Samsung Mocks Apple’s Failed Ad with Hilarious Counter-Spot

Opportunity makes the thief, they say. In this matter, Samsung has shown itself to be very clever: the South Korean consumer electronics giant saw the very violent backlash that Apple took with its advertising celebrating the new iPad Pro. She therefore seized the opportunity and quickly produced a counter-advertisement to make fun of her American rival.

A little context: at the beginning of May, Apple released a promotional clip where we see a huge hydraulic press crushing a host of instruments and objects linked to culture and art, all with large colorful splashes. Everything is crushed. Then the press rises and reveals the famous iPad Pro instead.

But the message was poorly received: on social networks, there were many unfavorable reactions – particularly from artists, creatives or craftsmen who welcomed the video as the symbolic destruction of their work tools. Internet users have even reassembled the video in reverse, to suggest the opposite: the reconstruction of what was broken.

It is therefore in this niche that Samsung entered with an advertisement on X (formerly Twitter) accompanied by the comment “ We will never crush creativity » and the keyword #Uncrush. The video features a woman moving among rubble (that caused by the Apple ad), picking up a guitar in poor condition and standing in front of a sheet of music, before starting to play.

The decor is inspired by Apple advertising, as if the protagonist had just gone there with the destruction of the items – we can sense the presence of the hydraulic press in the background. We also feel a certain connection with The Last of Us 2with a very similar aesthetic — a girl arriving in a devastated place and playing a poorly tuned guitar.

Of course, all this is not done for free: Samsung is taking advantage of the opportunity to promote your own tablet, the Galaxy Tab S9 – marketing and economic issues oblige. Moreover, this is not the South Korean company's first attempt: other mockery was observed over the last fifteen years.

The misstep with AI?

If Apple has since apologized for its advertising, admitting its error, it is not impossible that Samsung will receive its own backlash in the process. If the Asian company has been very reactive in paying for its rival, its reference to artificial intelligence (“With Galaxy AI”) could also be poorly received…

The arrival of artificial intelligence, particularly generative, is not viewed favorably by some artists, in fact. Both because these systems are trained on works protected by copyright, and also because these new tools pushed by tech giants are seen as a threat to the employment of creative people.

Samsung was smart to react quickly and denounce an advertisement suggesting that creativity is being killed. But he may have made a misstep with the emphasis on AI.