Samsung promotes its products via digital comic

“You should get one, too. It is out of this world. It is an artificial intelligence (AI) washer that does everything for you. Washing blankets can be done quickly without much difficulty.”

This is a quote from the 30th episode of Naver’s digital comic “Living Alone Diary,” where a friend of the protagonist, who works as a cartoonist, boasts her new Samsung washer and dryer. As the readers’ comments pointed out, it was a product placement (PPL) advertisement. Just as brands that are under a PPL deal are naturally incorporated into TV series, this digital comic revealed the brand name, “Samsung Xrande AI” in its episode.

This is the first time that Samsung Electronics has signed a PPL deal with a cartoonist for its home appliances products. “After watching a recent episode, where the protagonist washes her jeans on a sink and has trouble washing her blanket because her old washer is broken, we thought it would be a great idea to promote our new small-size washing machine for one-person household released on Sept. 16 via the digital comic,” said an official from Samsung’s promotion team.

Samsung’s small-size washing machine and dryer are non-flagship models that are not featured in the South Korean IT giant’s TV ad. Samsung thought it could have the effect of target advertisement by promoting its product targeted for young people in their 20s and 30s via a digital comic that is winning empathy from college students living alone and those who just got their job. “Working with digital cartoons on PPL can bring about as much influence as TV and achieve a clear delivery of the message to target consumers at a tenth of the cost,” said Samsung Electronics.

“We did not ask the cartoonist to create a new episode for the PPL ad since we thought it was important to empathize with the readers of the story,” the company said. “Our employee at the sales team, who is a fan of the cartoonist, offered her a discount for our products but she declined it because of the recent paid advertisement controversy.”


Taek Kyoon Sohn sohn@donga.com