Samsung is emperor of whole known world, claim

"This is my mistake. Let me make it good
I raised the wall and I will be the one to knock it down" - R.E.M.'s song "World Leader Pretend"

KOREAN GIANT Samsung makes good cameras, and after my great experience with the U-CA5 camera, I had some questions about the company's current and future offerings.

The company however surprised us when we visited the company's Digital Cameras web site at www.samsungcamera.com and we found a Flash based banner announcing the company's "victory in the digital camera war!". Not only that, taking lessons from Microsoft's quiet whispering Ballmer, Samsung humbly proclaims itself the "Leader of the Digital World" *cough*.

---

The War is Over. And Samsung won, it seems.
Since I wanted to contact their PR spokesperson, or any exec at Samsung's digicams division, I clicked on "Contact US" and found that drop-down options on the feedback form only included "after sales service" and "how to use this site" as message "categories", with sub options available for each topic. Slightly frustrated, I headed back to the home page and clicked on "Press Center". The Samsung Camera's press centre lists press releases as it's to be expected on a press page, but strangely, press releases do not include the company's spokesperson contact info, any PR agency or any contact e-mail or phone number for the press - as is the de-facto norm in press releases.

SamsungCamera.com's Press Centre map looks a bit... empty.
Winners of the War and Leaders of the World don't need no stinking press, it seems.
I can ignore the fact that some of the documents are poorly formatted, poorly translated, and the whole section appears to be visited very little - a counter on each press release shows the number of views, with for instance one press release dated 2003 showing apparently only 49 views at time of this writing. But I cannot ignore that this happened before and it hurts the company as whole. If there's something I learned in all these years is that companies come in two basic kinds: those that isolate their management from the outside world (very frequent in Asian cultures) and those that are wide open to bi-directional feedback between employees and management and the outside world. IBM, a company whose management I often disagree with, for instance, is famous for its public "Whois" search engine which allows anyone to find the e-mail address of anyone at the corporation, from rank-and-file managers, to DB2 sysadmins, to the company's VP's, as long as you know their full names.

SamsungCamera's press releases don't include the usual footer
with contact information, PR agency or e-mail info
Thinking I made I mistake, I clicked on "Sitemap" to see if their press center's contact information was buried elsewhere, perhaps on a "sub page"... but the "map view" of the site clearly showed that the Press Centre has nothing more than the press releases list I had seen already. Three years ago, back when I was just starting writing for the INQ, I tried contacting Samsung's hard disk division, and my experience was a nightmare as well. Only after a week of faxing busy numbers and mailing dozens of people I finally found the email addresses of three key managers at Samsung's SISA division (Samsung Information Systems America) who produces the company's hard disks and as a result of which I was able to arrange a review.

Some companies don't hide their execs

And make them easy to contact

Three years later of my horrible experience trying to find the names and e-mail addresses of SISA's managers and exesc, Samsung's Hard Disk division not only eliminated the pictures of their key execs from their "Management Team" web page, they have also shorted names to initials, so you have five "Lee"(s) in there with no clues as to their first names. And of course, like it was the case back in 2003, no e-mail links of a single person.

It's not only the lack of PR / press contact info.
Execs at other Samsung divisions are virtually hidden, too, with no direct contact info

I can only wonder if the empty "press center" map at Samsung Camera, along with the lack of any contact info on the division's press releases along with the subtle, humble references of it being the "Leaders of the Digital World" indicates a serious case of deliriousness or perhaps a sign of the "Napoleon complex" which according to the Wikipedia "may also include being overly aggressive or argumentative and a need to over-achieve, which all serve to give the person a sense of greater self worth."

Documentaries like The Corporation already showed us some of the darker sides of corporations, but Samsung's division web sites are apparently an example of one that doesn't seem to care too much about getting in contact with the press. "We won the war. We're the leaders, hence, we don't need to be bothered by journalists" seems to be the message. Since we don't want to get in trouble with the "Leader of the Digital World", this humble journalist will now go underground until it's clear that the Korea's new World Emperor won't declare War on US. µ

Speaking of War, and Samsung
Samsung 5MP digicam with MPEG4 video is a winner
Korea is insisting we do a press release
Koreans battle killer computer games
US threatens to eliminate independent war journalists
Don't mention the war
Intel absorbs Samsung's Eric Kim, counters chaebol threat
Samsung claims it owns DDR market