A recent Samsung advertisement featuring a woman waking up at 2 am to go for a run alone on the streets of a big city has been on the receiving end of criticism as viewers termed it “unrealistic”, “tone-deaf” and “short-sighted”.
Titled ‘Night Owls. Your Galaxy. Your Way.’, the commercial advertises Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Buds 2 and shows the women running past dark streets and alleys in the middle of the night. “Sleep at night. Run faster. Push harder. Follow the herd. Not for me, I run on a different schedule: mine,” the voiceover says.
However, Women’s safety group Reclaim These Streets found it offensive in light of the death of Irish teacher Ashling Murphy, who was killed while running along a canal near Tullamore, west of Dublin, in January.
The ad was “completely and utterly tone-deaf, especially in light of Ashling Murphy,” Jamie Klingler, the co-founder of Reclaim These Streets told The Guardian. “It’s the Kendall Jenner Pepsi moment for Samsung. It isn’t safe for us to run at night and the last thing I want is for anyone to violate our space while we are trying to exercise. It’s almost laughable how bad this ad lands.”
Esther Newman, editor of Women’s Running magazine, added that the ad was “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.”
Several users took to Twitter to express their displeasure over the advertisement.
Hey @samsung how realistic do you think your advert of a woman running at 2am is on a scale of one to are you mad?
This couldn’t be further from the experience of pretty much all women, especially wearing headphones! Assuming the only women involved in the making was the actress— Jack of all Tirades. (@InCockKneeToe) April 21, 2022
“So ridiculous. Huge miss from the campaign,” a user wrote.
This gave me the hump the first time I saw it and I get more annoyed each time it comes on. I don’t know any woman that says ‘oooh, it’s the middle of the night, the best time for me to go for a run and enjoy all the interactions with men I don’t know’
— Windy Beaver (@WindyBeaver) April 21, 2022
Another user commented: “The @SamsungMobile Watch ad is annoying because it implies that a woman can run at night without a care in the world.”
Samsung Galaxy doing an advert for a fitness watch where a woman goes running alone? At night? You have to laugh
— Mollie Goodfellow (@hansmollman) April 23, 2022
After the massive backlash, Samsung apologised for “how this (advertisement) may have been received”. “The ‘Night Owls’ campaign was designed with a positive message in mind: to celebrate individuality and freedom to exercise at all hours,” the company told Radio 1 Newsbeat.
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