Since 2014 we’ve supported Samsung on a range of B2C and B2B activity from launch product marketing and media fulfilment, channel and online retail performance marketing, retail staff engagement and app based training to brand team campaign concepting and partnership development.

Traditional education struggles to keep up with the pace of technological change, to prepare young people for the jobs of the future. In 2020, Samsung research showed 68% of young adults in the UK felt their education hadn’t given them the right tools for success and only 10% felt confident about their future career prospects - something exacerbated by COVID-19 and the nationwide lockdown.

At the heart of technological change and with a Global CSR commitment to empower the next generation of innovators through education, Samsung wanted to support 18–25-year-olds across the UK – their core Gen Z consumer base and potential future employees - with an experience to build back their confidence for a future driven by innovation, while delivering on the Samsung brand expression; ‘Do What You Can’t.’

In order to help as many people as possible, we needed to take a new approach. If school wasn’t preparing young people for the future, we had to give them the opposite: Not a School.

Where tech competitors focus on STEM skills, like coding, we committed to using technology and innovation to help students learn in a more relevant and human way. Not a School set out to upskill 18-25-year-olds across the UK with a free, alternative, digital education experience that focused on teaching through shared experience and “the four C’s”; timeless skills that pedagogical experts argue should be taught in schools - communication, critical-thinking, collaboration, and creativity.

 Through applying these skills to developing innovative solutions to the societal issues that Gen Z told us worried them most in research – from sustainability, inequality to digital wellbeing – we could co-create an educational experience they wanted to participate in. By recruiting unexpected educators, from businesses to influencers, we could develop learning content from experts they wanted to hear from.

Initial plans were developed for Not a School to launch as a face-to-face learning experience at Samsung’s flagship Kings Cross experience space. However lockdown meant we needed to quickly pivot and provide a wholly digital-first experience without losing the depth of face-to-face learning.​

We recruited online learning experts, FutureLearn, helping us optimise the course for a virtual setting and developed a platform providing live, interactive and pre-recorded teaching sessions from unconventional experts sharing learned experience. ​

We used the research with our target audience to develop four engaging course themes, each with a tech focus. ​

We brought together representatives from across Samsung UK, The British Red Cross and Internet Matters, along with figures from Friends of the Earth, Black Ballad and Shout Out UK. And recruited high profile influencers Jack Harries, Liv Little and Lady Leshurr, to share inspirational thinking on the topics.​

​The experience was supported by a successful paid and earned social and high-profile influencer campaign targeted to our audience across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and

Snapchat:​

• ​A nationwide social media recruitment campaign and CRM outreach to Samsung’s userbase invited Gen Z to apply for the immersive course​​
• A 60” launch film featuring British rapper Lady Leshurr, drove broad awareness of the Not a School self-led course, and multiple cut downs per platform plus a Snapchat Lens ensured broad reach and engagement​
• Subsequent course influencer social posts from Lady Leshurr, Liv Little (founder of Gal-dem) and Jack Harries (Climate activist and videographer) provocatively spoke to the topics of Not a School and drove continued participation in the course on Samsung.com and FutureLearn.​

​Samsung.com acted as the hub for all information on the course, and drove users to FutureLearn to sign up. ​

​Recruitment ran throughout August, to align with the UK school and university results period, with the launch in September 2020. ​