Making bad advertising is easy. But, every now and then, somebody produces something so atrociously heinous that it almost makes you want to stand up and applaud.
Congrats, Samsung. “Are You Geared Up?” may be the absolute worst thing we’ve seen this year. You found rock bottom, and you dug even deeper. You combined bad acting with a nonsensical script, added in a dash of uncomfortable pacing and stretched the whole thing out to a cringeworthy two-and-a-half minutes.
Not only did you create The Room of online advertising, but your ad was so shitty that it went viral. Your spot was featured on the front page of Reddit under the headline “Hands down the worst ad I’ve ever seen. Take a bow, Samsung.” On top of that, the online legions have taken to your Samsung Mobile YouTube page, where you’ve received 13,000 thumbs down votes to 2,000 thumbs up votes. And, some genius left the comments on, which just adds to the chaos of terrible. Here are just a smattering of some of our favorite comments:
- “There’s no way this is a real ad from Samsung. That would mean someone from Samsung had to actually watch this train wreck of a commercial and approve it. So it has to be fake. Right?”
- “I feel like I just watched porn without the porn.”
- “I’m almost speechless because of how terrible this is. I’m embarrassed that it’s for an Android product.”
- “Thanks Samsung, I forgot for a moment that women are prizes that can be won through the creative use of technology and being creepy as fuck.”
- “HAY GURL CHECK OOT THEESE COOL PICS I TOOK OF YOU SEECRETLY WHILE I FOLLOWED YOU. TEE HEE YOUR PICTURES OF ME ARE SO FLATTERING HERE IS MY CONTACT INFORMATION ANONYMOUS STRANGER I WILL BE ALONE IN MY HOTEL ROOM TONIGHT. HAHAHA I AM GOING TO HAEV SEX WITH YOU BECAUSE MY WATCH IS A PHONE!”
In other words, it’s been a pretty fun morning. However, one Reddit-er has an interesting theory for why this terrible, terrible thing exists:
This was shot in Korea (that’s why everyone has a Russian accent). It was probably never meant to be seen in English. The main audience will see this with a Korean dub (that’s also why the actors speak so slowly).
The English script was probably written and edited by non-native speakers, and the company probably doesn’t give a shit what the English version sounds like, because the Korean dub is the one that will be seen. All that matters is that the white people look cool and pretty. It’s like that other commercial with the Samsung hard drive or whatever.
It’s an interesting theory, but as one commenter replied, “I wonder if Samsung has heard of the Internet.” Judging by this, it seems unlikely. If anyone has any info on the agency behind this, or would like to nominate anything else for Worst Ad of the Year, please do so in the comments.