We were briefed to build hype around the launch of Samsung’s flagship mobile phone product - the Galaxy S4 – and break the iPhone’s hold on the mainstream smartphone market. The problem, Auckland lacks the traditional location for phone pre-launch hype, a flagship store for fans to queue through the night outside of!

We knew however that Samsung fans couldn’t wait to get their hands on the Galaxy S4 and that for people beyond our core fanbase, hearing a recommendation carries far more weight than a branded message ever could.

So we let our advocates do the talking - instead of launching the phone ourselves, we got our biggest fans to launch it for us. Rather than making them physically queue up and camp outside for days in the traditional fashion for a latest smartphone release, we instead created a virtual queue that fans could join via social media.

We enabled customers to act as marketers by creating sharable S4 related content and rewarded them for sharing the content via social media. The more likes, retweets, shares and comments they received, the further they moved towards the front of the virtual queue and in the draw for one of 627 prizes on offer.

The Smart Phone Line enabled fans to get to the front of an online line by sharing features of the phone via social media. For two weeks, 12,000 fans shared 85,000 Galaxy S4 posts, reaching 15 million people – helping the S4 in New Zealand smash all its launch sales targets.