Samsung Turns Paris 2024 Into a Photography Exhibition

Why Samsung and BBH Bet on Photographic Legacy to Win Paris 2024

Samsung chose France's most celebrated photographic voice to anchor its Olympic campaign. The strategic logic is precise: by engaging the Depardon family — Raymond for historical gravitas and Simon for contemporary relevance — Samsung connects the Galaxy S24's imaging credentials to a lineage of serious French photography rather than generic sports marketing, positioning the device as a tool worthy of professionals and enthusiasts alike.

The decision reflects a broader competitive reality in the global smartphone market. According to ABI Research, global smartphone shipments in 2024 reached approximately 1.24 billion units, rising roughly six percent year-over-year. Samsung shipped approximately 223 million units in 2024, representing an eighteen percent global market share, according to ABI Research — placing it marginally behind Apple, which held an eighteen-point-seven percent share with approximately 232 million units shipped in the same period, per ABI Research. In the French market, where premium device ownership and cultural brand association carry particular weight, the Depardon commission signals that Samsung's integrated campaign is designed to compete on creative authority, not specification sheets alone.

Xiaomi, meanwhile, captured a growing share of the global market with strong year-over-year growth according to ABI Research, intensifying pressure on Samsung to defend its position through brand differentiation rather than price competition. The Paris 2024 context offered a rare, time-bounded platform to do exactly that. As a Worldwide Olympic and Paralympic Partner, Samsung held category exclusivity that rivals including Xiaomi and Apple could not access, giving the 'Olympic Games Instants Shared' campaign a structural advantage in France and across international markets during the games window. The multi-agency model — incorporating BBH, Starcom, Marcel, and UEG, according to news.samsung.com — reflects the scale of ambition behind this integrated campaign.

Raymond and Simon Depardon Bring Craft and Continuity to Samsung's Galaxy S24 Campaign

Simon Depardon directed the contemporary photographic work at the heart of 'Olympic Games Instants Shared', according to news.samsung.com, shooting new portraits of Team Samsung Galaxy athletes across Paris locations that echo his father Raymond Depardon's earlier Olympic documentation. The creative structure — intergenerational, French, rooted in documentary tradition — is itself a statement about how Samsung wants the Galaxy S24's camera system to be perceived.

Raymond Depardon's archival imagery provides the campaign's historical depth. His reputation within French and international photography is unambiguous: a member of the Magnum Photos collective and winner of multiple international recognitions, his involvement lends the work a cultural legitimacy that advertising alone cannot manufacture. Placing his archive alongside Simon's new commissions at physical installations on Paris landmarks creates a dialogue between Olympic memory and Olympic present, with the Galaxy S24 positioned implicitly as the device that makes such image-making possible for everyday users.

The integrated campaign spans a public outdoor exhibition running from June 24 to September 8, 2024 — a period bookending the Paris 2024 Olympic Games — alongside a video asset published on June 28, 2024, according to the campaign record. The video presents the Depardon photographs in sequence, set against the Parisian backdrop that doubles as the campaign's physical installation space. A QR code embedded within the outdoor installations directed audiences online, according to lbbonline.com, creating a channel between the physical and digital dimensions of the campaign. BBH's creative framework for this integrated campaign uses the city of Paris as its primary medium, treating iconic landmarks not as backdrops but as exhibition walls — an approach that amplifies the work's visibility during the highest-footfall period France has experienced in years. Production credits beyond the Depardon photographers are not fully documented in publicly available sources.

Measuring the Impact of Samsung's Olympic Games Instants Shared Campaign in France

The associated campaign video accumulated over 1.02 million views according to the campaign record, a figure that reflects meaningful organic reach for a brand film released in advance of the Paris 2024 opening. The video registered 599 likes and 48 comments at time of record, according to the same source, suggesting a broadly appreciative but not heavily interactive response — consistent with the campaign's positioning as a premium cultural statement rather than a call-to-action-driven activation.

No verified campaign-specific sales lift data or independent effectiveness metrics for 'Olympic Games Instants Shared' are publicly available. No awards for this campaign were identified across Cannes Lions, Effies, The One Show, D&AD, Clio Awards, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards at time of publication. Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness rests on three reinforcing pillars: the cultural authority of the Depardon name within France, the category exclusivity Samsung holds as a Worldwide Olympic and Paralympic Partner, and the physical scale of the Paris landmark installations during a period of extraordinary international footfall in the French capital. These factors combine to create brand impressions that are difficult to replicate through paid media alone. The Clapboard Score for 'Olympic Games Instants Shared' is 66 out of 100, reflecting a campaign with strong creative rationale and cultural alignment, offset by limited publicly documented performance data and a relatively contained media footprint for a partnership of this scale.