Samsung Bites Apple with Latest Ads

On November 22nd, Samsung released a commercial, advertising the new Galaxy SII – the phone many Android fans believe will be the big “iPhone killer”. The ad aimed to attack both the specs of the Apple devices as well as the iPhone culture in general.

I’ll admit, the ad had a fair amount of entertainment value to it. The manner in which they portrayed the die-hard Apple fans, waiting endless hours for the latest device, was humorous. That being said, this commercial had some serious flaws, that I could certainly see as a deterrent to those they are trying so hard to market to.

Clearly their overall goal was to try and cut Apple down to size, and take a shot at anyone who’s ever waited in line for an Apple device. I find this to be a very peculiar strategy owing to the fact that they are actually insulting their potential customers. Another flaw in this “bite out of the Apple” attitude is they do very little advertising of their own product. They’re so focused on telling you why you shouldn’t get an iPhone, that they give you little reason as to what’s so great about their own.

Now, I’m a little weary about the features they did cover in the commercial. The two main ones seemed to be the larger screen, and the “4G speeds”. Regarding the larger screen, I think this was a poor choice to feature. A lot of people aren’t going to be happy when they realize the screen on their phone is so big, they cannot physically reach all areas of the screen with their thumb. To me, boasting a poor UX choice as a feature is a dangerous move, and could backfire very easily. The 4G is probably one of the top features Samsung can push as a marketing ploy right now, because it just sounds impressive. I’ve seen & heard reports of people still managing to load web pages faster on a 4s, but they could be isolated occurrences, tampered tests, etc, so I won’t go too deep into that. I’m sure Samsung will milk that buzzword for all it’s worth.

Overall, I feel mocking the idea of people waiting in line for a different device wasn’t the best way to go about winning customers over. I’m more than sure Samsung would be positively thrilled to have the type of fan-base Apple does. Mocking something you wish you had comes off as an action of bitterness, and I don’t think that’s the direction Samsung should be taking to sell their new products. I think Samsung has a great product on their hands that will appeal to a large audience, and they just need to start explaining why. Then again, this video was certainly a step up from the usual, which made it seem like you had to be a robot from the year 2550 to use their devices.