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Samsung is taking its latest Galaxy campaign to therapy.
The tech giant has tapped “Couples Therapy” star Dr. Orna Guralnik to lead “Switchers,” a new campaign that centers a counseling session on the anxieties around ditching a longtime smartphone.
The branded spots pair Guralnik with pairs of contrived couples such as “Summer House” star Ciara Miller and Dylan Efron, reality TV personalities Carl Schmidt and Aniya Harvey and former NFL players Nick Foles and Clay Matthews, who work through tech-centered issues such as “brand loyalty,” “group-chat fears” and the “perceived hassle of transferring data between devices.”
“My profession is all about change,” Guralnik, a clinical psychologist who stars in Showtime’s “Couples Therapy,” tells Variety. “People come to analysis when they’ve reached a certain point where they’re just repeating the same old patterns and having a hard time letting go or changing.”
“The fact that Samsung decided to go toward this kind of psychological, even psychoanalytic language — even using language like, ‘What’s your defense?’ — it just tickled me a lot,” Guralnik continues. “What a great way to bring psychoanalytic and psychological language into mass culture, which is really what I’m doing with the show anyhow.”
The commercial is the latest example of Samsung leaning on talent to market its Galaxy lineup. Earlier this year, the company added singer and rapper Audrey Nuna, model and influencer Haley Baylee and 11 other creators across music, gaming, fashion and culture to its #TeamGalaxy roster around the Galaxy S26 launch. Samsung also enlisting K-pop talent including Eric Nam for its Galaxy Experience in February.
Samsung’s latest Galaxy Z lineup now spans three foldable models: the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, Z Fold8 and Z Flip8. The company says 30% of Galaxy Z Flip8 buyers since launch have switched from a competing smartphone brand, while the Fold8 and Fold8 Ultra are also bringing in a higher proportion of competitive switchers than the previous Fold7 generation.
That makes convincing longtime iPhone and other smartphone users to defect a central part of Samsung’s sales pitch. The campaign highlights Smart Switch, which transfers contacts, photos, videos, messages, apps and settings from iOS or Android devices, alongside cross-platform RCS messaging and Samsung’s broader suite of Galaxy AI features.
Guralnik even tested that proposition closer to home with her teenage son, whom she describes as highly resistant to changing phones. “He was constantly worried about how easy it would be to switch,” she says. “Would he lose all his contacts? Would he lose all his chains of messages with his friends? His photos? All of that.”
Once he made the jump, she says, his concerns largely mirrored the barriers Samsung had built the campaign around.
“They really dug deep into people’s anxieties and addressed them,” Guralnik says. “So, touché to Samsung.”
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