” said another team member,
recalling his penchant for seeing 9/11 as an inside job. He could come off
as aloof—a “ghost” who “didn’t talk to anybody,” joked one colleague—
spending a lot of time at Los Angeles commercial shoots and not always
accessible in Texas.
But the Nike veteran was also a tough perfectionist, and working under
him could be hard on one’s ego.