Communicator spotlight: Samsung's Allison Stransky
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Samsung CMO Allison Stransky. Photo: Courtesy of Samsung
As chief marketing officer of Samsung Electronics America, Allison Stransky oversees the company's corporate marketing team and is responsible for the Samsung brand.
Why it matters: Samsung is trying to position itself as the companion to AI living through its electronics and home products, and Stransky's team is responsible for sharing that narrative with a skeptical consumer base.
What she's saying: "We have the privilege of being in this place of we're bringing it to the consumers on all of our devices," Stransky told Axios. "You need a device for AI to run on, and that is your phone, your computer, your television, everything has AI in it, which is amazing."
- "And then we are marketers, so we get to bring that story to the consumer, but then we're also at the forefront of doing our best to be those early adopters and see how we are getting benefits from our work."
State of play: Stransky oversees the team responsible for U.S. corporate marketing and communications, Big Data, AI-led transformation, sustainability, and citizenship across the brand.
Catch up quick: Before joining Samsung, Stransky served as head of strategy and operations for Google's global creative services teams.
- She also spent close to a decade at L'Oreal and started her marketing career in the consumer packaged goods spaces at Unilever and Johnson & Johnson.
- "Data has become the throughput for my career, because you can bring that traditional marketing from Unilever, to rich storytelling from L'Oreal, to data from Google, and bring it all together in a way that allows data-driven marketing to drive better consumer connection and ultimately build brand love," she says.
Between the lines: Purpose-driven marketing has taken a back seat in recent years, but Stransky says it's still an important part of the Samsung brand.
- "We spend a lot of time thinking about purpose, and I would love to see it come back from everybody," she says. "One of the things that I believe to be true is that younger consumers — Gen Z and soon Gen Alpha — care more about brand purpose than every generation before them, and there's so much more tuned into it. So I think purpose is going to continue to be relevant, if not become more relevant," she says.
- Zoom in: "Solve for Tomorrow" — an open competition in which students use STEM skills to tackle real-world community challenges — is Samsung's purpose-driven initiative.
- Most recently, entrepreneurs Mark Cuban and Emma Grede signed on as "Solve for Tomorrow" partners.
What she's watching: How AI is changing the media landscape and what that means for paid media spend, SEO and discoverability.
💡 Her personal mantra is a nod to Tom Hanks' character in "A League of Their Own": "If it was easy, anyone would do it. It's the hard that makes it great."
- "Things have never been easy in marketing. They're not easy now — and here comes AI."
