Samsung is now ripping off Apple design in a painfully awkward ad

Samsung is now mocking Apple over a perceived lack of new designs for the iPhone, and doing it with a nod to the famous "Think Different" ads — as well as doing it despite a lack of new designs.

If you want to argue that the iPhone 16 range is little different to last year's iPhone 15 releases, you have a point and you are far from alone. Equally, if you don't think design should be changed solely for the hell of it, you're on strong ground.

It's when you take out an ad to mock Apple over this perceived issue and do so by bringing up an ad campaign that ended two decades ago. It's when your advertising centers on your claimed design superiority by showing a single feature that you first did five years ago.

Samsung's ad shows a parade of identical white smartphones scrolling by, as if on a bland conveyor belt. Then in the middle of the bleak and dull phones, there is a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip6.

That phone is shown in full color, and it animates being folded open and closed. As it finishes, the word "different" is displayed on screen.

It's more than pointlessly saying this one phone is different to the other renders in the ad. It's specifically the word "different" spelt in all lowercase, and with a period at the end.

Add in that the font at least strongly resembles Apple Garamond, the modified ITC Garamond font face that Apple used in its "Think Different" ads.

Apple's original "Think Different" campaign. Samsung has copied the text and the punctuation, and as close as it could also the font face

"Think Different" ran from 1997 to 2002, so it was running from the time Steve Jobs returned to Apple. It was there for the iMac and the portable iBook, so it was current just when Apple was designing its way out of oblivion.

In that time, design was essential for Apple to distinguish itself from competitors. But the fact that it did this so successfully is because it was specifically design meant to make better computers.

Of course it is always more interesting when Apple launches an entirely new design for the iPhone. But changing it just to change it is about fashion, not design in the sense of making the most usable product possible.

Apple is out to make money like any other vendor, but it has consistently chosen to pursue sales by making what it believes are the best design choices. It's why Apple dropped the headphone jack — which Samsung also mocked, before copying it.

It's easy to ridicule Samsung for how often it does this mocking-before-copying, but someone needs to ask if the company is okay. Because for all that it has a point about Apple's design not changing this year, Samsung has again acted like an ex who can't get over being dumped.

This new ad, for instance, does work if you don't happen to remember the "Think Different" campaign — but Samsung clearly assumes you do.

Samsung is fixated on Apple and Apple is like the ex who is doing much better. Apple never calls out Samsung and never mentions it.

It certainly doesn't rely on it for its advertising ideas. Samsung has a history of looking to Apple for how it designs its ads.

For instance, Apple's first-ever ad for the iPhone is the famous "Hello" one from 2007, with clips of people answering the phone in movies. In 2013, Samsung launched a smartwatch with clips of people in movies talking to their watch.

That is now 11 years ago and it seems unfair to look back that far. But if you're counting the start of the "Think Different" campaign, Samsung's new ad looks back 27 years.

Still, Samsung isn't saying that Apple design has stalled for the last thirty years. Samsung is saying that Samsung's design is superior now, is marching ahead while Apple fails to significantly update the iPhone.

Again, the firm has a point. But it makes the point with a folding phone — and Samsung designed folding phones in 2019.

This is all just noise intended to appeal to Samsung's base.