When Apple announced their new iPad Pro (and iPad Air) last week, they boasted that the new flagship model is their thinnest product to date. Part of this was done through a new advertisement, depicting a whole amalgamation of art, instruments, and technology being crushed down by a hydraulic press, leaving behind the slimline tablet. Usually this makes for satisfying viewing, but it didn’t get the prettiest of responses, particularly from the artistic community, garnering an apology from Apple as The Verge reported.
Now, looking to capitalize on the controversy no doubt, Samsung has posted a retort. However, they’ve made a blunder of their own in what has been a bad couple of weeks for their respective marketing teams. Not quite as big a response just yet, but we can see that most people have a similar opinion on it.
Why is the iPad Pro advert controversial?
A few high profile people have made their opinion on the advert quite clear. Not too impressed by what he calls a “destruction of human experience”, Hugh Grant posted his views on Apple’s attempt to make the tablet look like an all-encompassing device for creatives, not something new to their marketing tactics. Furthermore, this fifteen-year-old video of LG advertising the (we’re sure at the time) ground-breaking LG Renoir KC910 camera phone shows that the concept has been done before.
Many point out that Apple has failed to read the room, especially with large conversations lately regarding the threat of AI. With it getting harder to distinguish actual creativity from something AI-generated in a fraction of the time, perhaps it isn’t the best idea to literally depict some of human’s most creative inventions being crushed into oblivion.
The response to Samsung’s rendition isn’t much better
In a post on X, Samsung Mobile US put out a video demonstrating their response to Apple’s commercial. Recreating the scene of a pile of crushed art, a woman picks up a (somehow relatively unscathed) guitar and begins to play it – ending with the tagline ‘creativity cannot be crushed’. Amazingly though, after that display, Samsung proudly tell us that the Galaxy Tab S9 Series featured their shiny new Galaxy AI, just a tad ironic.
Aside from the obvious plug for AI which made up part of the original’s backlash, you’ll find comments pointing out the obvious: this feels a bit like a copy and paste job. Either way, this little conversation between the two tech giants it at least an amusing exchange, even if it has got plenty of people riled up.
