5 Questions for Jackie Pyo, LG Brand Manager

The call went out. People responded. The gallery is up. Editors are editing. It’s Life in a Day, and who’s behind it? Well, you are, most importantly. Along with Ridley Scott and Kevin McDonald, of course. But the project has also been a unique sponsorship opportunity for LG, and when you’re a large brand with a plethora of sponsorship options, you want to stand behind something that reaches out and grabs people.

The Life in a Day project is entirely based on capturing a single day on earth through the eyes of thousands of different people around the world. We sat down with LG’s Brand Manager, Jackie Pyo, to talk about why LG chose to partner with Life in a Day.

LG CMO Dermot J M Boden explains what LG and Life in a Day have in common and encouraged users to upload videos on July 24th

1) Life in a Day promises to be one of YouTube's largest global experiments. How did LG come to be involved in the project?

LG is always looking out for innovative projects and ground-breaking ideas that support our company vision that technology can make life better – that it can make life good. YouTube is a company that uses technology to help people learn more about each other, build better relationships with one and other and, in doing so, ultimately enrich our lives.

When we first heard about the Life in a Day project we knew immediately that this was going to be a chance to bring our company vision to life and deliver something special to millions of people around the world. What started as just the seed of an idea has grown into one of our most exciting partnerships to date. Because we were involved at the very beginning, we’ve been able to work collaboratively with YouTube to shape the direction of the project and help to make Life in a Day a fantastic success, while staying true to the core essence of the LG brand.

2) LG has done many other sponsorships in the past, from New Year's Eve 2008 fireworks in London to Formula 1 racing. Why did this particular partnership make sense, and how does Life in a Day differ from other sponsorships you've done?

Other sponsorships we’ve done in the past, and are doing today, all associate LG with phenomenal properties – properties people love – that help us connect with people on an intimate, emotional level. Life in a Day is no exception, but the difference between Life in a Day and our other marketing activities is that it has never been done before – the journey is new both for LG and for the people who join in. In this respect, it’s a completely new path for LG and we hope we can show people what we really stand for along the way.

3) Tell us a little about LG's values as a company and how you've maintained those through other marketing efforts.

Our brand has four core values: Humanity, Pleasure, Curiosity and an Optimistic Energy. So, whenever we do any marketing we always ask ourselves, “Is it truly representative of ‘Life’s Good’?” It’s our litmus test for everything we do.

4) From the Life in a Day Gallery launch, the LG page talks about how you hope to reach YouTube users on a personal level. What kind of user engagement are you hoping to achieve?

We wanted to present the Life in a Day Gallery because we were fascinated not only by the sheer volume of entries the project received, but the way the entries were tagged. Each of the 80,000 entries has its own story, and no one story is more or less important than the next. We worked with YouTube to create the Gallery to showcase all the entries in one place. These personal, emotional stories – the entries – are important to us. It’s what excited us most about the project. The Gallery brings the stories to the users, and the users to the stories. That’s the real emotional engagement – between the people in the films and the people watching the films. Our role, in facilitating this emotional engagement, provides LG with a great opportunity to engage with both the participants and the viewers on a personal level.

What really surprised us with the tagging is that so many videos were illustrating positive messages. Thousands of people wanted to tell the world about the good things in life. To celebrate this we created the Smile Gallery, but we also want to give these people the chance to create a video about their favorite “Life’s Good When…” moment in a LG promotion we’ll be running towards the end of October. By running our own promotion, people won’t just be learning more about our brand, but they’ll actually be relating the positive experiences of their lives to our brand expression of Life’s Good – this is a really interesting prospect for our brand and something we’re very excited about.

5) Anything else to note about the project?

Like any brand, LG has always looked at YouTube almost like a window – a window to an engaged audience. We shouldn’t forget that YouTube is still only 5 years old, and lots of brands tend to rush into new platforms without thinking about how they’re actually adding value. We didn’t want to do that, so we always looked on and just wanted to wait for the right opportunity; an opportunity that worked for LG, worked for YouTube, but most importantly an opportunity that in some way would improve the lives of the YouTube community. The YouTube community has already embraced it with open arms and we’re really excited to see how Kevin interprets all the footage.

Kate Rose, Communications Associate, recently watched "DominoStudios - Life in a Day"