Over the past year or so, we’ve seen a fierce legal war unfolding in the tech world, with the first to draw the sword usually being the Cupertino-based maker of the iPhone and the iPad. While Samsung didn’t hesitate to answer with its own legal salvos against Apple, the Koreans used a slightly different approach in their confrontation with arch-frenemy Apple.
We’ve seen how Samsung started selling the Galaxy S2 for only $2 in Australia, just when the iPhone 4S was released, and ridiculing the Apple faithful in a series of high-profile commercials. More recently, in a teaser video for the eagerly-anticipated Galaxy S3, Samsung makes a not-so-subtle reference to Apple fanatics, one that involves sheep.
Going a step further, Samsung apparently recruited the marketing agency Tongue, to conduct an “unbranded” protest outside the Apple Store in Sydney. A bunch of people dressed in black arrived in a black bus branded with the “WAKE UP” slogan. The “flash mobbers” then lined up in front of the local Apple Store, holding up banners that said “WAKE UP,” and chanting, you guessed it, “WAKE UP!” The agency also registered the website wake-up-australia.com.au , which displays a timer that will reach zero in about 9 days, which could be the expected release date of the Galaxy S3 in Australia.
A Youtube video blogger, Nate “Blunty” Burr was co-incidentally (and conveniently) visiting the Apple Store at the time and was able to capture the following video.
Funnily, Samsung’s stunt was not the first protest that particular Apple Store has faced this week, with Greenpeace holding a protest aiming to pressure Apple into using renewable sources to power its cloud computing infrastructure. Some have speculated that the “Wake Up” campaign could be a continuation of this protest, with the black theme symbolizing oil. Along those lines, the countdown could be the product launch of a solar energy company.
We’ll just have to wait and see what happens when the countdown reaches zero.
[Updated] Samsung denied its involvement in the stunt/protest, according to Slashgear: ”Samsung Electronics Australia has nothing to do with the ‘Wake-Up Campaign”. The plot thickens…
[Update 2] After some bloggers unveiled ties between the campaign and RIM, the struggling maker of the Blackberry came clean and admitted that it is behind this backfiring publicity stunt.