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Vinicius, the official Rio 2016 mascot, poses with (from left) Rio 2016 Chief Commercial Officer Renato Ciuchini, IOC Marketing Director Timo Lumme, Samsung Latin America CEO Pedro Kim and Samsung Brazil VP of Mobile CH Yoon.
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Mired in a deep recession, Brazil is far from the global marketer’s ideal environment right now. But Olympic sponsor Samsung plowed ahead anyway on Tuesday, making Rio 2016 one of three focal points for a global product launch.
In an mostly empty Barra Olympic Park, the built-for-the-Games Samsung Galaxy Studio hummed with slick corporate marketing. Samsung Latin America CEO Pedro Kim and team showed off their new Galaxy Note 7 to about 100 reporters and staff. The phone’s new features include an iris scanner unlock feature, a screen-off memo pad and stylus, and a “secure folder” for shared files.
First, executives in New York and London spoke via live stream in English, and then the show proceeded in Portuguese to the media assembled in person.
After the oohs and ahhs for the new phone died down, the marketing team brought out Vinicius, the official Rio 2016 mascot, to pose for pictures. Then, a Samsung employee took Kim, Samsung Brazil VP of Mobile CH Yoon, IOC Marketing Director Timo Lumme, Rio 2016 Chief Commercial Officer Renato Ciuchini, and IOC Head of Marketing Communications Ben Seeley on a tour of the expansive Galaxy Studio.
Inside the two-story, black-and-white activation zone, users can experiment with technologies like a new music-mixing tool, virtual reality and a biometrics tracker. Fans win Samsung’s Olympic pins for completing each of the stations, including riding a virtual-reality canoe course. At the Olympic Village two miles away, Samsung provided new phones to all the athletes to use.
Samsung is the dominant smart-phone seller in Brazil, controlling about 43 percent of the market, according to numbers released by researcher Counterpoint in March. In February, Samsung announced it would adapt to the Brazilian recession by focusing on selling more expensive products. The new phone retails in Brazil for about $1,319.
Samsung first became a worldwide Olympics sponsor at the 1998 Nagano Games. It signed an extension through 2020 in 2014.
