First, follow this link to get a sense of Samsung’s new ad campaign, which reimagines famous self portraits as selfies.
Now follow this link, for a series of ads from last summer.
They sure look similar. Not identical, certainly, but interesting that both use Van Gogh as the source of their inspiration. Also interesting that neither seems based on an actual painting, as far as I can tell.
Eh, different enough I’ll give Samsung a pass on this one.
I don’t see any similarity
Both Van Gogh adverts are based on the September 1889 self-portrait, which is in the Musée d’Orsay.
I am pretty sure Samsug got its idea from this reddit post. http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/2l5h4o/my_friend_went_to_the_museum_and_made_art_of_the/
http://imgur.com/a/7LkvP
C’mon…. I’m all for bashing Samsung but this is a stretch.
Still waiting…
http://samsungdesign.tumblr.com
Off the mark here. No pun intended. Ok, pun intended.
The Loop needs to get over its obsession with Samsung. Apple doesn’t need public defenders. There are more interesting topics.
In other words, the Loop missed the point here and really satirized itself.
Those two campaigns are almost the opposite of each other. The Samsung one focuses on famous self-portraits, saying that their camera can make your selfie a work of art (adding style). The KelOptic one latches onto impressionism, calling it clutter, and using the art to show how their product brings clarity (removing style).
Van Gogh painted a lot of self-portraits, and his work is so recognizable, that I can hardly fault either company’s ad agency for using one of his portraits in an ad.
If this is going to become a discussion of stealing (i.e making the thing your own new thing), rather than copying wholesale, I’d say that Samsung is more successful in the former than KelOptic in this case.
Dave, I think you are reaching here a bit. Samsung represents all that is underhanded and unoriginal, but I don’t think they are ripping off those ads you linked to.
Both ad sets are great ideas and seem quite unrelated to me. It’s like whining that Apple’s iconic metropolis ad is a blatant copy because of its obvious copying of the metropolis movie visuals.
The ad campaigns seem different. However, I have definitely seen artist self portraits modified to look like selfies before. Here is one (although recent), but I have seen others. https://www.facebook.com/LACMA/photos/pcb.10152412219826566/10152412219586566/?type=1&theater
you must be lost.
Tongue firmly in cheek: This is possibly the most original campaign Samsung has ever run, meaning it’s only 125 years old.
The selfies in the LCD are not representative of what the camera would have seen from that angle. I have to wonder, was the woman with the flowers in her hair supposed to be Tina Modotti? Because it should have been black and white in that case! Edward Weston wouldn’t have allowed color. 🙂
She’s Frida Kahlo.
“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”
— usually attributed to Pablo Picasso
(and a favorite of Steve Jobs)
Samsung riffed on Apple’s idea. It’d have been more impressive if Samsung could come up with what they did without prompts.
A SAMSUNG obsession?
Well… I guess it HAS been a while since there’s been any Blackberry news.