A Samsung commercial depicting a lady exercising alone at 2 a.m. has been deemed “unrealistic” and disrespectful.
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.
It 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.
Jamie Klingler, the co-founder of Reclaim These Streets, said the ad was “completely and utterly tone deaf, especially in light of Ashling Murphy”.
“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,” she said.
According to Klingler, it’s tough to envision a lady feeling comfortable running at that hour of the night, which is why the commercial is “beyond ludicrous.”
Sahra-Isha Muhammad-Jones, the founder and head of partnerships of Asra running club, a group for Muslim women, 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.”
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