Case Study

Samsung Explore

An editorial content hub that brought younger audiences to Samsung.com through search-driven lifestyle and cultural content, built to feel nothing like traditional brand marketing.

Role

Editor‑in‑Chief

Client

Samsung · via Razorfish

Joined

2020

Output

Editorial and creative direction

Read

samsung.com/explore →

Samsung launched Explore in 2018 with an ambitious premise: build a publication, not a product page. The goal was to win younger audiences through lifestyle and cultural content they were actually searching for — a fundamentally different bet than traditional brand advertising. By the time I joined in 2020, Explore was already a proven part of Samsung's audience and SEO strategy. The agency created an editor-in-chief role specifically to push it further — from content hub to fully realized publication — and brought me in to lead that evolution.

The challenge

Explore had established itself, but the landscape was shifting fast. Covid changed how people used the internet almost overnight. They flooded online looking for instruction, connection, and practical guidance. Short-form, personality-led video took off. Creators became trusted teachers. Audiences expected brands to show up with something genuinely useful, not just polished.

At the same time, the platform needed to mature editorially: sharper point of view, stronger content identity, and new formats that could extend its reach beyond written articles. The question wasn't whether to evolve — it was how to do it without losing what was already working.

The approach

I came in focused on two things: sharpening Explore's editorial direction and expanding its format range in response to where audiences were going.

On the editorial side, I pushed Explore toward a stronger point of view — one rooted in culture and creativity, not just search opportunity. The best content did both, but the animating question was always what felt genuinely relevant to people's lives, not what the keyword data alone suggested we cover.

The bigger swing was Master It, a creator-led video series I conceived and developed from the ground up. The format paired influencers with Samsung technology around accessible tutorials, creative skills, and everyday expertise. The editorial instinct behind it was simple but easy to lose inside a brand content system: prioritize usefulness over campaign framing. In practice, that meant getting deep into the search data to find what audiences were actually asking, then working closely with creators to shape ideas that answered those questions in a format native to their voice. It was Explore's first meaningful move into video, and was designed to feel like something people sought out rather than something served to them.