Here's How Samsung Spent Billions Of Dollars To Destroy Apple With Attack Ads

The first Samsung ad to mock Apple was the one for Galaxy S II in November 2011.

It pokes fun at the hipster, Apple fanboys lining up to buy iPhones, portraying them as delusional losers.

It was a high-risk maneuver for Samsung.

Many companies tried mocking Apple, like Motorola in its 2011 ad for the Xoom tablet, but none have really succeeded in backing it up with more than words. Motorola referenced Apple’s famous 1984 Superbowl ad, saying “It’s time for more choices,” but it clearly didn’t translate to more sales.

Samsung continued making fun of the Apple customers in its Galaxy S III commercial.

This time, it goes a step further and paints Apple useres as old, outdated customers.

The Galaxy S III ad was one of the most viral video ads at the time.

It was so popular that it got over 120,000 shares in less than 24 hours on social media.

Samsung even took its attack on Apple to the Superbowl.

During the 2012 Superbowl, Samsung aired an ad featuring The Darkness. It’s a pretty funny ad, trashing iPhone users as foolish prisoners of Apple’s world.

Samsung’s parody ads were becoming so effective that mainstream media started to take notice, too.

The Wall Street Journal wrote an article titled, "Has Apple Lost Its Cool To Samsung?"

In fact, that WSJ story made Apple’s marketing chief, Phil Schiller, blow up at his ad agency TBWA/Media Arts Lab.

Schiller forwarded the article to TBWA with one sentence that read, “We have a lot of work to do to turn this around…”

Schiller even admitted that Samsung’s doing a good job.

“It’s pretty good and I can’t help but think ‘these guys are feeling it’ (like an athlete who can’t miss because they are in a zone),” Schiller wrote in one of his emails to TBWA.

By 2012, Samsung was outspending most consumer brands in advertising.

Its ad budget for 2012 was $4 billion, but they spent another $5.3 billion on other marketing through sales promotions.

The Galaxy S III became one of the best-selling smartphones ever.

The Galaxy S III became the world’s best-selling smartphone model in the third quarter of 2012, surpassing Apple’s iPhone sales for the first time. The Galaxy line as a whole ended up outselling the iPhone for four straight quarters in 2012.

Samsung had another Superbowl ad in 2013.

Samsung’s 2013 Superbowl mocked Apple’s lawsuit over copying its designs. It featured Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd.

That Superbowl ad went viral too, topping viral ad charts for weeks.

The 2013 Superbowl ad went totally viral again, and remained on top of viral ad charts for weeks. Samsung even made its washing machine ad become the fifth most viral ad at the time, proving it could pretty much make any ad go viral.

But not all Samsung ads were a success.

...like this bizarre ad in Iceland, where the main character literally takes a bite of apple. It also has some strange scenes of ninjas and a goat.

Samsung was the No. 1 smartphone maker in 2013.

It sold nearly 300 million units, which accounted for 31 percent of market share.

In 2013, Samsung spent almost $13 billion in marketing.

That’s more than what Google paid to buy all of Motorola. And three times HTC's market cap at the time.

Microsoft has also tried attacking Apple with its tablet commercials for years.

But none of them has been really been effective — yet.

For the new Galaxy S4 ad, Samsung changed scenes and went to a more hip pool side party.

The Galaxy S4 ad moved to a graduation party where all the cool, recent grads have the Galaxy and their old parents have iPhones.

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3 ad - again - attacks Apple’s screen size.

It puts the Note 3 and the iPhone 5S side-by-side, and features a cameo from Samsung spokesperson Lebron James.

Samsung also parodied Apple’s iPad Air.

Apple at the time made an ad showing how the iPad Air’s thinner than a pencil. Samsung’s ad showed that the Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1 tablet is even thinner than the iPad Air and has a sharper screen and multi-task capabilities.

At around this time, internal documents leaked, showing how obsessed Samsung is with Apple.

The first page of the document says, “Beating Apple is #1 priority (everything must be context of beating Apple).”

Samsung is the leader in US smartphone advertising, too.

Samsung's $363 million spending was slightly more than Apple’s $351 million in US smartphone advertising last year.

It wasn’t only Samsung’s video ads that made fun of Apple.

Samsung put this ad in airports across the country, mocking Apple’s relatively weak battery life.

The ad says, “So you have the power to be anywhere but here.”

As of now, these ads are only placed in JFK in New York and Chicago's O'Hare and Midway airports.

Here's another ad taking a swipe at the iPhone's battery life.

It calls iPhone users “Wall Huggers” for always staying close to power outlets.

Samsung doesn't only attack Apple users — it makes fun of Apple's features, too.

This ad tells the story of a sad dad who can’t watch a soccer game on his iPad because his baby wants to watch a movie on it. (Message: Samsung’s tablet can multitask).

Samsung made another ad mocking the iPhone's screen size as bigger iPhone rumors started swirling around.

In July 2014, before Apple released its bigger sized iPhone 6 models, Samsung made this ad for the Galaxy S5 that stresses how it’s always had bigger screens.

And in a little over 24 hours after Apple’s event for the iPhone 6, Samsung posted a series of ads poking fun at Apple’s new products.

It reminds people that Apple is playing catch-up on screen size, and makes fun of how Apple’s live stream continued to crash during the event. It also tackles the wearables.

Samsung also made fun of this famous line from Steve Jobs.

Samsung tweeted this poster after the iPhone 6 event.

It says, "No one is going to buy a big phone - Guess who surprised themselves and changed their minds."

The ad was in reference to the famous line Steve Jobs said four years ago for the iPhone 4.

At the time, Jobs said that no one would be interested in owning a big screen smartphone, like Samsung's Galaxy series. But Apple came out with bigger screen phones for the iPhone 6 this month.

Samsung and Apple are the two clear leaders in the smartphone market.

Samsung continues to go neck-and-neck with Apple in the smartphone market’s total operating profit share.

But Samsung holds the largest marketshare in total shipments.

In terms of total shipments, Samsung is the market leader. In the first quarter of 2014, Samsung shipped more smartphones than Apple, Huawei, Lenovo, and LG combined.

Samsung faces many challenges ahead, especially from Chinese competitors.

The rise of Chinese brands with cheaper yet high-quality products are eating into Samsung’s market share. It remains to be seen how Samsung will respond to these threats.