When you come for the king, you best not miss.

That, at least, is what comes to my mind after watching Xiaomi's new ad for the company's upcoming Xiaomi 14 Civi smartphone.

The short ad, tagged #CinematicVision (Civi for short), is an obvious riff on Apple's tone-deaf 'Crush' ad. In the clip, a hydraulic press is shown destroying a bunch of instruments and other creative tools to create an iPad Pro, which hit the wrong note with creatives, prompting Apple to pull the ad and apologize for it.

Xiaomi couldn't just let it go, though. The company's ad starts in a very similar fashion, but the hydraulic press stops short (breaks down, seemingly) of actually destroying the tools beneath.

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While the intention is likely to show how the company is different from Apple when it comes to destroying beautiful objects and creative tools, it's unclear how copying Apple's ad achieves that, even in this tongue-in-cheek fashion. Furthermore, with Xiaomi's hydraulic press breaking down before it can do the crushing, what's the message here? They wanted to crush the stuff, but couldn't?

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We're all for playful teasing among tech giants. Samsung has been doing it for years, including making fun of the Crush ad a few days ago, and Apple did it for years with its Mac vs. PC series of ads. But if you're gonna do it, maybe put a little more effort into it.