“Samsung has denied any involvement with the ‘Wake Up’ flashmob staged outside an Apple Store in Australia, despite suggestions that it was an escalation of the company’s anti-iPhone campaign,” Chris Davies reports for SlashGear.
“Reported earlier this week, the flashmob saw dozens of black-clad men and women holding ‘Wake Up’ signs converge outside of the Sydney Apple Store,” Davies reports. “However, Samsung Electronics Australia has nothing to do with the ‘Wake-Up Campaign’ the company told SlashGear today.”
Davies reports, “It’s unclear, then, who arranged the Australian flashmob, and when they might step forward. The consensus about the event was that – if Samsung had been behind it – it did not paint the Korean company in a particularly favorable light.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The People for the Advancement of Alarm Clocks? The anti-sleep movement? 5-Hour Energy?
And, yes, Apple still should not be doing business with Samsung if they can help it and working hard to eliminate any dependence upon Samsung ASAP.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Why is Tim Cook still doing business with Samsung? Samsung stages ‘protest’ at Australian Apple Store (with video) – April 26, 2012
Strange. Looked too slick to be a not-for-profit. And that slickness makes it hard to take it seriously as anything but a marketing effort.
Maybe the MDN take is right. It’s a new product called Wake, from the people who brought you Nest.
I wonder, how much can one make from ads on a YouTube video if it involves a “mystery” about Apple Inc. and it’s the only video of the event which the media embeds in sites around the world?
Enough to more than cover the cost of hiring a black bus for a few hours, loading it up with some of your friends, printing up some placards, and pretending it was all just blind luck that you happened to be standing there shooting video?
(Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.)
The MDN take is fanboy nonsense, as usual.
There is no feasible way for Apple to completely drop Samsung as a supplier, particularly since 80% of its revenues (iPhone, iPad & iPod touch) depend on SoC CPU manufactured by Samsung, not to mention the IPS screens on the iMac and Thunderbolt display in addition to the IPS screens found in iOS devices.
Good point. Though, it’s a step up from the previous take -which was understandably a little reactionary. This one’s much more aspirational, and I imagine it’s something Apple are already looking at.
Basically, Apple will never let anything compromise the quality of their products, including a mithering copycat company. I guess the best analogy I can think of regarding Apple’s philosophy on this must be:
‘Hey, this manure will help our crops grow – as long as we can put up with the flies’
As you say its an aspirational slant everyone knows it cant happen over night or even within a year or so. However a question phrased something like ‘ as and when possible should Apple try to stop buying Samsung products to put in their own products’ isn’t exactly slipping off the tongue is it. I presume that MSN are confident enough (rightly or wrongly) in the intelligence of their readership to presume that they know what they mean by the question .
Of course they deny it after they realize it made them look like clueless idiots. Their advertising team should “wake up”
Yeah, it wasn’t Samsung that hired those lemmings, it was their marketing agency.
I think their marketing agency is being fired as we speak in order to distance themselves as much as possible.
Sort of like the mess that Coke got themselves in in New Orleans during the NCAA basketball finals.
Samdung endorsing any idea as people bing a horde of sheep unless they buy their Galaxy crap phone is enough for anyone to blacklist them.
When everyone shows up together on a bus, it’s not a flashmob, it’s a field trip.
A well-financed field trip, at that. This is obviously an ad campaign of some sort, but, is there any real evidence that Samsung is anywhere near it?
Yep…way too organized to be a flashmob event. Regardless of whether or not SammyD is directly behind it, this event puts another blot on this shameless copier’s rep and its inferior apple-like products.
The freaking bus is painted black with the words “WAKE UP” as well – this is no cheap rally – but a generically disguised protest typical of Samsung.
I don’t think it’s Samsung that’s behind this one. I really don’t believe they’re stupid enough to pull such a juvenile stunt. It would make them look so bad. It could be a distributor or a retail chain that doesn’t offer Apple stuff but I highly doubt Samsung itself would be involved.
Presumably because they’ve shown such integrity thus far…?
Believe me; I think Samsung’s shameless copying of Apple’s ideas and products is despicable and I myself don’t own or plan to buy any Samsung products. I’d be just very surprised that they would resort to being behind something so low and petty. I guess we’ll find out soon enough. If it’s Samsung behind it, well, the tide will turn against them in a very bad way in terms of brand and corporate image.
“I really don’t believe they’re stupid enough to pull such a juvenile stunt.”
Why is that so hard to believe? Microsoft and Bill thought it was a good idea for him to wiggle his ass on the commercial with Seinfeld. Yes, even a huge multinational can be that juvenile and stupid.
I think this is a case of, “Oops, we’re getting slammed all over the Web. Better say it was nothing to do with us.”
Well, we’ll see how this shakes out. As I’ve posted many times before, I have a fairly low opinion of Samsung in general and if it really turns out to be that they were involved with this, it’ll just prove once and for all that they have no class whatsoever and that will further put a mindshare gap between them and Apple in the public eye.
http://wake-up-australia.com.au/ This looks familiar, I wonder if it’s counting down to the launch of a Samsung phone in Australia?
That is indeed a very telling clue. It could very well be the Samsung mobile products distributor (or retail chain) in Australia behind it. I’m not trying to defend Samsung here at all. Even if Samsung’s HQ in Seoul didn’t directly authorize this stunt, it’ll still reflect very badly on them even if it was just a Samsung partner or distributor that organized it. If Samsung Australia knew about it and okayed it, then Samsung deserves all the slamming it can get. I’m fine with that.
whois result:
Visit Website »
Domain Name: wake-up-australia.com.au
Last Modified: 16-Apr-2012 00:50:03 UTC
Registrar ID: Crazy Domains
Registrar Name: Crazy Domains
Status: ok
Registrant: New Dialogue Pty Limited
Registrant ID: ABN 25111086938
Eligibility Type: Company
Registrant Contact ID: R-003810381-SN
Registrant Contact Name: ANON ANON
Registrant Contact Email: Visit whois.ausregistry.com.au for Web based WhoIs
Tech Contact ID: C-000891683-SN
Tech Contact Name: Private Tech
Tech Contact Email: Visit whois.ausregistry.com.au for Web based WhoIs
Name Server: ns1.dnspackage.com
Name Server: ns2.dnspackage.com
The New Dialog Party Limited.
So what dumbass event happens 5,898,000 seconds from… NOW?
I hate the anonymity allowed in IP registration. Shameful.
BTW: I went through the source code of the web page and found nothing telling. It’s infested with Google/DoubleClick crap, which is nothing new. The documentation indicates where they will be tossing in further code, apparently after the count down timer explodes. IOW: Whatever dolt perpetrated this garbage, they have made certain they are effectively anonymous.
The counter is indicating that Godzilla will “Wake Up.’ and stomp Seoul to dust on July 6th, according to my rough calculations.
Because of the constant lying and stealing of Samsung, Korean business are now looked upon as untrustworthy. Shame on Samsung for destroying any trust for Korean businesses.
As a Korean-American who grew up in Korea, I can totally relate to this and it’s one more reason that I’m very critical about the way Samsung conducts its business. It’s embarrassing to me. I showed the other “teaser” ad with the sheep to my wife and she also said that’s very tacky and makes Samsung look like a low classless company. It’s as though they’re trying to peddle hamburgers or something like that.
+1
Of course Smsung Denys it, just as they deny they stole the design of the iPad.
Samsung are liars and rank IP thieves.
Found this on Wikipedia.
“A flash mob (or flashmob)[1] is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and artistic expression.[2][3][4] Flash mobs are organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails.[5][6][7][8][9][10]
The term, coined in 2003, is generally not applied to events and performances organized for the purposes of politics (such as protests), commercial advertisement, publicity stunts that involve public relation firms, or paid professionals.[7][11][12] In these cases of a planned purpose for the social activity in question, the term smart mobs is often applied instead.”
Those people came with their own specially painted quater of a million dollar bus, identical uniforms and signs. They had to have been recruited and paid to behave like that.
I do not think they should be dignified with the label “Flash Mob.” Paid stooges would be closer to describing their significance.
good find NOT BILL…
a flashmob in deed.
pointless definitely.
paid by Samsung certainly.
“It’s unclear, then, who arranged the Australian flashmob”
So the bus didn’t had license plates? it is the easiest thing in the world to know who was behind that ridicules display.
This Fake Flashmob event matches Samsung’s advertising campaign pretty closely.
Samsung’s TV spot with the Apple store line-up intimates that those standing in line are just sheep who have not yet awoken to the fact that Samsung’s phones are somehow better.
I think that this event has the stink of Samsung all over it.
Yes, woke up one morning, called a few friends, got a bus, put “Wake Up” on it, drove to an Apple store where we shouted at the Apple patrons because we are devoted Samsung loyalists for all the cool gadgets Samsung made that became the moniker for that segment, like the iPod = mp3 player, oh wait, that’s Apple. No problem, the iPhone = smartphone of today. Oh wait, Apple’s too. Ahhh, the iPad = tablet. Darn it Apple, you have all the cool stuff with the cool names that people happily apply when defining it!
Yeah, that was a spur of the moment, non-Samsung supported, flash in the pan brainstorming idea of a happy Samsung item user.
It could happen! Not…
Apple sure woke up Samsung to the idea of touchscreen devices!
I thought someone in Australia had already traced this to one of Samsung’s marketing firms, named something like Tongue.
I would characterize this as Hitlerian storm troopers antics, whose aim is to create imaginary bogeymen and intimidate the opposition. Samsung is a dangerous rabble rouser and those in the Android camp should be very wary of it. Yes Google has begotten a Frankenstein’s monster which doesn’t bring anything good to its Android brethren but has been chomping up their very existence. It seems now that the smartphone space is occupied by only two antagonists: Apple and Samsung. Google is irrelevant because it does not profit immensely from its own creation.
I agree the first thought I had was how it was some corporate sanitised version of the Nazi blackshirt gangs who disrupted the opposition before the war. Only a non Japanese Asian company could surely fail to see the implications of this or simply didnt care.
Apple’s to-do list:
adobe, done.
msft, almost finished.
google, in progress.
samsung, next up.
No it seems as if it is not Samsung. If the from research from http://www.mactalk.com.au/content/rim-behind-wake-up-stunt-apple-store-not-samsung-2293/ is correct it seems as if this is the final death-throws of RIM.
Yes, there are pointers within the doubleclick code in the page source that point to RIM. Interesting. They certainly haven’t followed their own advice if this is the case.
It’s unclear, then, who arranged the Australian flashmob, and when they might step forward.
The anonymity and pointless nature of this EXPENSIVE ‘flashmob’ probably finished drilling its way into the heads of the tards who invented it, SHAMING them into NEVER revealing themselves. This is blatantly stupid Marketing Moron behavior.