Step two was to ensure that the economics of the coming marketing war
on Apple made sense. Samsung had built, under Pete Skarzynski, a carrier-
driven model, jumping through hoops to ensure that Sprint and AT&T
received their own customized Galaxy phones to sell, using Samsung’s
marketing money. If Todd pulled a maneuver akin to the Pepsi challenge
too soon, swarms of customers might show up at AT&T stores—AT&T
was the exclusive carrier for the iPhone at the time—only to have the
advertising throughout the stores nudge them toward Apple.
The solution? To redirect Samsung’s marketing budget. At the time,
Samsung was putting about 70 percent of its U.S. smartphone budget in so-
called marketing development funds (MDFs), which were cash piles
allocated to the carriers for advertising and rebates. About 30 percent of
the budget went to Samsung’s own branding efforts. Pendleton’s team
convinced Dale Sohn to reverse the figures: to put 70 percent behind
Samsung’s own efforts and devote 30 percent to the carriers.
Once Samsung had the marketing budget to reach out directly to
customers, Pendleton could initiate step three: hiring an ad agency. He
annoyed Samsung headquarters by going around their established Madison
Avenue and Seoul agencies and instead putting in a call to relative
newcomer 72andSunny, a boutique advertising firm with offices in Los
Angeles, New York, and Amsterdam that had a special zing for cultural
marketing.
“I just need some help to get this thing really rocking,” Todd told
72andSunny’s Glenn Cole, John Boiler, and Matt Jarvis on the phone.
“We’ve got the best phone. Nobody knows it.”
Known for their edgy and rebellious approach to their craft, the trio
didn’t even describe 72andSunny as an ad agency in the traditional sense.
Earlier that year, 72andSunny had been in trouble for a campaign called
“Unhate” that it had crafted for United Colors of Benetton. In a push for
what it called “global love,” it featured fake images of President Barack
Obama kissing the former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez, a smooch
between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and an especially controversial lip-
lock between the pope and an Egyptian Muslim religious leader.
The Vatican threatened legal action; its spokesman told The Guardian
he was dismayed that “in the field of advertising, the most elemental rules
of respect for others can be broken in order to attract attention by
provocation.”