Samsung hands out free phones to Appel fans

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Samsung-Appel 1
You mean Apple? Nope.
Photo: Samsung

The Appel community is all over Samsung these days. And, no, before you accuse us of failing to properly proofread these articles, we’re talking about Appel, a hamlet in the Netherlands with a population of just a few hundred residents.

In an effort to drum up a bit of publicity, Samsung recently handed out free Galaxy S9 handsets to people living in Appel as a marketing stunt. Because, you know, getting people who live in a town with a kinda similar name to that of your competition is totally the kind of thing that keeps Tim Cook up at night!

Samsung’s certainly not above taking jabs at Apple in its advertising. Its ads frequently spend as much time mocking Apple as it does talking up its own products. In this case, however, it’s going for more of a guerilla-style marketing stunt than its usual approach — albeit not necessarily any more successfully.

Samsung isn’t the only company to try a similar stunt in the wake of Apple’s new iPhone XS and XS Max. On the day of the new iPhones’ release, Huawei parked a van up outside Apple’s flagship retail store in London to engage with prospective customers.

The van offered up free phone charging and served up juice to passers-by, featuring the taglines, “Get ju%ce that lasts” and “No traces of Apple.” This was a shot at Apple’s supposedly inferior iPhone battery life.

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