Samsung Searches for Good Samaritans to Carry Olympic Torch
Samsung is once again searching across the globe for mobile phone users to be Olympic torch bearers during the run-up to the 2008 summer games in Beijing.
The Samsung Mobile Phone Samaritan program solicits nominations to people in 56 countries who used a mobile phone to help someone in an emergency situation.
Nominations can be submitted in stories of 100 words or less to Samsung.com/TorchRelay through Sept. 12. Five people will be selected by a panel of judges to carry the torch through San Francisco next April during the only North American Olympic Torch Run on its worldwide tour to Beijing.
“It’s our chance to give back to people who’ve helped other people with mobile phones,” said Samsung spokesman Jose Cardona. “Having a chance to carry the Olympic torch is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”
The program also heightens Samsung’s brand identity as a good corporate citizens and Samsung’s status as a presenting sponsor of the summer Olympics, Cardona said.
Samsung first ran the program prior to the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, where 15 Samaritans and their guests won a trip to Florence to be torch bearers between there and Torino. The first Samaritan search drew 8,000 nominations, according to Cardona.
The stories ideally exemplify the immediacy of cell phone technology and the clear-minded compassion of the responder, like eight-year-old Mike Bishop, who called 911 when his father went into insulin shock on a hiking trip with his family. Mike helped carry the torch to Torino two years ago.
Samsung became an Olympic Torch Relay sponsor in the prelude to the 2004 summer games in Athens. Samsung has been an Olympics partner since 1997.
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