Polish telco pays actors to line up for iPhones
By Erna Mahyuni
A telco in Poland admitted to paying actors to line up in queues for the iPhone on launch day. It was a calculated publicity trick, ironic when in the U.S customers would pay to be in the queue.
The AFP minced no words in reporting the phoney iPhone enthusiasts. Of course, Steve Jobs’s fanboys could argue that this wasn’t, after all, Apple’s doing. Poland’s biggest telecoms operator, Telekomunikacja Polska, admitted to the deed without a qualm.
"It was a marketing move. We thought it was a pretty interesting strategy," said TP spokesperson Wojciech Jabczynski to the AFP. No comment as yet by France Telecom who controls TP as well as owning the Orange mobile telephone brand.
The Polish launch happened last Thursday, in comparison to the much earlier launch date in July for the United States. Over there, fans were willing to pay, beg and wrangle their ways into queues, even if it meant standing in line for days in advance. Of course, when that happened, Apple was accused of engineering such publicity stunts.
People probably got a clue when people in line started offering their slot to passerby for money. Not for cheap either: 100-300 zlotys or 45-135 dollars. A bargain for iPhone lovers, highway robbery for the rest of us. Of course the TP spokesperson said that a sizeable number of users, 38,000 of them, had signed up for iPhone updates on its site and though unwilling to reveal actual purchasers, TP sounded reasonably upbeat on the iPhone’s response.
TP wasn’t the only telco offering the iPhone to all and sundry. Rival telco Era also launched the iPhone. Era is controlled by German telco heavyweight Deutsche Telekom. Certainly an odd turn of events which shows that whatever the iPhone isn’t, it’s certainly not a stranger to controversy or strange headlines.
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