Samsung Shades Apple’s Crush Ad With New ‘UnCrush’ Promotion

Last week, Apple introduced an ad that received enough backlash to make the tech giant apologize and cut plans to air it on TV. Now, rival Samsung has released an ad that makes fun of Apple’s fiasco by returning to the same scene — but with a different message.

Apple’s Crush iPad Pro ad featured creative objects, like paint, a piano, a record player, and books, bursting under the force of a hydraulic press. When it lifts, an ultra-thin iPad is revealed. The ad doesn’t have a human being in it.

Related: Is It an iPad or a MacBook? Apple Makes It Tough to Tell By Revealing a 13-Inch iPad Pro With ‘Outrageously Powerful’ M4 Chip for AI

Samsung’s new ad, posted Wednesday on X and other social media with the hashtag UnCrush, appears to be shot in the aftermath of Apple’s ad.

We would never crush creativity. #UnCrush pic.twitter.com/qvlUqbRlnE

— Samsung Mobile US (@SamsungMobileUS) May 15, 2024

A person steps through the rubble of crushed objects left behind at the end of Apple’s ad and picks up a beat-up guitar. They then start playing it while sitting on what appears to be the hydraulic press Apple used in its ad.

Here’s the kicker: They’re looking at sheet music on a Samsung tablet.

“Creativity cannot be crushed,” is Samsung’s message at the end of the ad, before a screen that reads “Galaxy Tab S9 Series with Galaxy AI.”

Related: Apple Issues Apology for iPad Pro ‘Crush!’ Ad and Pulls It from TV

This isn’t the first time Samsung has shaded Apple in an ad. Samsung mocked the iPhone’s battery strength in 2014, the iPhone X notch in 2017, and iPhone cameras in 2022, to name a few.

Apple’s ad was roundly criticized by many — from Hollywood stars to college professors.

Americus Reed II, a marketing professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told the Associated Press that the ad came across as “technology crushing the life of that nostalgic sort of joy (from former times).”