Historically, Samsung has been all too willing to slander Apple and its products with ads, but for a while a few years back, the Korean outfit took a back seat, preferring to let Google take control of the Apple-bashing. But while, as has been revealed during the unfolding of events in the current Apple vs. Samsung court case in California, the Galaxy maker did cease to attack Apple for a while, the company’s marketing team saw the death former CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs as “the best opportunity” to re-ignite its smear campaign.
Samsung and Apple are two of the fiercest rivals in modern technology, and although the latest in-court patent dispute case is perhaps the most obvious testament to the fact that there’s little love lost between them, you only have to look at the ongoing sniping through advertisements to see that both parties are more than willing to take shots at one another.
When Steve Jobs passed, there was a natural worry from those affiliated with Apple that the company would struggle without his guidance. After all, it was he who had introduced pivotal, game-changing products like the iPod, iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air, turning the fruit company around from the brink of despair to what has been, at times, the world’s most expensive company.
This period of uncertainty, it has been revealed, was something that Samsung’s marketing arm wished to capitalize on, with newly-uncovered emails showing that Samsung wished to take advantage of the situation.
Mark Pennington, Samsung America’s Vice President of U.S. sales, thought that Jobs’ death would leave smartphone shoppers less than confident in Apple’s ability to keep delivering the goods, and pushed out out an email to team members around him stating: “this is our best opportunity to attack iPhone.”
CMO Todd Pendleton then gave the green light, and subsequently, the launch iPhone 4s was used as a part of Samsung’s own advertising campaign.
It’s not perhaps the most tasteful in which one should look to attain one-upmanship over a rival, but then again, it’s hard to condemn Samsung in an industry where market share, margins and the bottom line seem to be the most important thing.
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(Source: WSJ)
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