Should you play nice when you're doing well? Or should you seek the jugular, machete in hand?
It seems now that Samsung is in a confident position, it no longer needs to mock Apple. BlackBerry might be another matter, of course. That brand has a business which Samsung covets.
But when it comes to launching the Galaxy S4, Samsung is steering a course very much down the middle of taste, the road and, who knows, America.
I am grateful to Business Insider for pointing the way toward three new ads to celebrate Samsung's next big device.
They are sweet. They are innocent. They have no tinge of the iPhone-baiting that was seen in the recent past in the U.S.
In one, a girl with an Australian accent is visiting a Chinese family. There is a language barrier. Thankfully, there is no food barrier, so to tell them she loves the food, she uses Samsung's S Translator. As opposed to, say, Google Translate.
In another, a basketball team is nervously awaiting a game. The S4's Group Play feature brings them together in perfect harmony.
The song, though, is an interesting choice. It's all about a girl who is angry that her boy has left her. The lyrics, in part, are "I don't care." The boys bond over this sentiment. I hope they cared enough to win their game.
In the last of these ads, a son is leaving on a trip and his mother desperately wants him to send pictures. And he really wants to please his mom. So he sends pictures using the Sound And Shot feature that allows him to offer a voiceover to his images of, for example, sheep.
Wait, did I say sheep? Was this something subliminal about that phrase so beloved of the emotive, "iSheep"? No, I am being wishful.
Samsung really doesn't want to appear too cool and thereby exclude. Although it did manage to annoy quite a few women with its little launch drama in New York recently.
It's unclear whether these ads will run in the U.S. and, if so, for how long.
It would be a shame if some of the quite brilliant ads created here were not followed by something a little less anodyne than this grouping of generic pleasantness.