UBSS BAS22 Assignment: Samsung Note 7 Communication Case Study Report

This report analyzes Samsung's communication strategies following the Note 7 launch, focusing on the importance of effective communication with stakeholders during a product crisis. The report examines the company's use of public relations, earned media, and media coverage to disseminate information. It identifies key communication channels, including popular publications and famous faces, and explores barriers to communication, such as negative media coverage and reluctant management. The analysis includes strategies to communicate with stakeholders, the receivers in the communication, and the appropriate channels. Finally, the report provides conclusions and recommendations, including the need for CEO communication and the use of push messages. The report is based on the provided assignment brief for the Advanced Business Communication course (BAS22) at UBSS.

IMPORTANCE OF
COMMUNICATION
SAMSUNG NOTE 7 CASE

Background on the Company
 Samsung is a mobile phone company
based in South Korea and doing
business in all over the world.
 It had launched its two flagship
phones in 2016 in the UK namely
Galaxy S7 and Note 7.
 Note 7 however developed issues like
over heating and exploding.

Strategies to communicate with
stakeholders
 The company used public relations and earned media
software namely Cision so that Samsung gets
empowered to identify influencers craft and
distribute meaningful stories.
 The company communicated about its product
through the most popular publications as this
ensured highest reach of the target audience
especially millennials.

Strategies to communicate with
stakeholders
 The company enhanced the organic
coverage of its campaign to discuss the
product’s Lifecyle following their initial
launch
 Samsung used the similar method of
analyzing the competitor previously
used by Apple Inc.
 It aimed to avoid using automation but
used the human analysts in the survey
and communicate.

Strategies to communicate with
stakeholders
 The company used the
open-ended tracking
 It identified reputational
issues in the company and
its PR agencies to mitigate
the negative coverage of
the Note 7

Receivers in the communication:
 Chief customers base includes millennials as
they are the important demographic for this
company.
 Eminent publications and newspapers like
The Guardian and BBC Online

Appropriate channels of
communication
 The company used media coverage to
communicate their message effectively.
 It also used various famous faces such as
Magician Dynamo and comedian Jack
Whitehall around the world to communicate
to the stakeholders.

Barriers to communication
 The main barriers of communication includes the
incapability of Spokesperson to convey message of
the company to the stakeholders.
 Negative media coverage, critical audience
especially the millennials and cross-cultural
organizational behaviors (Poldma 2016).
 The head management was reluctant to make public
comments on crisis matter.

Conclusions & Recommendations
 Samsung needs to include the
duty of CEO of Samsung to
communicate important
messages on behalf of the
company every time
 The company may use push
messages to communicate
directly to the users as they
send system upgrade message
(Scandelius and Cohen 2016).

References:
 Poldma, T., 2016. Communication and stakeholders. In Retail
Design (pp. 161-181). Routledge
 Scandelius, C. and Cohen, G., 2016. Achieving collaboration with
diverse stakeholders—The role of strategic ambiguity in CSR
communication. Journal of Business Research, 69(9), pp.3487-3499.