Samsung's Happy Galaxy Tab Users Are Actors 190
harrymcc writes "At the CTIA Wireless show in Orlando this week, Samsung unveiled new Galaxy Tab tablets and showed videos of interviews with 'true-life' users who raved about the Tab, including a travel writer, a filmmaker, and a real-estate CEO. One problem: the writer and the CEO are actually New York stage actors."
News flash! (Score:5, Insightful)
Marketing = lies. Is anyone really surprised?
News at 11... (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess what? The people in ads are, well, actors.
And for the uber-naive, some online reviews are written by the product's manufactures!
Re:News at 11... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's called "marketing". (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:News flash! (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't that beautiful?
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty and hoped thereby to prove that the guilty party in this case was Life itself for failing to be either beautiful or true."
So... Samsung is in the clear...
I'm shocked and amazed (Score:2, Insightful)
The other day I saw an advertisement for a fast food establishment*, and there was a family there enjoying the food. I later learned that they weren't even related! The guy on the poster for haemorrhoid treatments doesn't actually have haemorrhoids either.
The point is that they're not deceiving you about anything that matters. A travel writer could use the galaxy for that purpose. Perhaps a travel writer even did, and they got an actress to explain why because it looks better. If you're going to choose something because its recommended by a pretty woman rather than a woman of more average appearance, then who are you to judge the marketing companies for taking advantage of this?
*Disclaimer - dramatisation only. I skip through the ads.
Re:News flash! (Score:4, Insightful)
The most interesting part of this "story" is of course the fact that it's much more an advertisement for Samsung's competition as a story in itself. "We: more honest than our competitors." It certainly isn't news.
Re:News flash! (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm a happy Galaxy Tab user, I just don't feel the need to prance around and sing about it.
Re:It's called "marketing". (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, it's just as well that Christopher Nolan put something at the bottom of the screen saying Christian Bale is an actor, and Batman doesn't actually exist, or he'd be doing hard time for fraud right now.
Re:why are putting up with this shit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Normally, we can assume they're all actors, but this isn't stretching the truth, this is a more flagrant dishonesty. The ad tells you that these are people and plainly gives you their "occupation" in a visual language that they are clearly trying to tell us they're real people and their real occupation, when it's not the case. The names they give are the actor's real names, which really muddies the waters in my opinion, give the actor's real names but fake their occupation.
Re:News flash! (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, users in advertisement are called personas, they may or may not be based on real users, sometimes they just examples of users the product has been designed for, but even if they are real, they are played by actors because real users make lousy actors.
Re:I'm shocked and amazed (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not the end of the world, but they're implying them as an endorsement by people in the field. The fact that the video says it's an "interview project" and list actual real names and but stretched or faked occupations, is pretty shady in my opinion.
Re:Look at that! (Score:5, Insightful)
That was exactly my point when I commented on this article yesterday on the site itself.
People are coming out of the woodwork screaming about fraud and astroturfing. No. Pretty much every single person who you'll find for this kind of gig is going to have an acting background on top of their day job. This is how the acting communities work. A handful of people out a hundred can make ends meet just by acting. The rest have to make ends meet by working day jobs. The overwhelming majority don't make much money at. Most move on after a period of time, but some of them plug away.
One of my best friends had (and still has) the acting bug. She lived in New York for a while after graduating. and managed to get quite a few small roles while waiting tables and tending bar. Eventually, she gave up it as a vocation (I think her parents bribed her) and now she's a lawyer. Still participates in community theater, still loves getting in front of the camera whenever she's given the opportunity. Just like every other actor who never made it as a professional actor.
And this is NYC we're talking about, for Taco's sake. CEO of a real estate company could describe a half dozen types of businesses that simply don't exist in most of the world.
Oh yeah, and those shows like Blind Date and their ilk? Half those people are actors, too. They're not acting in a role other than themselves for Blind Date. They're trying to get "exposure" or just jumped at the chance to get in front of a camera.
Of all the cockamamie REAL underhanded bullshit marketing tactics that big corporations pull every day, this is the one people are going to freak out about? GTFO.
Re:It's called "marketing". (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, it's just as well that Christopher Nolan put something at the bottom of the screen saying Christian Bale is an actor, and Batman doesn't actually exist, or he'd be doing hard time for fraud right now.
Try watching the credits until a message similar to this one comes along :
"The events depicted in this movie are fictitious. Any similarity to any person living or dead is merely coincidental."
It's in every friggin' movie.
Re:News flash! Relax, everyone! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, users in advertisement are called personas....
Thank god it has a name. That changes everything!
Okay, everyone. There's no lying going on here -- it just personas.
Everything's okay!