Samsung’s troll doesn’t dampen #iPhone6S launch

Samsung isn’t letting Apple have all the attention today.

With the iPhone 6S finally hitting store shelves today across the world, its number one competitor extended its long-form troll campaign against Apple. Samsung deployed workers to an Apple store in London this morning to hand out pillows and blankets to shoppers camping out for the news device.

That sounds sweet, but Samsung clearly had ulterior motives, so says Boy Genius Report.

Samsung workers disguised themselves as Apple workers, wearing similarly blue-colored shirts and didn’t identify themselves. The pillows also had a cryptic hashtag stitched on them too, BGR writes:

As it turns out, #NextIsNew is a Samsung hashtag, and the company was trying to make Apple fans look stupid by advertising a Samsung marketing scheme while waiting in line for an iPhone 6s.

For those smart enough to search the hashtag on Twitter, this sponsored tweet appears first:

Although the campaign might have sounded clever in Samsung’s meetings, Twitter users were quick to trash it:

Yikes! Despite Samsung’s attempt to shift some of the attention away from hyped iPhone 6S launch, it didn’t make a dent: The hashtag #iPhone6s trended all morning. Topsy measures 30,000 tweets using the hashtag within the past 24 hours, mostly from excited fans tweeting pictures of the enormous lines outside of Apple locations:

The iPhone 6S is expected to be Apple’s biggest launch yet with analysts predicting 12 to 13 million units being sold this weekend alone, numbers that Samsung has the right to be bitter over.

Photo via Apple.

https://digiday.com/?p=137787

More in Marketing

Here is how Lego’s partnership with Fortnite stacks up as an example of video game brand marketing

The game worlds of “Lego Fortnite” are 20 times the size of the digital environment of “Fortnite: Battle Royale” — and they’re built completely out of virtual Lego bricks, making the entire experience a showcase of the Lego brand.

Research Briefing: Programmatic hits road bumps heading into 2024

In this week’s Digiday+ Research Briefing, we examine the challenges facing programmatic advertising, how publishers, brands and retailers are giving up on X, and how publishers and brands are rapidly increasing their use of AI, as seen in recent data from Digiday+ Research.

Influencers

How Whalar’s Gaz Alushi is putting the creator economy into programmatic terms

The creator economy is on its way to becoming more like the programmatic market than many advertisers realize.