Samsung’s commercial depicting a lady exercising alone at 2 a.m. has been panned for being “unrealistic” and insulting.
The commercial, named Night Owls, promotes the Galaxy Watch4, Galaxy Buds 2, and Galaxy S22 phone by showing a young woman running through dark streets and alleyways at 2 a.m. with earphones in. She sprints past a man on a bike on a deserted bridge at one point.
In ad the young woman is running, the voiceover says, “Sleep at night. Run faster. Push harder. Follow the herd. Not for me, I run on a different schedule: mine.”
The advertisement comes after the murders of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa, as well as the death of 23-year-old Ashling Murphy, who was attacked while out running along a canal at Tullamore, west of Dublin, earlier this year.
The ad was “totally and utterly tone deaf, especially in light of Ashling Murphy,” according to Jamie Klingler, co-founder of Reclaim These Streets.
“It’s Samsung’s Kendall Jenner Pepsi moment.” We can’t run at night because it’s unsafe, and the last thing I want is for someone to intrude on our space while we’re trying to exercise. She commented, “It’s almost ridiculous how awful this ad lands.”
Klingler said it was difficult to imagine a woman who would feel safe running at that time of night, and that was what made the ad “beyond unrealistic”.
Sahra-Isha Muhammad-Jones, the founder and head of partnerships of Asra running club, said, “There seems to be an unawareness of how unsafe it is for women running at this time. As a woman who is running, it’s not safe already, but as a Black Muslim woman, it’s even more unsafe. This advert felt like what would happen in an ideal world.”
“It can be triggering for women watching this advert and then having to come to terms with what is actually happening in reality to women in this country.”
Muhammad-Jones added that the advertisement felt like a missed opportunity to spark a meaningful discussion on women’s safety.
Women Running Magazine editor Esther Newman said, “My first reaction was to laugh. The ad is completely unrealistic and totally blinkered.”
“We have worked for years on the issues of women’s safety when it comes to running and the vast majority of women in our audience have felt unsafe whilst running, from heckling to actual abuse. We know that women often think about stopping running because of this,”
“Women feel unsafe when it comes to running at any point of the day. Seeing a woman choosing to run at 2am, with headphones, it’s just ludicrous.”
Newman said, ad was not empowering and instead was “shortsighted, naïve and comical”.
Samsung said, “The Night Owls campaign was designed with a positive message in mind: to celebrate individuality and freedom to exercise at all hours.
“It was never our intention to be insensitive to ongoing conversations around women’s safety. As a global company with a diverse workforce, we apologies for how this may have been received.”
