I think Samsung missed the point of HP’s “Hands” effort. “Hands” was cool because the hands in the ads belonged to people we could both admire and identify with. By exposing the contents of their hard drives, celebrities also shared the contents of their minds: how they saw the world and chose to make it their own, all in a style that resembled play.
Along that vein, Samsung gives us “Express Yourself” by Cheil Worldwide Canada. Its two ads, “Express Yourself” and “Hands,” try replicating HP’s idea but taking the human interest story out.
There’s no narrative; just peppy background music. The hands aren’t even human; they’re just animated cell phones, flashing symbols and playing catch.
The campaign extends to Toronto’s Union Station, where hands molded out of cell phones accompany phrases like “Express your innovative side” (illustrated with a hand’s “number one”) and “Express your strong side” (illustrated with a fist).
In my mind, some pissed-off public transit passenger has already begun expressing his misanthropic side — with a hand signal used far more often than the dated “number one.”
