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Samsung Israel Bets on Human Grit to Power Do What You Can't
Samsung's "Do What You Can't" is a 2019 film campaign produced by Leo Burnett Israel and directed by Tal Zagreba, published in Israel on July 26, 2019, in which real individuals who have overcome significant physical and psychological barriers embody the brand's long-running global platform through a single cinematic narrative.
The campaign exists as a locally rooted chapter of a platform Samsung first introduced to the world during the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, as documented by campaignsoftheworld.com. In Israel, Leo Burnett translated that global ambition into something more intimate. Rather than casting actors or athletes groomed for commercial work, the creative team sought out people whose lives already demonstrated the platform's core conviction. Among those featured is Beza Nababa, a blind marathoner who finished fifth at the Beijing Olympics, and Romy Barnea, a child dancer, as reported by adruby.com. Their presence anchors the film in verifiable human experience rather than aspirational abstraction.
The campaign carries a single media asset — a film — a deliberate formal constraint that concentrates all creative energy into one sustained statement. According to adruby.com, production was handled by Omri Paz Productions, with Great Guns, UK serving as co-producer, giving the Israeli execution access to international production infrastructure. Director Tal Zagreba described the creative intent with precision, stating that the core idea was to take Samsung's brand slogan and manifest it into an epic film featuring real characters who struggle against physical and psychological barriers to achieve greatness. The Electronics and Technology sector context is significant: in Israel, a market defined by high smartphone penetration and fierce competition among global brands, an emotionally resonant film platform offers Samsung a means of differentiation that product specifications alone cannot deliver. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, reflecting solid creative ambition tempered by the structural challenges of adapting a global platform for a single-market execution.
Samsung entered the Israeli market for this campaign at a moment when its global brand narrative was undergoing deliberate transformation. The strategic objective, as documented by The Drum, was to move Samsung away from a product-feature-oriented image toward an emotionally resonant and culturally relevant brand identity, with an explicit ambition to become what internal planning described as a beloved iconic brand. In Israel, that ambition required grounding an international platform in locally recognisable human truth.
The competitive context sharpens the strategic logic. According to adruby.com, Samsung held approximately 22 percent of the global smartphone market in 2019. Competitors including Apple and Huawei were investing heavily in brand-level storytelling as well as hardware differentiation, compressing the space available to Samsung for purely feature-led communication. In South Korea, Apple held approximately 35 percent of the phone market in January 2019 compared with Samsung's more than 51 percent share, as reported by adruby.com — a reminder that even Samsung's strongest markets were contested. In Israel, a technology-literate consumer base accustomed to global brand narratives would not respond to claims that lacked emotional or evidentiary weight.
Leo Burnett Israel's response was to reframe the brand promise as a statement about human capacity rather than device capability. Chief Creative Officer Ami Alush and CEO Adam Polachek oversaw a creative strategy that selected real participants whose life stories constituted literal proof of the platform's claim. This approach converts the brand slogan from aspiration into documentation. The film does not argue that Samsung technology enables extraordinary achievement; it presents extraordinary achievement as fact and allows the brand association to form through proximity. That structural choice reflects a mature reading of how emotionally driven electronics advertising earns lasting recall in competitive markets.
Director Tal Zagreba shaped the entire visual and narrative architecture of the campaign. Zagreba's stated ambition was to create an epic film — a word choice that signals deliberate scale and formal seriousness rather than the compressed, product-forward language typical of electronics advertising. The decision to work with real subjects rather than professional performers placed particular demands on direction: authentic emotion cannot be scripted, only created through the conditions in which filming occurs.
Production was executed by Omri Paz Productions in Israel, with Great Guns, UK serving as co-production partner, as confirmed by campaignsoftheworld.com and adsoftheworld.com. The Great Guns involvement brought international post-production and cinematographic expertise to bear on an Israeli shoot, a structural decision that aligns with the campaign's ambition to deliver broadcast-quality cinematic storytelling. Producers Omri Paz, Ravit Aviv, and Ophir Sorriso Tal are credited alongside agency producer Simi Ben Zikri, per adruby.com, reflecting a production team assembled specifically to support the logistical complexity of filming non-professional subjects in emotionally demanding scenarios.
The creative team at Leo Burnett Israel — Elad Gaizler, Oren Ben Naim, and Harel Livne — developed the brief that shaped Zagreba's approach, as reported by adsoftheworld.com. Their decision to confine the campaign to a single film asset rather than a multi-format suite concentrates all strategic and creative intent into one uninterrupted viewing experience. In the Electronics and Technology category, where advertising frequently fragments across short-form pre-roll, social cuts, and product demonstrations, a single long-form film signals confidence in the creative idea. PR manager Mia Segal is also credited in the production documentation, per adruby.com, indicating that earned media amplification was considered part of the campaign's distribution architecture from the outset.
No verified performance data for the Samsung "Do What You Can't" Israel campaign is publicly available. No sales lift figures, brand-tracking results, or reach and engagement KPIs for this specific execution have been documented by campaignsoftheworld.com, adsoftheworld.com, adruby.com, or any other named source at the time of publication. Similarly, no award entries or festival recognition specific to this campaign appear in publicly accessible records.
Structural analysis offers a meaningful alternative lens. The campaign's decision to anchor a global platform in locally verified human stories addresses one of the consistent vulnerabilities of international brand rollouts: the gap between a slogan's promise and a local audience's willingness to believe it. By featuring Beza Nababa and Romy Barnea — individuals whose achievements are independently verifiable — the film transforms Samsung's brand claim from assertion into evidence. That is a durable creative mechanism, particularly in the Israeli Electronics and Technology market where consumer scepticism toward advertising is well documented.
The platform lineage also provides contextual scale. According to campaignsoftheworld.com, the original Rio 2016 "Do What You Can't" campaign achieved more than 121 million fans, with the execution titled "The Chant" identified as its principal film. The 2019 Israeli execution inherits that equity while operating at a fundamentally different register — personal, local, and emotionally compressed rather than globally staged. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects this tension: strong creative intent and credible craft are present, but the single-asset format and absence of measurable market impact limit the campaign's demonstrable effectiveness relative to the platform's established global benchmarks.
Samsung's "Do What You Can't" Israel campaign is a 2019 film produced by Leo Burnett Israel, directed by Tal Zagreba, and published on July 26, 2019. It features real individuals overcoming physical and psychological barriers, serving as a locally grounded extension of Samsung's global brand platform first launched at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
Tal Zagreba directed the Samsung "Do What You Can't" Israel film. Zagreba worked with production company Omri Paz Productions and co-producer Great Guns, UK. He described the objective as manifesting Samsung's slogan into an epic film featuring real characters struggling against physical and psychological barriers, as documented by campaignsoftheworld.com.
The Samsung Israel 2019 campaign features Beza Nababa, a blind marathoner who finished fifth at the Beijing Olympics, and Romy Barnea, a child dancer, according to adruby.com. Both participants were selected because their documented life achievements provide direct evidence of the brand platform's core claim rather than performed aspiration.
Leo Burnett Israel, under Chief Creative Officer Ami Alush and CEO Adam Polachek, chose real participants over professional performers to transform Samsung's brand slogan from aspiration into documented human truth. The creative team — Elad Gaizler, Oren Ben Naim, and Harel Livne — concentrated the campaign into a single cinematic film asset, per adsoftheworld.com.
No verified award recognition for the Samsung "Do What You Can't" Israel campaign is publicly available. No entries or festival results specific to this execution appear in records maintained by campaignsoftheworld.com, adsoftheworld.com, or adruby.com. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, reflecting solid creative intent against limited documented impact.
Samsung launched the global "Do What You Can't" platform at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, achieving more than 121 million fans according to campaignsoftheworld.com. The 2019 Israeli execution by Leo Burnett continues that platform while shifting its register from global spectacle to local, personally verified human stories, adapting a proven global idea for a specific national market.
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