Samsung Mobile USA aired a 90-second TV commercial during the Super Bowl yesterday. The air buy itself reportedly cost US$10.5 million. The cost of the ad itself, directed by one half of the Farrelly brothers, Bobby Farrelly, is unknown.
The ad, featuring the British glam rock band The Darkness, advertised Samsung’s Galaxy Note, a mobile device with a 5.3-inch display and a 1990s-era stylus that retails for $300 with a two-year AT&T Mobility contract.
MacDailyNews Take: Cute ad, Samsung, but your desperation is showing. Bill Gates is on line 2, he wants his stylus back.
Who wants a stylus? You have to get ‘em and put ‘em away, and you lose ‘em. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus. So let’s not use a stylus. We’re going to use the best pointing device in the world. We’re going to use a pointing device that we’re all born with — born with ten of them. We’re going to use our fingers. We’re going to touch this with our fingers. – Steve Jobs, January 9, 2007
If you think a $300 oversized pretend iPhone with a fscking stylus is really going to cause one person to leave the iPhone 5 line, you must think that it’s fine and dandy to slavishly copy other companies’ products by stealing their patented IP, that it’s smart to permanently alienate a company’s millions of customers while advertising a device that would not even exist without said company, that it’s okay to commit rampant trade dress infringement with virtually every piece of plastic crap that you churn out, and that it’s perfectly acceptable to have to sew oversized pockets on all of your clothes in order to house a stupidly gigantic stylus-holder that does nothing but further fragment and bastardize a platform that’s already fragmented and bastardized beyond repair.
As the ad rolled live, a mobile developer in the room muttered, “More bullshit to ignore.”
As we wrote when this ad campaign first appeared, “What this ad screams to us is that Samsung is concerned with keeping the sheep they have in the pen. “Don’t wander!” That’s all this particular ad is about. Siri’s siren call has created some very restless sheep and that obviously has Samsung spooked.”
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That was really cheesy!
Beyond cheesy, SD was dissing the intelligence of iPhone owners. This is a sign of a very desperate company using desperate tactics to avoid being desperately irrelevant.
You know, when the ad first started rolling with those lines, I thought they were people lined up at bus stops in different cities. No interest. I got up to visit the john and had no idea what it was about until later when one of the folks watching explained it to me.
Unsurprisingly, it won’t play on a iPad. Thank goodness.
A pen? A freaking pen?? Bill Gates must secretly love it.
History repeats itself. Everything old is new again.
My first thought was that Samsung will make a killing on replacement pens.
A stylus may have advantages in terms of actually writing, which you can’t really do with your finger (at a normal size anyway), yet all they use it for is circling a map and scribbling on a picture!
I have a stylus for my iDevices, and multiTouch, and Retina display, and iOS, and . . . NOT any Samesung crap, and NOT any fake retro glam band tendencies.
Exactly. Jobs was wrong about the stylus.
Using your finger for all pointing on a tablet is like doing calligraphy with a fat crayon.
For the iPad, I agree. For iPhone, no way. No need.
The problem with a stylus is that it shouldn’t be a *requirement* — having one as an option isn’t a bad deal. I just got a Jot pen for my iPad and it’s great for drawing and handwriting.
Jobs was right to not include one. If he had, third party developers would have written their apps to depend on it and that would have been terrible.
I still use a stylus on my Palm Tungsten T-3!
Stylus = Your father’s father’s Oldsmobile. Oh yeah, gonna hop right on that trend. It’s so great the first time you lose your stylus as I remember from my Palm Pilot daze some 20-25 years ago. Waitaminute, that sucked!!!!
Use a stylus and your screen stays nice and clean. Like I posted above- using a finger for everything is like doing calligraphy with a fat crayon.
You could try washing the cheetos dust off those fat fingers of yours.
+1
Work in medicine- clean is important & I don’t like cheetos.
+1
If a stylus doesn’t have software to make it more efficient at data entry than a keyboard, then it just isn’t a solution. All the Super Bowl ads were a bit meh.
They could’ve given me 10.3 million dollars instead.
That was a horrible commercial.
Apple is no saint. They are guilty of stealing technology from Motorola. It’s that simple.
Did you get lost?
I admire the chutzpah though :-/
Come back when you know what you’re talking about. FRAND patents are pledged to an industry standard and are available for use by anyone for a nominal fee. Motorola violated the terms of the standard and of FRAND patents when it tried to hold up Apple for a 2.2% royalty. That’s just plain stupid and a probable violation of anti-trust laws.
As far as stealing, name me one smart phone that you can distinguish from an iPhone at 10 feet. All the other manufacturers have shamelessly and illegally copied Apple’s look and touch control system, which are not FRAND patents. Those are private patents that Apple owns. But you go right ahead and defend blatant thievery.
You’re the simple one, for being incapable of understanding why there’s an issue between Apple and Motorola. Trying to force one company to pay more for licence rights to industry critical patents than others already pay is utterly immoral, and Moto need to be slapped about and brought into line.
Yeah, people who leave Apple for Samsung are idiots who think some 70s hair band bozo is a musician. Talk about sheep. People who would leave iOS for Android is the ultimate expression of sophistry.
Not a 70’s hair band, that is Justin Hawkins from The Darkness, a glam metal band from England. They’ve been around about 10 years. They are awesome.
I dont blame them for taking the money for the ad. The product will still suck.
I’m afraid The Darkness are a pathetic joke that had worn thin before the first album came out, a third-rate Spinal Tap that should remain dead and buried. As someone who saw his first live band 41 years ago, and numbers Pink Floyd, (Wish You Were Here tour), Led Zeppelin, (Physical Graffiti tour), Deep Purple, ZZ Top, Steely Dan, among many, many other bands seen over the years, I have a pretty good idea what makes an awesome band, and The Darkness fail on so many levels.
Doors, San Diego,Ca, 1968! The Chambers Brothers opened and out did the Doors.
Y’all should’ve come to Woodstock. It was awesome…
Awesomeness in Norfolk, UK is a very rare thing. Just some bright local lads who rode limited talent via pre-packaged hype to minor glam-rock riches. Good luck to them.
Now seeing Led Zeppelin at Leeds uni in ’71, now that was awesome.
Glad I am not the only one in the know!
A Stylus? Ur kidding right?
Why would I need a stylus to circle something on a map?
What a stupid ad made by desperate clueless and tasteless morons.
Why would I need a tablet to draw a circle on a map?
Your trolls are becoming so pathetic that we are cringing in embarrassment for you.
Not being a Fanboi makes me a troll?
Hate to tell you, but Apple isn’t always right and has been known to eff up. The last Snow Leopard update FUBARed the Rosetta functionality of Mac OS and Safari is an eternal beta and has been unstable in recent versions.
Maybe you think we should fellate and worship Apple- I do not.
Wow you really seem to have a comprehension issue; I said your trolls; i.e. your “Why would I need a tablet to draw a circle on a map?” was an obvious (albeit lame) attempt to troll for responses.
I never called you a troll (though, if the shoe fits…)
It has a Pen!?! I laughed out loud at that line. The Palm Treo called, it wants to come out of retirement…
Where was the hilarious part?
At the end when they say “The next big thing is already here”
…followed shortly by “coming soon”.
“It has a PEN?!”
It has a pen.
Samesung screws itself, AGAIN!
This just keeps getting better.
Next ad please!
heeheehee
A dingy that’s too big to be a phone and too small to be a tablet that uses a 80s stylus?
I like their strategy, I like it a lot!
I thought it was a very good ad. Funny and had a message. Unfortunately, it’s still not an iPhone as the people who buy these will out. All in all good ad. It might get people to check it out which is all you can expect from an ad. People that buy because of a cool ad, well, they get what they deserve. I won’t be running out to buy a Chrysler or Camaro because of an ad either. And the song was from 2003 not the 70’s. Good song, too.
I thought the ad was really lame .
1. The “line” gag was clever… Once. Even Apple doesn’t have perpetual lines.
2. A stylus so I can squiggle a circle in a map? That’s what fingers are for.
3. The stuff that was supposed represent mind-blowing excitement was actually mundane. A marching band? Kid on skateboard?
That ad was like a turkey injected with water to make it seem plumper; just substitute noise and fast cut editing for the water. Either way what you get is a turkey that’s not even the turkey you thought you were getting.
Definitly not going into the annals of Great Superbowl Ads.
Try injecting that turkey with Tabasco and deep frying it.
Don’t try this anywhere near your house, garage, apartment, motor home, cottage, tent or vehicle.
sounds good!
“If you see a stylus, they blew it”
“we’ll use a stylus, right? NNNNNooo.”
-Steve Jobs
The Darkness is so passé…
First there was some product line for maybe an Apple product, then someone was poking a mini-tablet with a ballpoint pen, then all kinds of weird shit happened. That’s all I really remember.
Don’t buy this version of the Galaxy Note – wait for the one with the 6″ screen (right, ‘Stockboy’ aka BLN?).
A 5.3″ screen?
and BLN has yet to post his wonderful praise?
BLN, calling BLN…
There is no need for Apple to worry. They spent the money their loss. Apple has a stable and viable product with great apps and a wonderful seamless ability to go between devices. I own an ipad2 and iphone4 and I enjoy the use of them tremendously. Sadly I also own a PC but plan on changing to an IMac on less than a month. I am looking forward to the day. Don’t fret apple you guys have good vision and a good product.
Welcome to the light… 🙂
Maybe the pen also “vibrates”? 😉
Who wants a phone this big? And there’s a reason Apple dumped the stylus with the iPhone. When people actually see this phone at the carrier’s store, they will not want it.
Oh, and the commercial was really annoying and vapid.
Lets rejoice at the lack of serious competition
My cousin was born with 11 styluses.
Well, if you think about it this way, they are helping Apple because it’s exagerating the fact that Apple have lines and samdung don’t. How dumb are they??
THE PEOPLE WILL WANT A PEN BECAUSE IF THEY DON’T THEY ARE APPLE SHEEP.
Sorry for putting it in all caps, that’s sort of how the ad does it, too.
There is almost 30% of negative votes for that video on YouTube. Commercials very rarely get this many negative votes, especially if they aren’t really controversial or shocking (and this one is neither).
Apple fans seem to be out in force.
What’s next…a tiny mouse with a slide out mousepad?
Samsung and Microsloth, on a race to the bottom. Free entertainment for us.
Yes, please let me buy the product rep’d by the douche in a pinstripe jumpsuit with his chest hair showing. Please.
He may be in some ironic, retro, glam, blah blah blah. I lived through glam rock already. I don’t need some hipster douche to bring it back.
The ad was laughable to me because it portrayed a wild, untame life outside the line. Maybe I’m getting old, ha, but I don’t want an unpredictable/clumsy/stupid?? experience.
This ad ranked right up there with Madonna’s stupid half time show!
Hey…I liked Madonna’s stupid half time show. The dancing, acrobatics and choreography with the cool cinematic display was particularly well done. I am not a fan of Madonna buyt give credit where it is due. Best half time show I have seen in a while.
BTW, I was rooting for NY so it was a good all around day.
Samsung needs to stop trying to compete with Apple and instead team up with them by supplying OLED screens for the upcoming iTV. They will make far more money doing that than on any of their sundry “smart” phone ventures.
Samsung should ask for their money back from Bobby Farrelly. The tree in the background looks like it is growing out of the guitarist’s head.
If i had to use one these I`d definitely feel like I`ve been Samsunged.
They almost made a stylus look cool! Ack.
So who cares what ‘Samdung’ puts up for sale? Once you have the reputation for producing substandard products that are predominantly ‘knock offs’ then the mud has the tendency to stick.
Is that meant to be a John Gruber lookalike? Ha!
The point of the stylus for SangDung is to marketing to the dementia crowd in nursing homes. Those are the ones that remember Palm Pilot as the latest technology. They would see the SungDang tablet as an improvement. I like their strategy, I wonder who reached Beleaguered status first, M$ or SingSame?
🙂
The point of the stylus for SandDung is to market to the dementia crowd in nursing homes. Those are the ones that remember the Palm Pilot as the latest technology. They would see the SungDang tablet as an improvement. I like their strategy, I wonder who will each ‘Beleaguered’ status first, M$ or SingSame??? (Sorry for the typos in previous post.) 🙂
That ad… The dancing just reminds me of ms and their flash mob dances. Totally dorky and w/o purpose. And that “phone” it’s f’n HUGE! I sure s#| don’t want to try and put that in a shirt or pants pocket!
Superficially these commercials remind me of the “I’m a Mac” campaign.
Euhhhh, nobody commented on the “moronity” of the commercial…..it is like the MS commercial for a sing along piece of software that we in Europe thought was a fake but turned out to be real. If you had told me this was a publicity stunt by Apple I would have believed it! This a not a commercial that would win a customer here, that’s for sure!