03/22/2026
What does it look like when a global brand shows up in a creator's world without overshadowing it?
That question was at the center of a fireside chat at last week's Asia x Austin Summit, a SXSW official event at the Long Center. Red Fan's Kathleen Lucente moderated a conversation with Allison Robl Stransky, CMO of Samsung Electronics America, and the stories she shared were worth sitting with.
Nearly 3,800 Olympic athletes were equipped with Galaxy phones to tell their own stories from the Village to the podium. High school students used AI to build oral cancer screening apps. Audrey Nuna, the Korean-American singer-rapper now known worldwide for her role in KPop Demon Hunters, built an entire Samsung campaign around her personality and her heritage, and it resonated because it was real.
In every case, the technology stepped back. The humans were the story.
Allison doesn't measure success in KPIs. She measures it in the moment someone sees themselves in a story and shares it. That's a standard worth borrowing, whether you're running a global brand or building one.
Thank you to Helen Haman, Mark Duval, and the Greater Austin Asian Chamber of Commerce for including Kathleen in this year's program.
