Ad of the Month - Samsung

At Human Made Machine, we tell you whether your creative will be effective with your target audience. This is crucial, as creative contributes up to 70% of a campaign's success. We test thousands of creatives each month in realistic, simulated media environments using the gold standard of control/exposed experiments to predict real-world impact. To dig deeper into performance, we collect qualitative and quantitative data, analyzing what works - and why.

We’ve been keeping a close eye on the smartphone category in recent weeks, with the Google Pixel 10 launched hot on the heels of the latest Samsung Fold and Flip models, and the eagerly anticipated iPhone 17 on the horizon. The big players in the category are fighting to be top of mind for consumers and, they hope, appear in their future shopping baskets, when the time for an upgrade comes around. 

There has been a clear trend amongst phone ads over the past year of increasingly highlighting AI features and integrations, with Google Gemini, Apple Intelligence, Galaxy AI and Moto AI all heavily featured in brands’ creative output in recent months. August’s Ad of the Month winner, however, confidently charts a different course:

Galaxy Z Fold7 - Unfold

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Not surprisingly, Samsung has focused on promotion of the new Galaxy Z Fold7 and Galaxy Z Flip7 models. The winning ad, Unfold, ran on Instagram and places the design of the phone and its foldable screen front and center. The amount of space the screen fills in the ad is a clever symbol of its real life size. True, there is some Galaxy AI co-branding, but it is very subtle, with the Fold7 branding dominating. This sets it apart from competitor ads that we measured, which tended to build a narrative or product demonstration around an AI feature.

Samsung instead commits to hardware over software. The narrative is extremely simple - influencer Dylan Efron says ‘Same old phone? Nah. Upgrade to the new Galaxy Z Fold7’, while unfolding the phone in his hands. There are no further features to distract from the folding design. Compared to previous Ad of the Month winners, this ad is very short at 6 seconds long. Such short videos can work well in the context of an Instagram Story ad, though they often play a reinforcing role for longer form videos in the same campaign. This ad, by contrast, drives lift in Consideration and Purchase Intent in its own right.

The ad’s conciseness doesn’t prevent it from scoring highly across our Diagnostic Pillars, which are proven indicators of ad effectiveness. It achieves 8/10 on Breakthrough, 8/10 on Appeal, and a particularly impressive 9/10 on Engagement (an ad’s ability to build and strengthen emotional brand connections). It was to the point and undemanding of viewers, resulting in an enjoyable viewing experience, while still building up excitement about the product and brand. It was the highest scoring smartphone ad we tested on our Brand Affinity metric, a key diagnostic that measures how positively an ad affects how people feel about the brand. 

In terms of viewers’ purely rational responses, there’s a tendency for them to tell us that they favor ads which give lots of logical reasons to buy the product. That was not the case here, with viewers rating Unfold as more relevant, credible, and having a more appealing product than competitor ads offering more detail on specs. These were also key strengths of other Samsung ads highlighting folding or flipping designs. It would seem that consumers found the focus on tangible hardware more compelling than AI integrations. Perhaps there is an element of AI fatigue and a feeling that smartphone brands are saying similar things about the technology, meaning Samsung appears fresher and more believable when it talks about the physical device.

At HMM we analyze thousands of qualitative responses to ads (i.e. real human feedback) using AI-powered topic modelling. This helps us understand the key themes that resonate with the audience. We can see what consumers loved about this ad in their own words:

It made me more interested in the Galaxy phone, I really want to try one and see how good the folding screen is

I liked the music and the phone, everything looked sleek

The phone itself has a great design, I love how it unfolds

I enjoyed the how the person is showing the phone and the way it unfolds

Clearly, the ad succeeded in putting the phone in the spotlight and presenting it as premium. A third of qualitative responses said something positive about the product, far more than for any other phone ad we tested. In response to other ads, many consumers talked about the characters, their views on AI, or general thoughts on the brand, with the phone in the background. 

As noted, the ad featured the influencer Dylan Efron, though this does not seem to be a case of celebrity driving ad success. Three quarters of viewers said they did not recognise him. The use of a less recognizable talent may have been to the ad’s advantage given its short runtime, allowing the phone to remain center stage and not be overshadowed. 

Honourable Mentions This Month

This month, we selected two runners up, based on the favorability of the audience’s response. One is another Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 ad, a slightly longer spot demonstrating the large foldable screen alongside AI based photo editing capabilities. Interestingly, our other runner up is an Apple iPhone ad which gives a clear demonstration of a similar AI photo editing feature. Viewers found this much more credible and appealing than other Apple ads we tested, which focused on alternative types of AI integrations, indicating that they find photo editing tools genuinely impressive and useful as a phone feature.

Galaxy Z Fold7 - Photo Edit

iPhone 16 - Proposal

By extensively testing a variety of smartphone ads across several brands, we’ve uncovered some key learnings. Perhaps most importantly, that consumers still see smartphones as a physical product which they judge based on how sleek, distinctive, and premium the design is. They are less likely to be swayed towards a phone if it is presented as a vehicle for AI features they believe are ubiquitously available. Meanwhile, a simple message about a phone’s physical capabilities, with a clear, premium visual demonstration, remains persuasive. 

At Human Made Machine, we help our partners identify creative that truly resonates and turn that understanding into confident, effective advertising.

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