The Brief
Samsung's European marketing team approached us to create lifestyle content for the Galaxy S24 launch. The ask was specific. They wanted content that felt organic to social feeds. No product-on-pedestal shots. No spec overlays. Just the phone in the hands of real people doing real things.
The deliverable list: 25 vertical videos (15-30 seconds each), 40 stills and 5 longer-form pieces for YouTube (90 seconds each). Three cities. Ten days. Two crew members.
Location Strategy
Tokyo for street culture and nightlife. The Shibuya crossing, Shinjuku Golden Gai, Harajuku at dawn before the crowds. London for the architecture and lifestyle angle .. Shoreditch studios, Borough Market, the Tate Modern walkway at sunset. Los Angeles for the outdoor and wellness content .. Runyon Canyon, Venice Beach, a rooftop pool in DTLA.
Each city gave us a different color palette and energy. Tokyo was neon and contrast. London was muted and editorial. LA was warm and golden. The phone appeared in every frame but never dominated it.
How We Shot It
Primary camera was a Sony FX3 for video with a 24-70mm f/2.8 GM. For stills we used a Sony A7R V. The trick was making professional content look like it could have been captured on the phone itself. We matched the Galaxy S24's color processing in post so the transition between our footage and actual phone footage felt seamless.
Samsung provided 4 Galaxy S24 units. We used them for B-roll, behind-the-scenes content and the social clips where the phone needed to appear as both the tool and the subject. Every video opened with 2-3 seconds of phone-captured footage before cutting to our primary camera.
Social-First Thinking
The entire shoot was planned for vertical first. Every location was scouted for how it would frame in 9:16. We shot horizontal as secondary coverage, not the other way around. This is the opposite of how most production companies work and it showed in the results.
We also created content in real time. During each shooting day, our editor cut a rough version of 2-3 social clips on a MacBook Pro in the van between locations. Samsung's social team received same-day content they could preview and approve. By day 5, they had already posted 8 clips.
Results
The campaign generated 12M impressions across Samsung's European social channels in the first month. The Tokyo nightlife reel hit 2.1M views on Instagram. Average engagement rate across all 25 vertical videos was 4.7% .. nearly double Samsung's benchmark for product content.
Samsung renewed the contract for Q3 and Q4 content. The same format .. small crew, three cities, social-first .. became their template for all regional lifestyle campaigns going forward.