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Dear Samsung, here's a heartfelt New Year's resolution for you
You need more than this, Samsung.
ZDNET Recommends
I know you're annoyed, Samsung.
I understand your frustration.
Apple has captured so many American minds that it feels unfair, unjust, and borderline unkind. Elon Musk would love to have that much support.
Yet you're letting your emotions get the better of you, Samsung. You really are. So as 2023 casts its shadow upon us, I wanted to give you a little advice. It's free, just like the tablets, buds, and watches you've been giving away at Verizon.
Look, you're trying to recycle old ideas, Samsung, in a very different world.
Once upon a time, you found Apple's weaknesses and you pricked it brilliantly.
Apple was a cult, with ridiculously mind-numbed customers lining up for a phone launch. So you mocked them with vast style and humor.
At the same time, you chuckled at how iPhones were really quite tiny and went completely the other way. The world suddenly took note of how large phones could be largely wonderful.
But now look at you, Samsung. You're trying the same kind of mockery -- over and over again -- and it's not working.
You're telling Apple customers that they're sad, retrograde, little people because, oh, they don't have a folding phone.
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You're telling Apple customers to jump over the wall of their safe little garden, so that they can get a folding phone. Oh, look, here's a new ad that's a lot like the last ad.
You've even resorted to posting a World Cup ad to China's Weibo, an ad that says only flip phones can do the Wave.
Please, Samsung, the Wave isn't cool and hasn't been for a very long time.
Here's the difference between now and then, Samsung. Mocking Apple for its walled garden and lack of a folding phone doesn't mine a desperate human truth.
The Z Flip 4 is a lovely phone. My wife has one and many people are captivated by its sheer cuteness, but it hasn't made a vast breakthrough. Neither have any other folding phones.
For reasons that may have something to do with laziness, myopia, or Apple's highly effective ecosystem (and its embracing of privacy, however imperfect it might be), iPhone users don't feel the urge to switch.
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This means you're going to have to find an emotional need for them to consider it. Merely telling them they're slightly stupid, in an ad that has all the humor of a pie in the face at a christening, isn't going to do it.
You likely think you're going for a bit of a Mac vs PC, Get A Mac vibe. You seem to be lurching, however, toward a Get A Life vibe.
These ads are neither funny enough nor conscience-pricking enough to be talked about, admired and, most importantly, acted upon.
It could be that you're building toward funnier, more engaging, more memorable ways of executing your anti-walled garden idea. But in 2023, maybe it's worth thinking a little harder about what Samsung itself stands for, rather than just hope to mock Apple with lots of nice millennially aged people trying their hand at witless mockery.
Or maybe, Samsung, you could release some phones that everyone just has to have -- which, and no mockery here, is quite hard these days.