LG Secret viral ad aims for sexy, ends up squarely at creepy
By Nilay Patel 
posted June 18th 2008 3:28AM
posted June 18th 2008 3:28AM
posted June 18th 2008 3:28AM
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Holly freakin dead peacock!
It was a good video showing the fact it is a touch screen. The whole video he is recording the woman, but as he touches the screen the woman changes in real live. It is designed to show that it is a touch screen and you can interact with things. He even tilts the screen and she moves in real live.
It's just a bit sick that they choose to film a woman sleeping. Would of been much better with a football/basketball fan recording a game and doing similar, eg moving the ball so it goes in the goal/net.
PS I'm from the UK!!!!!!
A successful ad shouldn't need an explaination as you just gave, but thank you anyway.
as Butthead so elonquently says it...
"uugghh, this sucks!"
Really, if they were going to do this they might as well have just made a real porn and somehow featured the phone. This would've been a sexy ad if I wasn't feeling bad for the girl the whole time.
You think that guy's hard-on was totally killed when his mom called? haha sucks to be you
I had this phone last week and returned it after 2 days. 10 minutes of talking and playing with all the 'new' features and the battery was dead.
Not to mention a rather temperamental interface. It really is a beautiful phone, with its carbon fiber back, tempered glass and sexy blue looks, but as a phone it just falls a bit short.
They should make the same ad with a woman doing the stalking and a guy in bed, I think it somehow would be less creepy due to the lower threat, and more noteworthy, plus support equality - of unwholesome behaviour - but equality.
If they do make that I don't need a link to it though :]
i think they could have had the same advert work, by maybe having the girl's actual partner in the same room, playfully manipulating the image of his sleeping (what the hell.. fridgid wife) on his phone, in a kind of, oh you naughty boy way.
but spying on your neighbours from another building...
WTF? Are YOU kidding me?! "Controlling" someone who does not give her consent = rape!!!!!
Uncomfortable. I love LG phones for the most part (Had the CU500 and it rocked, my N95 has taken it's place though) but this ad straight up sucked. Thanks for the heads up on how not to market, Engadget.
I can't lie. I liked it!
I thought it was creative (I'm in the industry).
I thought it (however embelished) did a good job of portraying the phones sex appeal. The one thing that manufacturers would like you to think of their product is sexy.
Also, I think you guys use the term creepy too liberally - he was playing with the phone. It would have been creepy if he was in her room doing it to her - No? We men fantasize (especially after gadgets : )
BTW I'm from the UK (but have lived in the US for 15 years).
Generally speaking the underlying "creepy" factor is the fact that this guy is standing outside her window filming her sleeping - the rest of the commercial with him "manipulating" and "touching" her (the ad goes out of the way to intersperse scenes of him touching the image on the screen with "touching" her directly) is icing on the cake. I don't think anyone is having trouble with the underlying logic of the ad, it's just that one can't help thinking a similar message could have been conveyed in a less creepy fashion (i.e. not have the guy standing creepily outside the window, so it would be easier to see it maybe as her boyfriend or something having some fun).
I don't get it. For what country was this made for? It's really creepy, to put it mildly.
I bet the girl in the phone would've gotten pregnant if the guy's mom didn't call....
Maybe the secret is she gets off on being watched. She is after all in a well lit room with the shades fully open, and she does the little shhh thing at the end. Is that creepy?
Or, we just over ANALizing this?
I think this was probably meant for the EU market - they are less offended by such SHOCK!
Horrible. It looked like something a contestant on 'The Apprentice' would come up with. Geez.
Extremely stupid and boring video.
That's indeed very creepy.
farking tease
I thought the ad was fine. Very European in tone and humor. My ex is Swedish so I saw many similar ads in her VHS collection. A search on YouTube will show other such ads, especially from Germany, Scandinavia, France and Italy. My feeling is that it was made for the Euro market, and only the ending is specific to the country. In the UK, the guy would have a British accent. In Germany, it would be German, etc. Note that the guy's mouth is deliberately covered so that we wouldn't know what language he was speaking.
The point of the ad was to highlight the realism of the hi res camera and the phone's interactivity, and it worked for me. It's the video version of the old Memorex ad.
As for the stalking aspect, how do we know that they're not dating? In the sitcom Friends, couple Ross and Rachel were able to look into each other's apartments. Upon discovering that she was being watched, the woman performed for the guy so she certainly didn't feel threatened. It's no more perverse than phone sex between spouses.. Or a webcam between lovers. And you know what? I often stare lovingly at my sleeping girlfriend without her knowledge (am I supposed to wake her to let her know?). She does the same with me. We think it's romantic. So why not assume the same of the people in this ad?
Wow.. How corny
creepy, or not, I still enjoyed it.
I guess that makes me a creepy old man...
creeper
Who cares if it's a crappy ad. The fact that there is close to a hundred comments about it and I'm sure most of us sent the link to someone at least once. That's sounds like an effective viral campaign to me.
That's the one part that's ambiguous though, as to whether they knew each other or not. I don't have a problem with most of the ad either, since it's him fantasizing with the phone. But the snapping of the picture part IS weird, due to not knowing.
That was in reply to Sam.
I really wish clicking reply once worked, instead of having to click it twice to get it to reply to another post.