As someone pointed out in response to the Galaxy Nexus commercial – that was made by Google, which is why it was excellent. Now we get one for the Galaxy S II made by Samsung … and it is NOT.
Back in the 80’s Apple produced two infamous commercials – 1984 and Lemmings. They are well known by name more than 25 years later for very different reasons: 1984 showed a single person striking out against tyranny to choose her own path and give others the opportunity to make their own choices as well.
Lemmings was infamous for … well, calling PC users a bunch of mindless idiots.
Which is pretty much what the new Samsung ad does.
Take a look:
What many are saying in reply is that it is no worse than the ‘I’m a Mac / I’m a PC’ commercials from Apple. The issue, however, is one of focus – the John Hodgemen / Justin Long commercials were comparing two DEVICES and features about products.
The Samsung commercial is all about the users – iPhone users are standing around in line while the Samsung people are all DOING stuff. This says iPhone users are posers. The early part of the commercial has people getting basic information about the device even after standing in line for 9 hours, which is delivered in a sneering, condescending manner – the commercial is saying that Apple customers are such moronic sheep they have no idea what they are buying, but will stand for hours to buy it.
The ultimate problem is that while there are a couple of shots of actual devices, the focus is clearly on sending a clear message about iPhone users – saying that the #1 smartphone in the world only got that way because the people who buy it are idiots who are Lemmings.