iPhone 3G creates a new marketing campaign trend: fake queue

I first thought it was only another silly jokes from Fake Steve, when the news about people began lining up in queue for iPhone 3G back then, long before at its first official release in July.

And then came a hard and sick truth about this fake queue, when we found out that even David Pogue; the New York Time's tech pundit, he interviewed some of the paid actors on the street.

I can't imagine if this is a new marketing campaign idea originally from Apple, to create a massive lines of people just to spark up the iPhone 3G launch histeria. True or not, it's working. iPhone 3G sells like a hot pancake that comes right from the oven, and the queue lines last days afterward.

But when Orange, the biggest wireless carrier in Poland, is about to bring iPhone 3G into the birthplace country of the late Pope John Paul II; they're actually paying college students and actors to line up in front of Orange stores across the country.

"We have these fake queues at front of 20 stores around the country to drum up interest in the iPhone," an Orange spokesman said. Why would Orange do this is probably because there were no queues at T-Mobile's Era stores, which will also due to launch the iPhone on Friday. And there's a fact that mobile phone buyers in Poland may be reluctant to pay hefty monthly charges. Now, who's fault is that?

So, instead of hiding the truth; they're saying out loud and admitted it is for the purpose of marketing campaign. Way to go, a new trend has arrived and I'm pretty sure other wireless companies will use the same trick in the future, and not necessarily only for launching iPhones but other branded handsets too.

Watch the video of the fake queue below, courtesy of Gazeta (via Engadget); sources are from Reuters & AppleBlog.

Długie kolejki po iPhone`a?

[blogged with my Treo 750v]