Big Think Interview With David Steel | Big Think

Big Think Interview With David Steel

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A conversation with the Senior Vice President of Strategic Marketing for Samsung in North America.

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David Steel:

David Steel is the Senior Vice President of Strategic Marketing for Samsung Electronics in North America. He previously spent 10 years working with Samsung in Korea, having joined the company's Korea’s Global Strategy Group to work on projects for some of Samsung's subsidiaries and advanced to Vice President and head of marketing for the Digital Media Business division. In 2007 he joined the Mobile Communications division as head of marketing strategy.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: What is your job description?

David Steel: Yes. I'm responsible for Samsung's corporate marketing efforts in North America covering the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and then looking at all of their corporate marketing activities across all of their product lines.

Question: How did you rise to your current position?

David Steel: Sure. It probably sounds a lot more logical and a lot more rational looking back on things, but I grew up in England, went to school there and actually studied physics in college. I came to the States to get my PhD in physics, worked for three years doing federal government R&D, and then decided I was ready for a change. So, I went back to business school and then Samsung hired me. I moved to Korea where I spent the last ten years heading up marketing for consumer electronics globally and then just came to the U.S. about a year ago. So, it's been a strange mixture of some science and some business and lots of cultural issues mixed in, but it's been a great time.

Question: Based on your experience, what would you advise young people entering today’s business world?

David Steel: So, I think there's no substitute for real fundamentals. When I was taking physics, people used to question whether a science or a math would be useful for business or useful for a career outside science or math. Actually, it turns out to be very useful. Those sort of fundamental number skills and **** skills, problem solving, they are really important. So, first thing would say is go for a fundamental education. If it's science or if it's math, that will really help you later.

Probably the second thing would be, look for international opportunities. Business is becoming so global in nature that language skills and cross-cultural skills are becoming far more important. So, I would say, look for opportunities to work in different countries, to learn different languages, to understand how business is done in different countries. That would be important too.

Question: What key trends will drive the consumer electronics landscape in the year ahead?

David Steel: Consumer electronics has been an amazing growth industry for the last few years. We've seen this tremendous explosion in terms of digital TV's in people's homes and mobile devices. And now people with two or three cell phones and other types of mobile devices. We're seeing netbooks and so on.

So, there's been this big growth of devices out there and that's obviously been a big part of Samsung's rise, but now what we see is more of a transformation to consumer experience. So, it's less and less about the hardware itself. It's more about the emotional connection with it. It's about the experience of using the product so your user experience, URIUX that's becoming more important. The interface is much more significant than in the past. Design is a more important element, the look and feel, touch of products.

My favorite example is the TV. It used to be a big box you would hide away in the corner of the room. Now, it's something sleek, almost like a picture, you want to hang up on the wall. So, we're seeing that, we're seeing more applications coming, content and services delivered through devices. A cell phone started out being about just talking to people; now it's much more about the content and services that you can get through that device. So, that's really where we're going to see in 2010, I think, a big evolution which is now that all these devices are out there, we're going to see much more about the service and the experience that's delivered. Design will be more important, using more interface will be more important, and all the kind of content you can get through these various devices.

Question: How do you discover what customers want in order to strengthen their emotional connection with your product?

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