LG makes people think they're about to die... to sell monitors

Ads of The World's Ivan Raszl shared this guerrilla marketing stunt by LG, in which monitors were installed in the bottom of an elevator car to simulate the bottom falling out.

Understandably, passengers were a little startled:



Very effective way to get attention, in theory. But is it responsible advertising? While most of the people shown seem to "get" it almost immediately, a few were momentarily terrified. And those are just the ones LG chose to show us. (And who agreed to sign the release.)

Shocking people like this is fun when you're an observer. But I would not have been happy to be a patsy for this type of thing, even if it does show the product benefit.

On that note, if you go to the YouTube link, you'll see that there's quite a bit of controversy over the authenticity of this video.

Here are the top two:

The perspective down the lift shaft is always correct for the POV of the camera - NEVER for the lift's occupants. You can't make screens that create correct perspective for ANY angle of view! FAKE! 

- Mobilearn 

The perspective would look all wrong to the "passengers". Plus the image would be two dimensional. 

Did the makers of this ad really think people would believe this was real?
It's actually quite insulting. 

- Ami Yamato

And here's a recent, particularly damning one:

It's more that LG have obviously gone in and adjusted the imagery in order to attempt to make it look as if there actually is a shaft from the hidden camera's perspective, which shows that they are not showing the actual true account of what happened on the screens, ergo they are not telling the truth. That is all the "fake" claims are, LG have been shown to be happy to lie to consumers about their products.

- Arkesus 

LG UK doesn't seem to be engaged whatsoever in this conversation on their own social media channel.  Which might be the worst thing about this whole campaign.