Samsung's Galaxy Note mobile device was the star of the company's first costly NFL Super Bowl commercial on Sunday, putting a bow on the somewhat controversial "The Next Big Thing is Already Here" media campaign that has been defined by its abject portrayal of Apple customers.
The 90-second Super Bowl XLVI spot, which was set to British glam rock revival band The Darkness' 2003 hit "I Believe in a Thing Called Love," was aired during the fourth quarter as expected, and depicted Apple users happily converting to the new Samsung product.
According to financial blog 24/7 Wall St.'s estimates, the ad cost the South Korean electronic's maker's phone division $10.5 million in air time alone, and included cameos from The Darkness lead singer Justin Hawkins and Chicago Bears' standout linebacker Brian Urlacher.
The ad begins as usual with customers waiting in line for what is presumably the launch of a new iDevice, who make a few quips about how long they have been waiting, when one of them spots a Galaxy Note user and asks, "what is that?!" From there, things take a turn for the absurd, and soon everyone is using the Galaxy Note to make movies, take pictures and even grab the odd autograph from Urlacher.
Also making an appearance is the "barista" character from previous ads in the campaign, who makes the rather droll remark, "well that was over the top," at the commercial's close.
Samsung's Galaxy Note is a larger-than-a-phone, smaller-than-a-tablet mobile device that sports a 5.3-inch, 1280x800 pixel screen, a 1.5 GHz dual core processor, 16 GB of internal memory, an SD card reader and 4G connectivity.
Setting itself apart from Apple's handset and tablet offerings, the Note utilizes a stylus as a main form of input, supplementing the finger-based scheme made popular by the original iPhone. In today's commercial, the capacitive "pen" is quite heavily referenced and is a throwback to when touch resistive screen technology ruled the PDA market.
AT&T is scheduled to start Galaxy Note sales on Feb. 19. | Source: AT&T
AT&T is slated to begin sales of the Note on Feb. 19, and will be offering the Android device for $299 on a two-year contract.
