In focus groups and surveys, the marketers noticed, there was a growing
divide between two camps: those who used Apple’s iPhones and those who
used smartphones from HTC, Samsung, and Nokia, which ran Google’s
quickly growing open-source operating system, Android.
“Android people consider themselves to be smarter than Apple people,”
a marketer under Todd concluded from his data. “They consider themselves
to be smart shoppers; they consider themselves to make informed
decisions, unlike Apple sheep, who just do what [Apple] says.” Samsung’s
data crunchers concluded that Android users were looking for someone to
say, “Hey, look, this Android phone is just as good as your iPhone.”
In fact, the team had to split up focus groups that included both Apple
and Android fans, as they’d get particularly raucous and unproductive.
There was always at least one Apple fan in the room who scolded the
Android fans, and vice versa, with Android users pointing out how much
more flexible and customizable their operating system was. “There was this
growing base of Android users who could become a tribe,” Brian Wallace
said, crunching a new trend in the social-media chatter. “But they needed a
leader.”
Samsung wanted to be that leader.
Pendleton showed his colleagues side-by-side hardware comparisons
between the iPhone and the Galaxy phone in The Wall Street Journal, which
showed Samsung leading in a number of areas. The problem was that
Samsung, up to this point, was not attempting to tell a story. Apple was
commanding the narrative: It had the cult of Steve Jobs, a massive
following, and glowing media coverage, and it had unleashed a barrage of
aggressive legal action arguing that Samsung was a copycat in terms of new
products and innovation.
Could Samsung reverse the narrative? What if its Android phones were
actually the smart person’s alternative to the iPhone, and Steve Jobs’s
worshippers were the mindless followers? What if Apple’s lawsuit
vindicated Samsung? What if Apple had patented something as silly as a
black rectangle with rounded edges out of desperation, attempting to bully
its way into a monopoly?
The outcome of the lawsuits—showing that this or that square, icon, or
color wasn’t copied—wasn’t the concern of Todd’s team. More urgent was
the big-picture narrative; that is what built emotional appeal for the
customer. The court case was only one aspect of the Samsung war; final