John Sculley may have been the one who pushed out Steve Jobs from Apple, but he also ushered in one of the most famous commercials. Sculley talks to CNET about Samsung's marketing efforts, Apple Watch, Tim Cook and more.

Thirty-one years after he helped oversee the iconic 1984 Macintosh ad, former Apple CEO John Sculley said there's still no one who can match Apple when it comes to marketing -- no matter how much money rivals pour into their campaigns.

Sculley was referring to Samsung, who took the smartphone crown thanks in part to its savvy "Next Big Thing" marketing campaign, which cemented its status as a credible competitor to Apple. But while Samsung may have a near-ubiquitous presence, it still can't beat Apple's ads when it comes to making consumers feel they have to have a product, said Scully, who's best known as the man who forced Steve Jobs out of Apple.

"Everybody talks about Apple. Nobody talks about Samsung, or Microsoft, for that matter," Sculley said. "It's hard to be one of these experience brands. Apple was superb about it...To play Apple's game as a direct competitor, which is what Samsung has been doing, is really, really hard."

While Sculley may be biased, his comments speak to the importance of a strong marketing campaign in the hypercompetitive battle for smartphone customers. Though marketing and a steady improvement in device quality helped Samsung reach the top the mountain, the company has recently lost market share and seen its profits dwindle as it gets squeezed by its rivals.

Samsung spent about 15 percent more on marketing its mobile devices in the US than Apple in the first nine months of 2014, according to the most recent data available from market tracker Kantar Media. But Apple still has managed to grow its market share and outsell Samsung in recent months, while Samsung has struggled to top its previous performance with recent flagship products such as the Galaxy S5 and Galaxy Note 4.

Sculley noted that Samsung's industrial design is "perfectly decent," but it hasn't managed to make consumers covet its devices and feel the way they do about their iPhones.

Samsung declined to comment.

Though Sculley has an infamous reputation, he was also known as a marketing genius who served as president of Pepsi-Cola. Since he himself was forced out of Apple in 1993, Sculley has advised and invested in companies, including low-cost handset vendor Obi Mobiles. Sculley even recently published a book, "Moonshot!," to coach companies on how to avoid the fate of companies like BlackBerry.

"The more successful you are, the more at risk you become of being a victim of that success," Sculley said. "One obvious example is Intel and Microsoft. In the 1990s they dominated personal computers...but both missed mobility."

That remark was part of a broader conversation Sculley had with CNET. Here are some other thoughts from the former Apple CEO:

The world of 'fashion electronics'

Part of Samsung's problem, Sculley says, is that it's still not thinking of the consumer when it's building products, but instead it includes technology features just because it can. Apple is more thoughtful when creating products, he said, and that's particularly obvious when it comes to wearables.

"We're in the world now of fashion electronics," Sculley said. "It's much less about the technology, it's about the fashion appeal of the products. I have no idea if Apple Watch is going to be successful or not, but certainly Apple has gone for the high ground with fashion. If a space is there for someone to build a fashion electronics brand for something you wear on the wrist, Apple's got the best shot at it."