Microsoft pokes fun at Samsung's Heathrow advertising, fails to book flight to the Galaxy

Nokia has employed Lumianauts to try to find the galaxy at Heathrow airport, which has recently been taken over by Samsung. All they found were a bunch of ads around Terminal Samsung Galaxy S5, so they had to go back home in their rover without getting launched into orbit.

It would be interesting if these Lumianauts are the start of a marketing campaign to poke fun at Samsung and the Galaxy brand. Nokia's never been shy about needling the competition, and seeing as Samsung's most popular ads were all about lampooning Apple, it seems like they deserve at least a little return fire. Obviously this Lumianaut thing is relatively tame, but it's easy to see the possibilities.

What do you guys think of Samsung's ad campaign in Heathrow airport? Tacky and over-the-top, or effective? How should Nokia and Microsoft respond?

Source: Nokia Conversations; Via: Neowin

Simon Sage
75 Comments
  • Lol great
  • Not great at all..
    First microsoft should look where they stand right now. Windows phone don't even have WhatsApp dude.
  • Its only been taken down temporarily. It was taken off the iOS app store for about a year previously... Didn't do them any harm lol
  • Another complaint about WhatsApp? At least Microsoft is working with them too fix everything, but nothing happens over night, sorry bub.
  • I could care less about BitchApp
  • Wow bitchapp, burnnnnn
  • Md Anwer get your head out of your f***ing ass and read articles. WhatsApp has been taken down temporarily because of bugs.
  • WhatsApp & SnapChat are old news... Get Telegram and forget the rest...
  • Too subtle and vague. Samsung has the potential to be lampooned way harder ;)
  • So true b
  • I agree; i really didn't get the joke at first
  • Why aren't the Lumianaughts in all the different Lumia colours? Lol
  • Good point!
     
  • Samesung?
  • Would prefer to see really positive ads about MS products, to be honest, just saying.
  • Completely agree. This looks a tad desperate. As is often the case with Microsoft!
  • Desperate like the Mac vs PC ads?
  • I always wanted to see PC guy punch Justin 'Mac' Long in the face. PC was always so nice to him even though he was such an a-hole back. Did those commercials even help there sales at all?
  • They did, actually. It's one of Apple's many very famous and very famous ad campaigns. It's one of the major reasons that the whole aura of glory surrounds Mac OS X and aura of disgust surrounds Windows to this day. Not the only reason, mind you, but it did help boost Apple's sales during the Vista-era. My, what dark times those were...
  • vista helped boost apple sales during the vista era.
  • Then when Windows 7 came along, the ads stopped.
  • Of course it helped. Those commercials tarnished the Windows brand really bad. I honestly don't think the Windows brand has recovered from those commercials.
  • Maybe. But being tarnished might have helped google surge more than apple. I feel like their computer sales barely improved. It was there iPod and iphone that got them where they are today.
  • Exactly
  • Don't know about Europe, but here in the US the Samsung Galaxy ads were all about making fun of Apple and their most devoted users... and it WORKED (especially when they added in some white lies about how great NFC works).
    It's not an either or, you can do both.
  • Hah I like this lol..
  • Lol... :D
  • Psst, Simon, this isn't Nokia anymore. This is Microsoft Mobile's doing. Samsung's ads are aggressive and they should be. When you have so many OEMs, you need to keep your brand in the minds of consumers. Microsoft fails in that area. They try to attack these kinds of ads with other silly actions (like the Scroogled campaign) but they normaly fail at that.
  • It's like they learned nothing from the scroogled campaign :|
  • Agreed, these ads aren't gonna sell any Lumia.
  • Nokia always used to make fun of Samsung,HTC etc.. Hope it continues the same under MSFT :D
  • Hmm.. I feel like this would've worked better if it was turned around.. Lumia lookin for the galaxy, then they find Samsung.. Then they decide "they like this galaxy." And stuff... But idk. That's just me.
  • I like the fact that it's subtle.
  • Lol yea I saw the vine the other day.
    They need to give em a taste of their own medicine ...
  • How about stop spending like that in usless amm "jokes" and invest that in better distribution! México is one of their biggest growing markets and the last Lumia we have recibe is the 925!! come on!! and the surface 2 is the "revolutionary" tablet... not even the surface pro 2... just the surface lame 2. :(
  • LOL Mexico
  • "just the surface lame 2" that made me loooool
  • You can include Brazil. LATAM is forgotten :( *In addition: In Brazil, the WP market is BIGGER than iOS market 
  • There were News about the 630 and 930 in Brasil no?
  • Yes, they're coming. But no news about Surface ...
  • Is it still technically Nokia?
    Me thinks not.
  • Microsoft needs to concentrate on getting WP 8.1 out to all devices before throwing mud at competitors running more capable OS's. Ask one of those lumianauts to reply to an email with a document and listen to the crickets chirp.
  • Microsoft has nothing to do with it. It's up to the carriers and OEMs.
  • Well WP 8.1 dev preview is so buggy that no Carrier with a brain should release it yet. When missing and podcasts work properly, and email attachments too then maybe they'll have something to talk about
  • "so buggy" really? For me it's been as smooth as ever.
  • Well maybe 'unfinished' would be a better term. I agree, it's pretty smooth, but with the unembedding of the features from the OS, clearly many of them are not ready for prime time. Music is still a mess, and not being able to quickly create emails with documents attached? How am I supposed to user it for work with that limitation?
  • Fine for me, and I'm with Sprint
  • No carrier has released it yet.  It's a dev preview.  You have to sign up for it.  You really think carriers would give you a preview of an OS?  Hell... they're having issues getting us the final products. 
  • No one cares about lame excuses. Dont have it? Then they'll go to iPhone or Samsung... look at the horrific market share stats.
  • Microsoft should attack harder since google's android, disrespectfully blocked YouTube for wp8. After every support Microsoft gave to google, this is certainly not a way to behave. They deserve lumianauts.
  • It's like putting Pepsi in a Coca cola glass. Most people don't give a damn. These things are funny. Also that some people think that Microsoft doesn't focus on anything else except throwing mud = Funny people.
  • I don't get the joke....
  • It's all very well taking the p*** out of the competition but remember their apps work. Put your own house in order first please MS.
  • Lmao
  • It's good fun, though I do feel that what is highly needed is an ad campaign which showcases in a very straightforward and clearly objective (fair & true, accurate) manner, simply showing the areas in which Nokia Lumia have a massive degree of superiority over any other mobile device. Nokia has developed the most advanced technology and hardware related to the camera and the video/audio capture capabilities in existence on smartphones, years ahead of what anyone else has, furthermore they continue to build on that while the others seem to be ignoring what easily accounts for a third of a phone's use. All that the competition is able to do at this point in the smartphone evolution is to release their latest flagship with an improved viewing experience, larger and more appealing build and add a few gimmicky features like 4k video capture, fingerprint scanner, & maybe some gesture controls that don't even really work.
  • Any videos?
  • Yeah videos would be lot fun, nothing on youtube.
  • something fresh and funny love it
  • What WP really needs is simply to find the best means by which to make inform the consumers to the degree of superiority, starting with the most glaring distinction between Nokia Lumia devices and all others. The camera and video/audio capture capabilities are years beyond anything else on the market for smartphones, yet amazingly these capabilities which are steadily being improved upon remain under the consumer radar, desperately in need of a clear and focused ad campaign which illustrates the differences as well as retail sales employees who are capable and proactively able to ingage & inform customers. Microsoft may even need to explore various ideas and options w/ retail stores such as At&t to address this issue. Possibly working out something like allowing for a Microsoft paid employee to be permitted to be in stores and available to engage and inform customers as to what makes the latest Nokia devices so unique as well as to the benefits and capabilities brought to the WP OS through the recent upgrade to the system in the form of WP 8.1.
  • It's better first Microsoft concentrate on its messed up windows phone 8.1 and make itb usable. Its such a mess n substandard all my android using friends laughing at me over the limitations of windows 8.1!!
    First fix your home before poking others
  • "Its such a mess n substandard all my android using friends laughing at me over the limitations of windows 8.1"
    Get new friends.
  • I experience the exact opposite, they love how wp8.1 looks and runs.
  • I would suggest you learn a little bit more about your Windows Phone, then you'll be able to tell your friends why their Android phones are "messed up".
  • ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀█▓▒░ E░X░C░E░L░L░E░N░T ░▒▓█▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄
  • What? Your android friends? I will tell you this, I have a HTC One M8 sitting right next to my Lumia 1520, wanna know which one is smoother? Yes, that's right, the 1520, and the M8 is the king of the android hill. My 1520 does everything I need it to do and more so please elaborate on these limitations. I actually find far more useful features on the 1520 than I do on the M8.
  • Links to source videos would help. Have no idea as to what this is in reference to.
  • Microsoft needs a better ad agency. It doesn't work. 
  • + Infiniti
  • Nokia + Microsoft should spend as much as they possibly can on advertisement's against Android + Samsung. But should make it fun.
  • I think it's funny but e can certainly do better than this. I want an ad that really focuses on the feature set of our phones. The simplistic yet artistic design philosophy... The integration points through OneDrive, etc...
  • Haha.. Awesome thinking.
  • Isn't this gonna backfire for Microsoft itself since they are trying to expand windows os to other manufacturers, especially Samsung, htc etc.
  • I dunno - I don't see this going well.  Without seeing the source material, all I see are a bunch of "Lumianauts" looking to defect!
  • So is there a video to this and where is it, that's the real question
  • LOL!!!!