Samsung's Happy Galaxy Tab Users Are Actors

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."

Comments

why are putting up with this shit?

[improfane]

I never had a problem with Samsung, these companies are going to get worse with the bullshit if we just let them. Astrosurfing is something that needs to be fought back against. It needs to be made public.

Why isn't there are defamation website or the realdeal or cutthebullshit website? Or thetrangressions website?

Keep a history of all the bullshitty things a company has done to users. Apple and Microsoft would have reams of instance of screwing with the company. Something like fuckedcompany but more organized and has a specialized interface?

It would need legal protection or it might be sued for defamation, even if it is correct. Does western civilization not realise how strongly the foot is on our throats?

Bah.

Re:why are putting up with this shit?

[PopeRatzo]

I really doubt marketing departments ever consider what /.ers think...

This is a common meme and also very wrong. I am an average Slashdot user, and I see advertising all over the magazines I read and the websites I visit (well, I would if I didn't use adblock and ghostery, except on Slashdot). Some of those magazines are pretty specialized.

Also, if marketing departments didn't care what we think, would they ever pay companies like New Media Strategies to sent armies of astroturfers here to post comments and disrupt our discussions on a daily basis? And by "armies" I mean most of the UIDs from 1900000 to 2000000. And according to my Texas Instruments programmable and graphic calculator, comes to about a hundred thousand astroturfers, or if you are so inclined, 1 x 10^5, or 11000011010100000.

Re:It's called "marketing".

[klagermkii]

The fraud is that they claim there's a particular real-estate CEO called X who believes Y about the Galaxy Tab, and in the way it's presented it's not unreasonable for someone to believe that that person actually exists. With movies there's a clear expectation going in that it's fiction.

However, if you go and make up fake reviews about your own movies such as calling them "another winner" and attributing them to non-existant movie critics, then that's also fraud.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4741259.stm

Re:Look at that!

[JabberWokky]

She's worked for the Travel Channel. It wouldn't surprise me if she's done some magazine articles. At the very least, her statement in the ad jibes with her career. I wonder if Joseph Kolinski has sold real estate.

Honestly, if they were actors, being paid as actors to portray characters, wouldn't they be using character names? This kind of sounds like they may have picked a minor side job they do when they can't find acting work and used that as their career. Otherwise, why use their real names if they are playing wholly fictitious characters? It's not exactly like they would balk at playing a part using a character name.

Re:News flash!

[macs4all]

"Do you have any doubt that if Apple showed a similar set of videos, they would be videos of real people who actually loved their iPads?"

No doubt at all. Remember the original "Switcher" campaign? One of the reasons it was discontinued was that the real-life people in the ads started getting harassed/idolized in real-life. They were not actors.

Contrast that with the one-and-only Windows "switcher", who's picture came straight from Getty Images...