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Nokia Faked Its New Lumia 920 PureView Ad

43 points by kavi_nash 14y ago

noirman 14y ago
Busted! But it's amazing to see how Nokia thought they can get away with this.
- FireBeyond 14y ago
  Kinda like Apple thought they could get away with edited iPhone sequences, that showed all sorts of things happening far quicker than they ever do in real life. They had to be coerced, legally, to concede this. "Sequences shortened".
fookyong 14y ago
The conspiracy theorist in me suspects this was completely intentional. As a marketer I could make the argument that it's more important that as many people as possible know the feature exists, rather than people seeing an accurate demo of it. Baking in some viral component to the video helps this tremendously - I would not have watched the video (an ad!) if not to spot the gaffe pointed out by this article. It's not even that detrimental anyway - I'd hypothesize that most savvy consumers know that things are brushed up in ads, like how the big mac you buy in mcdonalds never looks like the one on the TVC. If the above is true, pretty smart on Nokia's part!
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
  Here's the real video they released with an apology, apparently taken by strapping two phones on a bar. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HSbhyaH0vw&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HSbhyaH0vw&feature=playe... http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/09/06/an-apology-is-due/ http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/09/06/an-apology-is-due/
  - manaskarekar 14y ago
    That's actually really nice! Seems like their marketing worked on me.
- hammersend 14y ago
  You're really reaching. At face value they shot a dishonest ad and incompetence got them busted. Why contrive some elaborate scheme?
amccloud 14y ago
I'm also skeptical about the floating lens claim. That doesn't seem like something you can just turn on and off. It looks more like software stabilization if you look at the video in their apology http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/09/06/an-apology-is-due/ http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/09/06/an-apology-is-due/
- Geee 14y ago
  The left one in the video is not 920, it's probably SGSIII. It's real OIS, but I'm pretty sure they also use some software on top of that, especially in video stabilization. I'm not sure if any software solution is effective on still images. There was white paper released earlier on the camera tech: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4481549 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4481549
dmbass 14y ago
Additionally, the second half of the video (the HDR low-light photographs) is also completely bogus. The crispness of focus on the girl contrasted with blur on the car in the background as well as the range of light and saturation of color are all evidence of a diligent composite of multiple exposures.
gst 14y ago
Not the first fake by Nokia. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJpEuMidcSU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJpEuMidcSU for Nokia's fake N97 commercial.
- penguinboy08 14y ago
  The N97 was an absolute joke. A close friend of mine went through a 6 month long battle here in Australia to get his contract nullified because of the blatant lies that Nokia told about the phone.
ClifReeder 14y ago
Blog spam - the source article is here http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3294545/nokias-pureview-ads-are-fraudulent http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3294545/nokias-pureview-ads...
- timmins 14y ago
  Not only that, but the first listing of the Verge is several paragraphs deep. Oh, and "The Verge" links to slashgear. Horrible attribution.
  - kavi_nash 14y ago
    Link slip! Corrected now :)
disordinary 14y ago
Its an advertisement so of course its shot with proper gear. Nokia didn't make it themselves, the production company would have. A few years ago ads for the Panasonic GH1 were revealed to have been shot with a Canon 5d - Panasonic said that the advertising company pitches the idea and are left to their own devices to shoot it.
- tomflack 14y ago
  If you're highlighting the quality of, or a specific feature of your smartphone's camera, the advertising brief should have at the very top: "You will use the product (Nokia Lumia 920 Pureview) to shoot example clips. No other cameras are to be used as a stand-in for the cellphone." You're insanely incompetent if you can't let your creative agency know this. Your creative agency is insanely stupid if they think it's okay to pass footage from another camera off as from the product being advertised.
- megablast 14y ago
  Yes, how can it be Nokia's fault. They hire an advertising company, which of course they have absolutely no control over. Except they do. They can dictate whatever they want to the ad company, and they have to do it. You know why? Because Nokia is paying the fucking bills. This is a disgraceful fake.
  - mbreese 14y ago
    Nokia didn't have to run the ad. They are responsible for what their ads say. And if they tried to push that video as coming from their camera, they are at fault. Nokia can probably be expecting a big fine over this.
chime 14y ago
How is this different from fast food ads with plastic burgers and salads? Or car ads with custom rigs. Or cleaning product ads that compare brand X vs Y? It is pretty much a given that making ads requires a certain amount of theatrics. The goal is to show how the potential features make your life better, not rigorous proof of actual usage.
- damian2000 14y ago
  I think there's a difference when they use it as a selling point like this optical image stabilization feature. McDonalds food ads for example still use the same raw ingredients but go to extreme lengths to get the presentation nice.
- danso 14y ago
  I believe in food ads, the food itself has to be edible
  - Klinky 14y ago
    How edible? You'd probably get extremely sick if you ate what they put on the food to make it look beautiful and stand up to long shoots.
- wallywax 14y ago
  Fast food ads do not use plastic food, at least in the US. Yes, it is carefully styled, but it is real food.
  - mbreese 14y ago
    McDonald's Canada (Quebec?) posted a video a while back that showed exactly how they turn the same raw ingredients for a burger into the one you see on TV. Short story - its amazing what you can do when you take 20 minutes to style the burger as opposed to 3 to make it in the restaurant. But, it's the same food.
    - ekianjo 14y ago
ftwinnovations 14y ago
Fake ad or not, I'm most interested in if the product can actually come close to those results. That would be amazingly impressive!
- hammersend 14y ago
  The last thing a blatantly dishonest advertisement makes me want to do is learn more about the product. A camera phone ad that uses a DSLR? Really? So if I go to buy a Malibu is the salesman going to have me test drive a Corvette?
- Mythbusters 14y ago
  which it apparently does if the video released later is to be believed.
tptacek 14y ago
Next you're going to tell me Siri can't handle Scorcese chatting with it in a cab in midtown Manhattan.
- Mythbusters 14y ago
  or anybody else for that matter...
brandoncapecci 14y ago
If Apple were to do this (again) people would probably be upset, but when Nokia does it, I'm just disappointed. Nokia is bringing real innovation to the mobile market and unlike most android releases I see, it actually pairs it with awesome device design. I can just imagine the video accompanying the release of the new iPhone in a few days: "We added an all new faster processor (the change won't even be noticeable but we will pay through the roof for it). It's running a new version of iOS (that is already old). We redesigned the fan to make it 2dB quiter (it wasn't loud to begin with but ok). We changed the connecting cable (so our old ones don't work then?). We made the screen even bigger (awesome, devs need to adjust their old apps for a new aspect ratio). We even added 4G (only the last company to do it). It's the best iPhone yet!" Of course, people will still hail that announcement as some sort of revolution. Nokia may have bs'd their ad but I can't help but ignore it and hope people see that these features are really quite cool without being exaggerated. It's refreshing to not only hear about screen size or processor speed in a new phone but also: a new photo technology, a more clear screen you can use gloves on, wireless charging, and a music functionality that seems a lot like a Nexus Q... If people didn't have their brand loyalties - any sensible person would realize how fucking awesome that list is. I still could be very likely getting an iPhone when it comes out but considering Apple literally hasn't done anything moderately interesting since Jobs died (besides troll Samsung), I can't imagine it's long before their stagnant innovation catches up to them. When the day comes that buying the phone with the best experience doesn't mean supporting a joke of a company, I'm going to be a really happy dude.

43 points by kavi_nash 14y ago

noirman 14y ago

Busted! But it's amazing to see how Nokia thought they can get away with this.

FireBeyond 14y ago
Kinda like Apple thought they could get away with edited iPhone sequences, that showed all sorts of things happening far quicker than they ever do in real life. They had to be coerced, legally, to concede this. "Sequences shortened".

fookyong 14y ago

The conspiracy theorist in me suspects this was completely intentional. As a marketer I could make the argument that it's more important that as many people as possible know the feature exists, rather than people seeing an accurate demo of it. Baking in some viral component to the video helps this tremendously - I would not have watched the video (an ad!) if not to spot the gaffe pointed out by this article. It's not even that detrimental anyway - I'd hypothesize that most savvy consumers know that things are brushed up in ads, like how the big mac you buy in mcdonalds never looks like the one on the TVC. If the above is true, pretty smart on Nokia's part!

recoiledsnake 14y ago
Here's the real video they released with an apology, apparently taken by strapping two phones on a bar. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HSbhyaH0vw&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HSbhyaH0vw&feature=playe... http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/09/06/an-apology-is-due/ http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/09/06/an-apology-is-due/
- manaskarekar 14y ago
  That's actually really nice! Seems like their marketing worked on me.
hammersend 14y ago
You're really reaching. At face value they shot a dishonest ad and incompetence got them busted. Why contrive some elaborate scheme?

amccloud 14y ago

I'm also skeptical about the floating lens claim. That doesn't seem like something you can just turn on and off. It looks more like software stabilization if you look at the video in their apology http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/09/06/an-apology-is-due/ http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/09/06/an-apology-is-due/

Geee 14y ago
The left one in the video is not 920, it's probably SGSIII. It's real OIS, but I'm pretty sure they also use some software on top of that, especially in video stabilization. I'm not sure if any software solution is effective on still images. There was white paper released earlier on the camera tech: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4481549 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4481549

dmbass 14y ago

Additionally, the second half of the video (the HDR low-light photographs) is also completely bogus. The crispness of focus on the girl contrasted with blur on the car in the background as well as the range of light and saturation of color are all evidence of a diligent composite of multiple exposures.

gst 14y ago

Not the first fake by Nokia. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJpEuMidcSU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJpEuMidcSU for Nokia's fake N97 commercial.

penguinboy08 14y ago
The N97 was an absolute joke. A close friend of mine went through a 6 month long battle here in Australia to get his contract nullified because of the blatant lies that Nokia told about the phone.

ClifReeder 14y ago

Blog spam - the source article is here http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3294545/nokias-pureview-ads-are-fraudulent http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3294545/nokias-pureview-ads...

timmins 14y ago
Not only that, but the first listing of the Verge is several paragraphs deep. Oh, and "The Verge" links to slashgear. Horrible attribution.
- kavi_nash 14y ago
  Link slip! Corrected now :)

disordinary 14y ago

Its an advertisement so of course its shot with proper gear. Nokia didn't make it themselves, the production company would have. A few years ago ads for the Panasonic GH1 were revealed to have been shot with a Canon 5d - Panasonic said that the advertising company pitches the idea and are left to their own devices to shoot it.

tomflack 14y ago
If you're highlighting the quality of, or a specific feature of your smartphone's camera, the advertising brief should have at the very top: "You will use the product (Nokia Lumia 920 Pureview) to shoot example clips. No other cameras are to be used as a stand-in for the cellphone." You're insanely incompetent if you can't let your creative agency know this. Your creative agency is insanely stupid if they think it's okay to pass footage from another camera off as from the product being advertised.
megablast 14y ago
Yes, how can it be Nokia's fault. They hire an advertising company, which of course they have absolutely no control over. Except they do. They can dictate whatever they want to the ad company, and they have to do it. You know why? Because Nokia is paying the fucking bills. This is a disgraceful fake.
- mbreese 14y ago
  Nokia didn't have to run the ad. They are responsible for what their ads say. And if they tried to push that video as coming from their camera, they are at fault. Nokia can probably be expecting a big fine over this.

chime 14y ago

How is this different from fast food ads with plastic burgers and salads? Or car ads with custom rigs. Or cleaning product ads that compare brand X vs Y? It is pretty much a given that making ads requires a certain amount of theatrics. The goal is to show how the potential features make your life better, not rigorous proof of actual usage.

damian2000 14y ago
I think there's a difference when they use it as a selling point like this optical image stabilization feature. McDonalds food ads for example still use the same raw ingredients but go to extreme lengths to get the presentation nice.
danso 14y ago
I believe in food ads, the food itself has to be edible
- Klinky 14y ago
  How edible? You'd probably get extremely sick if you ate what they put on the food to make it look beautiful and stand up to long shoots.
wallywax 14y ago
Fast food ads do not use plastic food, at least in the US. Yes, it is carefully styled, but it is real food.
- mbreese 14y ago
  McDonald's Canada (Quebec?) posted a video a while back that showed exactly how they turn the same raw ingredients for a burger into the one you see on TV. Short story - its amazing what you can do when you take 20 minutes to style the burger as opposed to 3 to make it in the restaurant. But, it's the same food.
  - ekianjo 14y ago

ftwinnovations 14y ago

Fake ad or not, I'm most interested in if the product can actually come close to those results. That would be amazingly impressive!

hammersend 14y ago
The last thing a blatantly dishonest advertisement makes me want to do is learn more about the product. A camera phone ad that uses a DSLR? Really? So if I go to buy a Malibu is the salesman going to have me test drive a Corvette?
Mythbusters 14y ago
which it apparently does if the video released later is to be believed.

tptacek 14y ago

Next you're going to tell me Siri can't handle Scorcese chatting with it in a cab in midtown Manhattan.

Mythbusters 14y ago
or anybody else for that matter...

brandoncapecci 14y ago

If Apple were to do this (again) people would probably be upset, but when Nokia does it, I'm just disappointed. Nokia is bringing real innovation to the mobile market and unlike most android releases I see, it actually pairs it with awesome device design. I can just imagine the video accompanying the release of the new iPhone in a few days: "We added an all new faster processor (the change won't even be noticeable but we will pay through the roof for it). It's running a new version of iOS (that is already old). We redesigned the fan to make it 2dB quiter (it wasn't loud to begin with but ok). We changed the connecting cable (so our old ones don't work then?). We made the screen even bigger (awesome, devs need to adjust their old apps for a new aspect ratio). We even added 4G (only the last company to do it). It's the best iPhone yet!" Of course, people will still hail that announcement as some sort of revolution. Nokia may have bs'd their ad but I can't help but ignore it and hope people see that these features are really quite cool without being exaggerated. It's refreshing to not only hear about screen size or processor speed in a new phone but also: a new photo technology, a more clear screen you can use gloves on, wireless charging, and a music functionality that seems a lot like a Nexus Q... If people didn't have their brand loyalties - any sensible person would realize how fucking awesome that list is. I still could be very likely getting an iPhone when it comes out but considering Apple literally hasn't done anything moderately interesting since Jobs died (besides troll Samsung), I can't imagine it's long before their stagnant innovation catches up to them. When the day comes that buying the phone with the best experience doesn't mean supporting a joke of a company, I'm going to be a really happy dude.