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These new Samsung foldable ads aren't real

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Samsung is wowing people on social media with a new ad campaign promoting the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 foldable smartphones. No, we aren’t talking about the one that innocuously trolls Apple. The Korean firm has published new videos featuring giant, movable foldables at some iconic locations around the world. The ads look impressive and can easily grab anyone’s attention. But — if you haven’t already figured it out — they aren’t real.

The Samsung ads in question feature the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 mounted on massive billboards and buildings at places like Times Square in New York City, Coex Media Tower in Seoul, and Sino-Ocean Taikoo Li Mall in Chengdu, China. The foldables have their bases attached to the billboard or building, with the other half slowly unfolding skyward. Crowds below stare up and take pictures of the outlandish ads on their smartphones.

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However, all of this is fake. Well, the locations are real, but everything else is CGI (computer-generated imagery). Samsung didn’t actually put up massive, movable models of its latest foldable smartphones at those locations. Instead, it superimposed images of the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 on real buildings and billboards and used CGI mastery to bring them to life. The result is impressive enough to wow the internet.

“Using advanced video editing techniques, moving cameras, and rotoscope technology, these huge, photorealistic foldables were superimposed onto footage of actual billboards and buildings. Rendered at a large scale but in meticulously realistic detail, the digital models capture viewers’ imaginations by showing the new foldables’ distinctive form factors inserted into familiar settings,” Samsung explained via a press release.

Samsung used CGI mastery to draw attention to its foldable phones

Of course, the Korean firm has mentioned this in fine print in the video that it originally posted on Instagram. “Please note that the OOH advertisement scenes featured in this video are not real but virtual images created with computer graphics,” the notice in fine print reads. Samsung wanted to draw people’s attention toward its new foldables through these OOH (out-of-home) ads, and the trick seems to have worked. People aren’t questioning the reality.

Unsurprisingly, Samsung launched this ad campaign for the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 just when Apple unveiled the iPhone 15 series. The Korean firm has done so on numerous occasions in the past as well. It releases new ads for its latest products coinciding with new iPhone launches.

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