RIM confirms ‘Wake up’ campaign created by RIM Australia

UPDATE: RIM Australia issued a statement this morning, May 1 9:20 AM AEST, with Richelle Gillett, Account Director from Spectrum Communications for Blackberry confirming:

“We can confirm that the Australian ‘Wake Up’ campaign, which involves a series of experiential activities taking place across Sydney and Melbourne, was created by RIM Australia. A reveal will take place on May 7th that will aim to provoke conversation on what ‘being in business’ means to Australians.”

Two days ago, Mumbrella posted an article pondering whether Samsung was responsible for the embarrassing Wake Up campaign that featured a paid for protest in front of the Sydney Apple store.

Mumbrella carefully chose the words “Samsung Galaxy launch believed to be behind ‘Wake up’ teaser campaign” (my emphasis added), but that didn’t stop The Next Web from claiming Samsung responsible, and from there, the story bounced to Cult of Mac, Daring Fireball, The Loop, and even MacTalk without anyone checking the facts.

As the story grew, comments on each article pointed out the timing for the countdown calendar on the Wake Up teaser page missed the expected launch of the Galaxy S3 (or New Galaxy, or whatever it’s called) by a few days. This timer was the original “smoking gun” linking the campaign to Samsung, but who cares about the facts when telling a good story?

Yesterday, according to Slashgear, Samsung publicly denied they were responsible for the stunt. So who is behind it?

James Croft, from our Mactalk Podcast, and our sister website, looked through the source code of the Wake Up page and spotted something interesting:

Code:
http://fls.doubleclick.net/activityi;src=2215527;type=black822;);
This bit is relevant:

src=2215527;type=black822

That SRC value is a Doubleclick account identifier. Throw that back into Google:

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=%…ick%22+2215527

…and you get a bunch of hits on the RIM AU website.

In those search results there’s also a single forum post on AppleInsider from a guy who also spotted this source code.

So it appears* it’s Poor Old RIM who put together this embarrassing campaign. It’s heartbreaking that even when RIM try something cool, they end up screwing it up so badly that no-one even imagines it could be them.

It’s also worth noting that Blunty, the lucky man who just happened to be at the Apple store to capture the video of the protesters, has worked with Blackberry in the past. He posted a three part glowing preview of the Blackberry Playbook in the lead up to its Australian launch.

If RIM does turn out to be responsible for this campaign, Samsung owes them a beer. They’ve had a bunch of free publicity over the last few days, and they’ll get a few more days of free publicity when the retractions come through. Not to mention all the Android sites who’ll be able to (rightly) make fun of the Apple blogosphere for leaping to conclusions. As for RIM, I wish them all the best…

*Before this theory gets out of hand, remember, I have no proof beyond the Doubleclick ID in the source code.

source