Return to Tradition
TODD PENDLETON’S TIGHT-KNIT TEAM was tired. They had fought,
sacrificed, and succeeded in achieving so many impossible goals,
transforming Samsung into the only smartphone maker mentioned in the
same breath as Apple. But they felt they were repeatedly being scolded by
executives at Samsung headquarters for a job well done.
“I left Samsung destroyed,” said Brian Wallace, who was among the
first to get out of the company, just over a year before the Oscar selfie.
“Oh, my god, dude, I gained thirty pounds. I hadn’t seen my wife and
family. And my marriage was under stress. I’d been traveling three weeks in
a month, working seventy-two hours a week. Just crazy. I was drinking too
much ’cause it was so stressful.”
“We called that weight gain the Samsung fifteen,” another employee
said.
The pressure from headquarters was rising to bring Pendleton’s insular
team of Texas cowboys back into the orbit of their Korean bosses.
Internally, Samsung dubbed the new campaign “One Samsung.”
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MILK MUSIC WAS GETTING buzz at the South by Southwest festival held in
Austin that spring. And Samsung brought back Jay-Z to perform a concert
with Kanye West, in an exclusive to Galaxy owners.
The Milk user interface—T.J.’s and Daren’s round dial that users could
rotate to select tunes—was launched at the SXSW festival with its own
demonstration booth, where users could try out high-fidelity headphones
and toggle between streaming stations on an imposing translucent screen in