Samsung’s Ice Bucket Challenge ⇥ theverge.com

This is a pretty slick ad: take a very current “viral” thingy and spin it in a short time to point out a great advantage Samsung’s product has over its competitors’. And they apparently gave a very generous donation to charity, so it’s good all around, right?

Gruber notes two things, though: it’s more like a promotion of the Galaxy S5 rather than truly dedicating itself to the charitable cause, and the status bar changes midway through the ad. Regarding the former point, I don’t see how this is much different than the Product Red campaign and its associated products. Regarding the latter, I would hope that this is due to a filming error or something. But knowing how unscrupulous Samsung has been in the past with regards to their ads, I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole thing were faked.

PS: If you want a better ice bucket challenge video, Jeremy Clarkson’s kids have you covered (NSFW language, obviously).