You’re sitting in an hour-long presentation with a full Broadway orchestra, a host who sounds at home on a game show, scenes replete with stereotypes of 50’s-era, girls-only cocktail parties and nuclear families intended to connect with everyday people, and a full curtain opening and closing with credits. Every now and then, you’re assaulted with an orchestrated six-tone tune you have come to recognize from the past year; It’s sort of pleasing at first, yet by now, it’s about as entertaining and welcome as CTV’s relentless renditions of I Believe during the Olympics. Surprisingly, you’re not at a D-list live show but at Samsung Unpacked 2013, the latest in a series of uncomfortably over-the-top performances that don’t really tell you much about what makes their products so great, but do a very good job of showcasing how much money South Korea’s largest chaebol has been able to pull in over the last couple years.
Samsung isn’t alone in attempting to define their style through cringeworthy cheese, and they haven’t earned the top spot for making audiences squirm. If that were an award, it would likely go to Qualcomm, whose keynote at this year’s CES 2013 in January was not remembered for anything they actually announced, but instead for their increasingly disparately-connected cameos and a flow so terrible you weren’t sure whether to laugh or cry. Starting with three categories of “today’s youth”, using 90’s slang and corporate jargon, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer enthusiastically jogged onto the stage, then came Guillermo del Toro, then Big Bird, then Archbishop Desmond Tutu. At one point, Star Trek Into Darkness actress Alice Eve came on the stage to talk about a Star Trek app powered by Qualcomm technology, which turned into an incredibly awkward five-minute fake conversation between her and Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs in which Eve spent most of her time reading the prompter with clearly visible discomfort. The ever-bizarre conference ended with Maroon 5, unless you watched the live stream, where Maroon 5 was dubbed over with Dido for no clear reason. What seems evident through the way both companies decide to show their content is that there is a level of insecurity in their ability to have their products explain themselves, so they feel the need to hype them up through glitzy marketing that distracts from the product, or attempts to overly explain it in an attempt to get the average user to understand what they’re trying to do.
However strange Samsung’s marketing is though, to its credit, it has been finding its own way of trying to present itself to consumers. Its phones too, which initially started out as very evident iPhone knockoffs, have started to differentiate themselves into their own type of device. While it was incredibly fair to assume that the original Galaxy S was effectively an Android copy of the iPhone 3GS, the Galaxy S III and S IV have branched out enough to define their own look. Yet, for areas where Samsung is not on top, it still depends on looking at what the market leader is doing and building their own version of it in what can only be a deliberate attempt to convince the consumer that their iteration is the same as what they are copying.
Even this week’s announcement of a Samsung gamepad for their phones drew heavy comparisons to the Xbox 360 controller, from which it copied the same buttons, analog stick placement, and D-pad. While all the major console manufacturers use gamepad layouts inspired by the Super Nintendo (the PlayStation itself was initially designed to be a CD-ROM expansion for the Super Nintendo), they have found enough ways of differentiating from Nintendo’s layout to avoid directly evoking the image of a Nintendo controller. Sony’s DualShock controllers use shapes instead of letters for the four primary buttons, introduced dual-analog sticks to the console market, and redesigned the D-pad to keep its solution unique yet easy enough to use for anyone coming off of Nintendo consoles. The Xbox controller again introduced yet another D-pad style, distinctively coloured the four primary buttons and switched their positions. While some of these ideas may not have been that useful, the idea is that there is more than one way to make a controller, and there is more than one way to design a product. There is a problem if you are able to put two different products next to each other and notice how they look so similar before any other thoughts come to mind. It would be fair to suggest that when most people saw Samsung’s solution, the first thing they thought of was the Xbox 360 controller. Not only is this unfair to Microsoft, who found their own way of implementing a gamepad; it’s also unfair to Sony and Nintendo, since there is an external manufacturer who has now assumed that the 360 layout is the gamepad standard.
Again, at Mobile World Congress in late February, Samsung announced a Samsung Wallet app, which holds coupons, tickets, memberships and boarding passes, and also conveniently borrowed Apple’s Passbook design, with a black background and colourful ticket-shaped rectangles organized in a floating column. The icon for the app, a part Samsung has yet to realize is one of the easiest ways to spot blatant plagiarism, is remarkably similar to Passbook’s stack of tickets, even down to having the some of the same coloured tickets use the same ticket shapes. Compare to Google Wallet, which uses a stylized W as its icon and has a bright, white background with Google-like icons, or Microsoft’s, which uses a credit card sticking out of a wallet as its icon and a very distinctive design inspired by its Windows Phone interface.
These couple instances are only the most recent in a line of fairly obviously lazy design on Samsung’s part, and because many are willing to reward them for their behaviour, they likely have no reason to stop in the near future. The point here is that it’s acceptable to draw inspiration or small ideas from others, as that’s how all ideas are made. What’s not acceptable is to take blatantly what someone else has done and present it as your own, without making any clear changes to its presentation. It’s unfortunate that other Android brands, like HTC’s One or Google’s Nexus, don’t get more credit in the marketplace for being truly unique and innovative in what they offer. Hopefully in Samsung’s attempt to define itself in the smartphone age, it will begin to find something that makes people think Samsung, instead of thinking about their competitors.
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