Samsung may have been ordered to pay Apple $290 million in patent infringement damages, but one thing the tech company hasn’t managed to steal is Apple’s knack for good advertizing.
In a holiday season in which Apple has released its effective and genuinely tear-jerking “Misunderstood” iPhone ad, the best Samsung can manage is a Galaxy Gear smart watch commercial that would have looked cheesy in 1982 — which is where we presume the creative team behind this campaign must have been summoned from.
We could explain the ad to you in detail, but you’re far better off watching it yourself for the full stomach-curdling effect.
Needless to say, when your best moments are the line “Hey, pretty lady. It’s me: Jack” followed by a snowboarding montage you’re pretty much in no man’s land. Which is presumably what Samsung realized — since both ratings and comments have been disabled on the official YouTube version of the commercial.
The ad has been roundly slated elsewhere though — with multiple sources referring to this as either the worst ad of the holidays, or of 2013 as a whole.
Kind of makes you look back on Apple’s advertizing missteps with fondness, doesn’t it?
Certainly Apple has to be learning all kinds of lessons from Samsung’s Galaxy Gear tribulations for the (rumored) release of its own eventual smart watch.
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
