Samsung CMO Allison Stransky on the AI ‘tipping point’ and its implications for marketers

At Samsung, Stransky leads brand marketing strategy, drives initiatives including the company’s vision for the connected home, and works to shape how people live, work and interact with technology.

In an interview with Modern Retail, she spoke about the innovations currently changing retail marketing, the brand challenges presented by Google Gemini and Perplexity AI, and the marketing power of Reddit. Her comments, below, have been lightly edited for clarity.

In April, Samsung Electronics reported 79.14 trillion won ($56 billion) in consolidated revenue for the first quarter of 2025 — an all-time quarterly high, according to the company. 

Compared to beauty marketing, what’s different about marketing tech products? 

“There are two big differences: One is the reason to believe and buy a product. Your beauty arsenal is an ecosystem, but everything essentially does one thing. But in tech, with your phone, for example: Is it a phone? A camera? Is it for logging onto the internet? Is it my AI device? Is it for summarizing all my meetings? Is it for paying all my bills? It’s my health app, it’s my home-connected device, … And so, it becomes an orchestration story of all the things you can tell, and you need to prioritize what you want to talk about to the consumer. It’s an exciting time right now: Data is enabling us to tell more of those stories at the same time and reach people more relevantly. It’s an exciting tipping point. Up until this point, you had to pick the most appropriate journey for the masses, which tended to mean focusing on the biggest features, rather than the niche ones that people like. And that’s just the phone. There’s the rest of [our] world, too. 

The second difference is in the access to products. We’re in a creator marketplace, but I have products that are really hard to get into creators’ hands. Beauty is on the other end of that spectrum: When you have a new lipstick, you get a couple hundred of them off the line, you send them to all the creators, and they create your content. For us, it’s more like: You send this one out, they write an article, and they get it back to us. Then you send it to someone else, … And, again, that’s with a phone. I can’t send them appliances, and they don’t want to come to us. Therein lies our challenge.”

Do you primarily work with tech influencers? 

“For us, there are two groups of influencers that are important. If I’m about to make a decision on a product, I need to hear from an expert. There are some really helpful influencers out there who are breaking down: ‘Here are the camera changes I made between this [image] and that one.’ ‘Let’s look at it during the day.’ ‘Let’s look at it at night.’ ‘Let’s look at it in this condition.’ They are really deep into tech and want to nerd out on all the changes that are happening — it’s a passion project for them. And those people are different from a Drex Lee, who is an artist and creates the most amazing videos using our cameras — that scratches a different itch. They’re all critical; we have to work with all of these partners, because there’s a consumer on the other side of all of them, too.”

Are you newly experiencing marketing success on any channel or platform? 

“Yes, Reddit. We’re doing paid [ads], as well as stoking communities with Reddit experts who are representing our products. It’s a different creator because they’re creating different content — they’re creating Reddit content, and they’re managing Reddit conversations. Reddit has been increasingly effective and important, and it has this spiraling benefit in that the LLMs seem to be picking up a lot of Reddit [content], as well. So, if you win on Reddit, you win on Reddit — but then you also influence Gemini and chat.”

Are there other tricks you’re using to influence Gemini? 

“There’s so much. SEO is constantly evolving, and we’re trying to keep up with how fast it has evolved — because you’re trying to now get picked up in the Gemini summary part of Google, and what drives that? It’s all behind closed doors. Nobody’s releasing their keys to winning on Perplexity — that’s not a thing. But there are a lot of partners out there who specialize in these things — they laugh that they’ve made a full-time job out of trying to stay on top of this, because it is a space that is changing on a daily basis. It actually gets me really excited, because when we think back to when we started buying ads on Meta and Amazon — it wasn’t even Meta yet, of course — those were really pivotal moments for marketers to lean in and try to figure out something new. And now we’re there again — in a search behavior change. So, we’re working with specialists and experts, and trying lots of things, and trying to see what new tools are out there. But beyond that, the tricky part becomes: How do you measure success? Today, if I search ‘best new TV,’ and I land on samsung.com, and I buy a TV, I’m like, ‘Yay, I got the attribution. I won. That was a great search and journey.’ But if I search ‘best new TV,’ and it comes up in the Gemini summary, and I make a decision off of that, and I go and buy it at Best Buy, I have no idea that that even happened. So, how do I get that attribution? How do I know what to do more of? It’s tricky.”

How are you tapping into the retail media opportunity? 

“Right now, we’re using it on-site and through our Best Buy network. Moving forward, we want to realize the power of matching data and to get bigger than our retail network. All the retail media networks are adding their layer of understanding of their consumers, and that different flavor. So now, we’re assessing the what and how — that’s something we’ve gotten more into in 2025. We built our first clean room this year, and we have a whole pipeline of clean rooms that will be coming out so that we can do better marketing with these retail partners. I think in 2026 and beyond is when we may get a bit more ‘expert.’”

When it comes to your AI journey, would you say you’re at the stage of making sense of the data you have?

“Yes, and we’re also looking to connect more data sources. We have a lot of data at Samsung. One of our great advantages is that we’ve been collecting first-party data for years and storing it properly, and it has been used very effectively for the purpose of reaching [consumers] more relevantly through our marketing — but we only know so much about you from what we have. So, now we’re opening it up to the next layer of the ecosystem. That includes looking at our SmartThings [connected home app]. We know what you have connected, which also includes non-Samsung products, and we can start to create a bigger picture of your [habits]. And from there, we’re going one step beyond — for example, connecting our customer care data. So, if you’ve been to a service center, what was your problem, and what was your experience? And we can start to have a much more appropriate and delicate conversation following that. … There are all these data sources across our total ecosystem, including our apps and our stores. Putting all of that together is where we believe we’ll get a more holistic story. Then you add third party — we still sell a vast majority through partners. What can we find out from that data? Then enter the AI tools to make sense of all of that. That’s the step on the journey we’re on.”

Now that you’re “reaching people more relevantly,” how are you personalizing the path to purchase?

“We’ve been on a journey to get from personalization to hyper-personalization. Last year, we created a handful of journeys around what we call personas: Are you a workout enthusiast? Are you a work-from-home boss? Are you a home chef? We have these dedicated journeys that we built through our ‘Your Home Speaks You’ campaign, and we’ve built a whole home hub on Samsung.com so you can explore one or all of the personas and see how to build that lifestyle. Using data signals, this was the first time we actually started driving different paths, where we could aggregate a whole product story around your interests. But now, we’re roadmapping how to get even more personal in the journey. Because I don’t just want to know what you do at your home — that you’re a workout enthusiast, for example. I also want to know that you like sports, and I want to know who your football team is, and I want to reach you relevantly with all of those points of information. We’re not there today, but we have a roadmap to be there in about a year or so, in terms of finding the data sources, finding the AI tools, and then, ultimately, hopefully, reaching people way more relevantly.”

And your focus is turning all Samsung customers into Samsung smart home customers? 

“We hope everybody sees our vision — that by creating this smart home, we’re making life easier, more automated and more personalized. And when we do all of those things, what we are giving you is ease, time back and the ability to focus on the things that matter more to you. The smart home is not a techie hub — it’s a personalized, predictive, private, holistic solution for improving your life.”

Can the potential be communicated through digital marketing?

“We always say that seeing is believing. So, on the other end of the spectrum, when it comes to the connected home, we have a partnership with Ashley Furniture where we are building vignettes that demonstrate an actual connected home in some of their stores. It’s in a pilot phase right now, but these vignettes show how you can create a better sleeping environment, for example. It features a Samsung TV, Philips Hue lighting, smart shades and an Ashley bedroom set, and seeing how all of that works together at the push of a button is really fun. Or, with the push of a button, you can turn dinner time into a fine dining scene. We’re obsessed with this project because everybody’s going more digital, and we’ve found an opportunity for IRL retail innovation. It’s important because, especially when you’re looking at an expensive product and a large product, nothing beats seeing the TV or the refrigerator before you buy it.”

What is your biggest challenge right now, in general?

“The biggest challenge is moving fast enough: Are we going to get ahead of SEO in an LLM world? Are we going to use our data well enough? The thing that keeps me up at night is the speed of all these things, and: Can we do more, faster? Because I think this is one of those moments, like when everybody started collecting first-party data. Some knew it was going to be important. Some collected it, and some didn’t. Some collected it, and didn’t know what to do with it. Samsung got it and knew this was coming. Now that we’ve got it, and because now’s the time to use it better, are we going to test things? Are we going to optimize? We’re a large company, so there’s a lot at stake when we’re the first to try some of these things. As a result, we’re focused on striking the right balance.”