During Apple’s Let Loose event, the company ran an ad highlighting the power of its new M4 iPad Pro. However, social media users disliked Cupertino’s idea of using a hydraulic press to destroy art, instruments, and other iconic symbols to represent that all of those things can fit into the thinnest iPad Pro to date.
A few days later, the company said it was sorry about the ad, and it wouldn’t promote it on TV or other channels:
Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.
While I agree with BGR‘s Yoni Heisler that Apple shouldn’t have apologized for this ad, eventually, everybody moved on from the controversy and bought the new M4 iPad Pro. However, Samsung thought it would be a good idea to pick on Apple’s ad by showing how much it cares about creativity. “We would never crush creativity,” says the company on an X post, followed by a video.
In the commercial, a person enters an area similar to where Apple would have destroyed those iconic symbols, gets a crushed guitar, and starts playing a song. They use the new Galaxy Tab S9 series to see the chords, and the commercial ends with a “Creativity cannot be crushed” slogan.
Unfortunately, Samsung swung and missed, as it often does when it tries to fire shots at Apple. People on social media immediately started to complain about the company’s ad: “So then how did that guitar get that way? You just found it like that?” a user asked. Opera GX’s official account questioned, “So you destroyed a guitar to make this ad?”
While Samsung didn’t remove the commercial, it has hidden several replies from X users complaining about this uncreative ad. The South Korean company could have promoted the Galaxy Tab S9 very differently, but it decided to try to be funny. As is often the case, the company’s ad suffered similar backlash to Apple’s.
Samsung is famous for creating commercials mocking Apple, such as that iconic commercial after the iPhone X reveal showing Apple users with the same “notch” haircut. However, most of the time, these ads backfire. The best examples are when Samsung ads mock new Apple features that Samsung eventually copies.
At the end of the day, people are still buying the new M4 iPad Pro, but can we say the same about the new Galaxy Tab S9?
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