Objective

Samsonite Group (“Samsonite”) has a sprawling presence in APAC & Middle East—they design, manufacture, and retail a portfolio of travel lifestyle brands across 13+ markets.

Post-pandemic, Samsonite was set for a period of recovery and transformation. With this growth imperative, a central question arose: how do we rejuvenate the workforce and create an attractive employer brand?

Digging deeper, we found that Samsonite had a decentralized approach and fractured corporate identity across the region. Having 13 separate local market LinkedIn pages meant:

1. Ambiguity between the brand and the company:

• Samsonite is oft regarded as a single brand; but Samsonite Group comprises other leading travel lifestyle brands such as TUMI, American Tourister, Gregory, High Sierra. Share of voice across each brand was not sufficiently represented within our LinkedIn corporate communications ecosystem.

2. Siloed local operations:

• The decentralized structure meant a lack of synergy across inter-market activities and little sense of belonging to a global company.

3. Ineffective use of LinkedIn:

• Local markets duplicated strategies from consumer-centric platforms like Facebook and Instagram, prioritizing product-focused content over engaging brand storytelling, leading to poor resonance.

With this in mind, we needed to create a space where all stakeholders could feel a stronger sense of community, company pride, and inspiration—a “tribe” where they belonged.

Our goal was to transform LinkedIn into an engagement hub that could galvanize our Samsonite tribe towards an optimistic way forward while showcasing what Samsonite embodies: industry-leading innovation, amazing people & culture, and commitment as a responsible company.

Strategy

Samsonite worked with Burson to devise a strategic approach:

1. Unifying the tribe:

• Designing a cohesive regional LinkedIn consolidation process that better represents our 13+ local markets and Group brands, and reinforces a consistent perception of Samsonite’s design-led thinking, innovation, and vision.

2. Mining tribe stories: 

• Pivoting from consumer-focused marketing to corporate brand building and people-centric storytelling; developing a refreshed identity and robust content strategy celebrating life at Samsonite.

3. Creating tribe advocates:

• Broadening our engagement with regional employees, partners, and talent to co-create content with us; fostering a greater sense of ownership and belonging.

Execution

1. LinkedIn Landscape Audit

We audited Samsonite’s pages alongside competitors with “Group” structures, uncovering insights to inform our optimal page structure and content design. This revealed the need for diversified content topics, high-quality media, and human-centric content to maximize resonance.

2. Seamless Transition and Stakeholder Management

We merged 13 local pages into one Samsonite APAC & Middle East LinkedIn page, aligning teams with operational best practices via a guidebook. We ensured smooth communication and promptly addressed markets’ concerns with a stakeholder management matrix.

3. Reinforcing Industry Leadership through a Holistic Content Strategy

Grounded on three pillars:

• A Tribe of Trailblazers: Highlights Samsonite's industry leadership and innovations.
• A Tribe That Cares: Showcases social impact and community focus.
• Tribe Spotlight: Celebrates employee stories and Samsonite’s growth and family-oriented culture.

4. Humanizing the Brand and Building Advocacy

We gave our tribe an accessible platform to co-create content—tapping into their love for sharing personal stories and getting executive-level buy-in to lead by example.

• The ‘People of Samsonite’ series

Launched in August 2023, this features insightful interviews with senior leaders. The positive reception has encouraged more junior and mid-level employees to get involved, enriching our page with diverse voices.

• Samsonite Mentorship Program series

Launched in April 2024, this features mentor-mentee pairs who passionately advocate for our talent development initiatives.

Each month, we also run continuous test-and-learn optimizations to improve content resonance, lower barriers to co-creation, and facilitate more active sharing among our tribe.

5. Proactive Two-Way Engagement

Through our daily monitoring, we actively listen and respond to what our tribe is saying in a highly personal way - whether it's sending a Reaction to celebrate a new joiner or work anniversary, or leaving congratulatory comments on an employee post sharing a successful local initiative.

6. Leverage Trending Conversations

Using social listening, we identify key conversation moments to spotlight employee-driven initiatives and inclusive culture in our tribe. For example, on International Women’s Day, we showcased multi-market celebrations honoring the contributions of women at Samsonite. Recently, we tapped into the post-marathon hype in Singapore to feature our local running community—a ground-up initiative fostering inclusion and wellbeing.

7. Keeping a Pulse on LinkedIn Features

Regularly maximize usage of the “Featured” content section and “Pin to top” or “Notify employees” features to highlight our employee advocates, culture initiatives, strategic announcements like financial results and partnerships, or industry initiatives. This reassures employees that they can get timely updates by following our page.

Results

From March 2023 to November 2024, we enhanced regional collaboration and unity without any amplification budget.

1. Tactical—Increased our tribe’s awareness of Samsonite’s regional LinkedIn presence

a. +33.5% increase in followers (from 16,088).

b. Achieved 504,681 impressions, 122,373 engagements and 89,566 clicks.

c. Average 24.25% monthly engagement rate, exceeding industry benchmarks (7%).

2. Behavioral—Inspired proactive tribe participation and advocacy

a. +200% increase in local contributions (from 1 to 3 posts/month).

b. +500% increase in employee-fronted posts (from bi-monthly to 3 posts/month).

c. +200% increase in reposts within a year of strategy implementation.

d. Increase in employee page tags, averaging 3 tags/month.

e. 39% of leadership members contributing content, actively commenting, and sharing.
 

3. Beyond APAC—Extended influence beyond intended objectives

a. Page is now a key source of APAC content for the Global Employee Experience team’s quarterly newsletters.
 

4. Perceptual—Increased appreciation based on testimonials

"We have a fantastic platform to showcase our brand portfolio and the people behind them—shining the spotlight on our local teams’ innovation and creativity through our American Tourister stories."
Nikhil Gupte | Senior Director, Head of Brands, American Tourister, Samsonite Asia

"I’m honoured to have been a part of the ‘People of Samsonite’ feature. It’s a great conversation starter with my regional colleagues, and brings us closer as a family!"
Colin Chui | Senior General Counsel, Samsonite Asia

"Thanks for showcasing our unique Thailand campaigns to the world. We appreciate this consistent regional-local collaboration!"
Maneerat Chongvisal | Communications & Digital Marketing Assistant Manager, Samsonite Thailand

Media