The VP of product and marketing for Samsung’s Mobile Experience division in the UK & Ireland is no stranger to eye-catching activations. But as she tells Tim Healey, big brand growth demands so much more than big stunts.
Can you take us through your career journey – from Aberystwyth University to key roles at Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Three UK, Meta and now your position as VP of product and marketing for Samsung’s Mobile Experience division in the UK & Ireland?
Having spent much of my time as a student watching films and TV, I had a huge interest in the industry. My first commercial role was at Universal Pictures where I was a junior doing a bit of everything. At that point, the business was being managed by Viacom. I was head-hunted across to 20th Century Fox where I subsequently built my career.
Murdoch companies are well-known for being very commercially driven. I was there for almost 14 years. I was the youngest sales director in the industry, and as far as I know, the only female sales director in the UK. I learned how to find my voice, be a mature leader and rise up through the ranks.
I moved to marketing director and then eventually commercial director, working with a number of different partners, and transitioning our business from a physical business – based around the sales of DVDs and VHS cassettes – into a digital one. It was a delicate process where we needed to balance the existing physical business with the new digital offer.
We had to make sure that people understood why we were making the move. These days, streaming platforms are ubiquitous, but there were no streaming platforms at that time. I learned how to be fast-paced and how consumer behavior drives everything.
I was lucky enough to work on movies like Titanic, Avatar, the latest Bond and new Star Wars films. I’ve been fortunate to work on the launch of some of the most incredible films and TV series ever made.
When Disney took over 20th Century Fox, I was part of that acquisition team. I was kept on to make sure that everything Disney needed was done in the correct way. Next I was part of the setup team for Disney+ and then I was invited to join Three Mobile to work on their B2B and consumer business.
I wanted to test myself outside of the industry I knew. Within Three, I worked on broadening their brand and on their business division. Samsung invited me in for a chat about their ‘omni-channel’ project. I realized that Samsung had incredible capabilities but their story could be more joined up.
My challenge was to link that whole customer journey together. How do we make sure that the omni-channel team sits at the center of the business? How does someone interact with Samsung in digital or in the physical space? Was there a thread running through it all? Having tackled that, I was asked to connect marketing into the journey.
Now I look after product as well. We have to make each product have the most exciting journey, whether that be through the marketing space or into the omni-channel space. And most recently I have also been given responsibility for Ireland too.
I think was schooled in this discipline working in film. You could see how products were created and actually adapted with the consumer in mind from the start. Unifying these journeys, and thinking this way, means that we have efficiency of spend and a more personalized journey overall for our customers.
Annika at the launch of Samsung’s Galaxy AI
What is the offer at Samsung?
I’m lucky enough to work in an organization that brings some of the most cutting-edge technology and innovation to the consumer. Part of my job is to take Samsung’s incredible innovations and ensure that they make sense to the customer.
An example would be Galaxy AI. We all remember the moment we first got a smartphone. And we all remember when we began to realize the power of this device in our hands – how we could now take photos and use apps to interact with our bank. Smartphones were a step-change from the brick phones I grew up with.
In January 2024, Samsung announced that its devices would now come with Galaxy AI. We now have over 5 million people using Galaxy AI in the UK. Galaxy AI is making their lives easier.
Sometimes the world of AI can appear quite frightening. We had to demystify it and show how it will benefit the lives of our customers. We’ve got people using it and telling us how they want to use it, which informs the next iteration.
The next stage of evolution for our AI is just around the corner. AI is now being applied to multiple devices, not just phones. Our Galaxy Ring now has AI technology built in to help you live a super-personalized and healthier life.
With strong demand expected across PCs and mobile – driven by the growth of on-device AI – what do the next 12 months look like for you and your team at Samsung?
We’re on a mission to teach people about Galaxy AI. Our drone-powered S24 phone launch was seen by 10 million people in the UK in 2024, and we turned the London Underground Circle Line into the ‘Circle to Search’ line for a period of time to bring some fun to the proceedings.
When people talk about AI, they are typically quite serious. We believe that AI-powered search gives you more time to do the things you want to do. A big driver for us is ‘ease of life.’ But making AI available to our customers also comes with responsibility. This responsibility will manifest in different ways. For example: to help people understand when AI is in use, an AI-generated image by Samsung will feature stars in the corner.
Last year was also a big year for our Z Flip6 phone. We have partnered with the Olympics for 40 years, and last year we ran the Olympic selfie campaign. We gave 17,000 Olympic competitors the flip phone to help them document their part in the event. That drove huge awareness for us and AI across the world.
Over the next six months, you’re going to see the next generation of AI. This year we’ve watched, listened and learned how our customers are interacting with AI. Now we know what they want to see and what they expect from AI. We’ve also [addressed] any concerns about where they store their data, so now they can choose in the cloud or on their phone.
This coming year you’re going to see more personalized journeys, different ways of interacting with AI, and not just for phones [but] across everything Samsung does. From your Samsung earbuds and your listening preferences to your Galaxy Ring and your health story, everything will start to be interconnected.
Our focus is now on making AI even more personal, intuitive and accessible for everyone. We kicked off 2025 with one of our biggest moments of the year, Unpacked, and the unveiling of the Galaxy S25 series. Think of the Galaxy S25 series like a PA in your pocket – an AI companion helping you manage your to-do lists and save time to do more of what you love.
We had a brilliant launch event in January hosted at our innovation space, Samsung KX, to mark the occasion. The highlight of the night was an amazing projection mapping at County Hall and the London Eye, which showcased the power of invention and the age of AI. It was one of the most ambitious displays the city has seen and was the perfect way to celebrate our Galaxy AI journey.
How is your team structured?
We have new product innovation that sits within my product team. My product team are at the top of the funnel. They assess everything from go-to-market through to our category management. They also own how our products perform throughout the whole year and all the associated services. It’s a really important part of our business.
Next, there is my marketing and communications team. They make sure that what we tell and bring to the consumer makes sense across all the different categories. I have teams for our back catalog, wearables, tablets, PCs and smartphones.
We have the omni-channel team, who consider how we connect the customer and the product together and take that to market in a very clear, cohesive way. We have a sales team and a retail contact center and training team, too. It is a virtuous circle because everybody’s working together to get to the best outcome.
Drawing on your leadership expertise, what has your career taught you that helps you to manage a great marketing team?
You’ve got to balance short-term and long-term marketing and everything should be connected. The customer is the center of that story. If you lose sight of the customer journey, you run the risk of everyone going off in different directions. You’ve got to have one stabilizing point: what are you trying to tell the customer? What do you want them to do as as a result?
As a leader, it is also about being honest, open, transparent and clear. You need to have people’s backs, too. We give people the freedom to explore and be more innovative. We are always testing boundaries within a sensible framework. Above all, we should all go and have some fun.
The launch of the Samsung Galaxy 3nm processor in 2025.
What’s your first memory of a marketing success where you were part of where you felt: this is the role for me?
When we launch a product, we need to communicate the key messages about that product that every consumer should understand. Let’s say Samsung are focusing on ‘Galaxy AI.’ And we have decided that message is the key thread that needs to run through our entire story with the S24 phone marketing. We would then consider the marketing through this ‘Galaxy AI’ lens as “Galaxy AI’ is our number one message.
The omni-channel team consider how that manifests in retail and in digital. We make sure that there’s consistency through our own dot com channels and our social channels. Obviously there is nuance, but consistency is key. When I walk into retail, what do I see? What do I touch, feel and experience? We know that customers typically demonstrate between 12 and 15 different behaviors when it comes to choosing technology. Before they purchase they often go into a retail environment.
By overseeing omni-channel marketing, my role is to ensure that the customer journey is consistent. No matter where our customers are, the messaging is consistent and tailored to their environment. When I brought marketing and omni-channel together, I saw people communicating between departments that had never really spoken before. I could see everyone coming together as a team.
We created this new way of working. Once established, people didn’t need me to explain what they were doing, because everybody was working out for themselves how they navigate that together. I was super-proud of that.
What are the pros and cons of AI in marketing?
For me, it’s about the benefits AI contributes to efficiency. It’s about bringing quality and speed together. And it is also about personalization. We play everything super-safe at Samsung. I have to make sure that it’s tested and safe for our customers and safe for our business. It is all about learning through the data: we are monitoring what is working and what’s not working.
At the last Olympics, all athletes were given Samsung Flip Phones to help them document their part in the athletics competition.
Emotional connection plays a powerful role in customer engagement. How do you and your team foster that at Samsung?
Proud To Own (PTO) is a huge metric for us. If someone’s decided and they’re proud enough to buy a Samsung product from us, I want them to feel good about that purchase. That’s the absolute number one thing.
It starts with how we excite them about the product: whether that be an amazing stunt with drones to celebrate Galaxy AI, or when we changed Old Street station to ‘Fold Street’ to celebrate our folding phone, or how we gave all the Olympic athletes a Galaxy Z Flip6 Olympic edition phone.
I want our customers to feel excited about a product, as in “That’s something I want to learn more about.” So excited that they are already thinking, “How do I carry on with my journey? How do I get hold of this product?” We have to make sure they have the right customer proposition so they feel like they’re getting great value.
The after-sales journey is just as important. How do our customers feel when they connect their old phone to their new phone and transfer the data? I want to make that experience as simple as possible. Being ‘Proud To Own’ is something we measure very accurately so that we can learn from it and make our customer story even more engaging.
Could you tell us about the customer research discovery that you’ve made that you found surprising?
During Covid there was a massive move to buying online. People were saying that physical retail is dead. That turned out to be completely incorrect. We can see now that ‘people love people.’ Our Contact Centers are still vibrant because people love to talk to people.
We have also found that the retail experience is incredibly important because people want immersive experiences. We need to work harder to ensure that when someone comes into a retail environment, they enjoy it, it’s fun and engaging. We must make the most of this renewed interest in physical retail. People have returned to old behaviors, but they expect more. Omni-channel and immersive retail must continue to evolve to meet and go beyond our customers’ expectations.
Tell us about a marketing mistake you may have made and what you learned from it?
When we launched the movie Shrek in the UK, we used a third-party supplier, and they delivered I think it was 2 million units of Shrek DVDs with a voice chip in them that said: ‘Shrek and Donkey on another whirlwind adventure.’ Only it was in German. To this day, I now check my product quality extremely thoroughly.
I remember someone playing it down the phone to me and me thinking: ‘That is definitely not English!’ There have been many mistakes in the past, but you deal with them. You adapt and you learn. It is all part of the fun.
What myth about marketing would you most like to bust?
If you don’t spend on marketing, you won’t deliver your numbers. In times of economic uncertainty, the first thing that most companies do (and luckily, Samsung doesn’t work this way) is cut the marketing spend.
The minute you cut your marketing spend, you wonder why your sales are down. You’ve got to keep a consistent story. If you only rely on “fireworks moments” – big brand activations – ultimately, they all come to an end. As marketers, you’ve got to keep your message going. You can’t just rely on those moments to do all the work.
Sometimes, you have to educate other parts of the business about this. If you don’t maintain your marketing, data shows that you will have to spend as much money again rebuilding your brand identity to get back to where you were before you stopped.
ntity to get back to where you were before you stopped.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 offers Google’s circle to search function – where using your finger or S-pen to encircle an item automatically triggers a search.
What advice might you offer your younger self if you could go back in time?
Three things: first, I was a young female in very male-dominated industries – film and then technology. I learned that you need to back yourself. Stop worrying about what people think about you. We’ve all had imposter syndrome at some point. I have found that if you are doing your best work, and believe in what you’re doing, then you shouldn’t worry about what people think. Great work will always shine through.
The second thing is: you have to find humor in your work. Make a mistake once. Don’t do it again. But don’t kill yourself over it. Remind yourself that 90% of the work you do is brilliant. 10% you will inevitably get wrong. As long as you learn from it, that’s OK.
The final thing I would add is you that can’t do it alone. You need a team. Make sure that you lean into your team. Build diversity in that team. Diversity of thought is crucial in marketing. Our customers are diverse, and it is essential that your team are challenging you. When people first go into management, the first thing many do is to build a team of ‘mini yous’ and actually, that’s where they fail.
The best teams will challenge you as much as you challenge them and say: “That doesn’t make sense.” Without a diverse team of experts around you, you will be replicating your voice in an infinite echo chamber.
The Samsung Galaxy Ring helps improve your lifestyle by monitoring your health.
What question would you like me to ask the next senior marketer that I interview?
I would like you to ask them: as we start to rely on AI more and more, how are they planning to adapt?
Your question from a senior marketer is: what can senior marketers be doing to help support and create leaders of the future?
I think much is already being done here, but there’s a challenge around supporting people who are coming up and starting to manage teams and brands. How can we help them with more thought leadership?
How do we engineer and provide networking so that they find their own communities in that space? If we can create a safe place for people to challenge existing thought processes, and offer advice around top-line decisions – like choosing an advertising agency – that would be really helpful.
Providing the marketing stars of tomorrow with a support network of experienced marketers from different industries so the younger marketers can get different views, or support when they feel they have imposter syndrome.
Industry stalwarts can offer expertise that may help less experienced marketers make considerable shortcuts. If a senior marketer has done something brilliantly, why wouldn’t you learn from it, copy it and make further improvements? That’s how evolution happens.
If there’s one thing you know about marketing, it is:
Follow the data. A good marketer will look at data and then make educated decisions using the data as a foundation. They might choose to make risky decisions based on or even against the data, but if you haven’t got a data set to start from, you’ve no anchor.
You might die tomorrow so make it worth your while. Worth Your While is an independent creative agency helping brands do spectacular stuff people like to talk about. wyw.agency.
This interview has already appeared in The Drum. Discover the best campaigns, industry insights and interviews from world-leading marketers, creatives and more.
