Samsung Electronics is changing its Korean corporate identity for the first time in 46 years from ‘Samsung Electronics’ to ‘SAMSUNG’.
It is trying to maximize global corporate identity by applying foreign tactic of using only English in its corporate identity.
Samsung Electronics is unifying its brand for foreign promotion purpose to ‘SAMSUNG’. It got rid of blue oval brand and Korean words that were used for its corporate identity in foreign advertisements such as newspapers, TVs, online, and etc. This is the first time since foundation of Samsung that Korean title is taken away in Korea.
Samsung Electronics’ Global Marketing Department led the basis change. Its judgment for a change was that they thought consumers became more familiar with ‘SAMSUNG’ due to English initials that were written on entire page of popular products such as Galaxy Smartphone and TVs.
Ever since many years ago, Samsung Electronics used ‘SAMSUNG’ more instead of corporate identity with blue background for its activities in foreign marketing. This move is part of ‘One Samsung’ strategy that uses same title for both the name of company and products and not individual brand for each product.
“We took a step by step action after we’ve decided since May that we need to use English letter mark in domestic and foreign advertisements just like the world’s trend. We’ve made it so that we can freely use letter mark and blue logo according to their purposes.” A person affiliated with Samsung explained why Samsung is introducing English letter mark.. Samsung’s purpose is that it wants to apply consistent marketing strategy in Korea by considering it as a part of global market. Samsung Electronics once set its domestic homepage design as the same as the foreign one in January.
Samsung’s affinity for current letter mark is on another level. Samsung developed it by requesting American corporate identity business called L&M at the same time when it proclaimed itself as new management in 1993. It represented Samsung for it shared same moments when Samsung was becoming a world’s top-notch company by sponsoring IOC and becoming number one in memory, Smartphones, and TVs. With a thought of going back to its old days, it put its current letter mark for Galaxy S6’s marketing instead of fonts that it was using previously on Smartphones.
It’s been a long time when it was emphasizing simple English letter mark in global industries that do not use English. Panasonic got rid of its domestic brand ‘National’ in 2009 that it was using since 1918 and unified its global brand under Panasonic. It is currently using just simple English letter mark without any extra design. After introducing ‘SONY’ brand since 1957, Sony is using its current letter mark for all marketing purposes since 1961. Toshiba, Sharp, and Hitachi are using the same strategy, and Chinese businesses such as Haier, HiSense, and TCL are also using that strategy in global markets.
Staff Reporter Seo, Hyeongseok | hsseo@etnews.com