Samsung’s latest ads make people on social media question reality

Samsung has launched a new ad campaign for the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5, and it all seems to have begun with an Instagram post that bedazzled the social media platform's users.

The campaign consists of videos showcasing giant, movable foldable phones mounted on billboards and buildings at key locations around the world, and they sure looks impressive. But — sorry to burts your bubble — they're not real.

The folding giant advertisements look out of this world, but that's because they kind of are. They're CGI (computer-generated imagery), and the fine print on the original Instagram video confirmed as much.

Nevertheless, a lot of social media users appear to have been so taken with these OOH (Out-Of-Home) ads that they didn't question whether or not they're actually OOH or CGI. If anything, this speaks volumes about Samsung's capabilities to create realistic CGI for its ads. It's quite impressive, but perhaps it would've been more so if these giant folding phones were real.

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Samsung's level of CGI has fooled a lot of people

With this ad campaign, Samsung is blurring the line between what's real and what isn't. But the company is not hiding it. After posting its video on Instagram, Samsung followed up with a blog post on its global newsroom page and explained the creation process.

The company says it used advanced video editing techniques, moving cameras, and rotoscope technology to superimpose these photorealistic folding Galaxy Z Fold 5s and Galaxy Z Flip 5s onto real footage of billboards and buildings from areas like the Times Square in New York City, Coex Media Tower in Seoul, Levent and Harbiye in Istanbul, and the Sino-Ocean Taikoo Li Mall in China.

Now, even though these great-looking ads are CGI and don't exist in the real world at these locations, the folding phones they represent are absolutely real. Samsung released the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 last month after unveiling them in July, and the actual phones look just as spectacular in real life as they do in these virtual advertisements.