How do you design a brand activation that generates social media content?

Create spaces the audience wants to photograph on their own initiative and build the product into them. Samsung Open House set up a disruptive, natural and exaggerated environment, with Instagrammable spaces where Samsung products were part of the experience.

What is a brand Open House event?

It's an activation where the brand opens up a space, usually styled as a home, so the public can experience its products in context. In Samsung's case, the goal was for young people to enjoy the experience of having Samsung products at home and share it on social media.

SamsungCase study

Samsung Open House: a brand activation built to generate content

Samsung Open House turned a house into an experience where Samsung products were part of the surroundings. Instagrammable spaces designed for young visitors to create and share content.

ClientSamsung
Formatbrand activation

The challenge

The goal was to generate virality among young people through the Samsung ecosystem, so they could enjoy the experience of having Samsung products at home. In other words: it wasn't about showing off individual devices, but about making people feel what it's like to live with them.

In an activation like this, the challenge is twofold. First, the product mustn't look like a shop display inside an event, but a natural part of the space. Second, a young audience, which filters out advertising very quickly, has to want to share what it experiences of its own accord. Virality can't be ordered: you have to design something people want to photograph and post because they feel like it, not because a sign asks them to.

The idea

The idea was to create a disruptive, natural and exaggerated environment where Samsung products are part of the experience, with Instagrammable spaces for visitors to generate and create content. The house as a format solves the brief in one stroke: a product ecosystem makes more sense in a home than on a stand.

The work included creating the concept, developing the experiences, styling the house and liaising with key partners. It fits because it shifts the communication effort onto the audience itself: every visitor who posts a photo becomes a channel. And because exaggeration and disruption are precisely what make a space worth photographing. A tasteful living room doesn't get shared; a surprising one does, and the product that makes it possible travels with it.

What we did

Creation of the Open House concept
Styling of the house in a disruptive, natural and exaggerated style
Development of experiences with Samsung products built in
Instagrammable spaces for visitors to generate content
Liaison with key partners

Key takeaways (expert view)

If you want your young audience talking about you, design spaces they want to photograph and let the product be part of the set.

The product inside the story

Building the devices into a styled house lets the audience see the ecosystem working, not a catalogue. It's the difference between showing a product and showing a life with that product. For any brand with several product lines, a domestic or everyday setting is a powerful resource: it shows how the pieces fit together without needing to explain it.

Designing for the photo

Instagrammable spaces aren't an add-on: they're the activation's distribution mechanism. If the goal is virality, every corner has to justify someone getting their phone out. For venues and producers, the lesson is to think about set design from the framing too: how it will look on a vertical screen, in what light and with which brand element in shot.

Partners who add to the ecosystem

Working with key partners broadens what the brand can offer inside the experience and, often, its reach. In brand activations, teaming up with like-minded companies enriches the space and shares the effort. For suppliers and complementary brands, projects like this are a way to appear in front of new audiences in a favourable context.

Services involved

→Experiential marketing →Live content →Live campaigns