Samsung Trolls iPad ‘Crush!’ Ad, Says ‘We Would Never Crush Creativity’

Samsung has sought to capitalize on the fallout of Apple’s controversial “Crush!” ad for iPad Pro by releasing a Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra ad that includes the tagline “Creativity cannot be crushed.”

When Apple last week introduced the new M4 iPad Pro models, it showed a video of a hydraulic press crushing creative tools, including musical instruments, electronic equipment, arcade games, paint and brushes, computers, cameras, and more, with the aim of demonstrating how the iPad represents all of the tools condensed into a single device.

This imagery sparked significant backlash from the creative community and the social media-using public, who interpreted it as a metaphor for Big Tech’s destructive impact on creative industries and individual creativity.

The negative reception was so strong that Apple decided to cancel planned TV spots for the ad and publicly apologized, acknowledging that the ad “missed the mark” by not aligning with their intention to celebrate and empower creatives​.

Seizing on a perceived marketing opportunity, Samsung has now released an ad of its own, in which a musician walks through the destructive wake of the hydraulic press and picks up a damaged guitar. The musician then sits beside an easel holding a Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra with musical notation on the screen, and proceeds to perform the piece of music. The video was shared on X (Twitter) by Samsung with the accompanying caption, “We would never crush creativity.”

Samsung mocking Apple in its ads is nothing new. The company has mocked Apple for everything from design decisions such as the iPhone’s removal of the headphone jack (which it also eventually removed) to Apple’s lack of a foldable smartphone lineup.