Samsung and Millie Bobby Brown partner on the TikTok #HandsFreeChallenge

Client work
Nick Carolan

It’s 10:00 am. Do you know where your phone is? Chances are, it’s permanently affixed to your palm, or it’s within close reach – likely no more than a respectable 1.5m distance. 

To say that our phones feel more vital than ever requires no great feat of imagination, especially given the nature of These Unprecedented Times. They’ve become a lifeline to the world outside our walls in more ways than we once thought capable. And yet, they also feel more fraught than ever, given the intense glare of our improved standards of hygiene for anything handheld.

It was from this cultural insight that the concept for a new challenge was born at the request of our client, Samsung Global. The idea? To harness the power of Samsung’s global influencer network, united under the moniker #TeamGalaxy, to participate in the #handsfreechallenge that asks that you find a way to do something you love at home without the use of your hands. 

We kicked off our activity with one of our global hero influencers, the actor, activist, producer and teenage entrepreneur, Millie Bobby Brown. During this period of social isolation, Millie has been a vocal advocate for staying indoors and spreading love and positivity through performing selfless gestures. She has also been busy on TikTok, where she completes dance and lip-sync challenges, and on Instagram, where she has taken to documenting her considerable talent as a quarantined pastry chef on her Stories.

In a confluence of her two lockdown passions, we were able to devise a scenario in which Millie attempted to recreate one of her favourite recipes for chocolate chip cookies, all without the use of her hands, while filming her activity on the Galaxy Z Flip and using the AI voice commands assistant, Bixby, to help source her recipe and enlist additional help as required.

Millie’s TikTok has so far generated almost 9 million views, 2 million likes, close to 39,000 responses and over 15,000 shares.

The results speak for themselves, even if the cookies don’t.



@milliebobbybrown


No chocolate biscuits were harmed in the making of this ##handsfreechallenge. Your turn now, ##TeamGalaxy @samsung ##SamsungPartner ##staywell


♬ original sound – milliebobbybrown