LG Electronics organized the scariest job interview in Chile.
Applicants had the scare of their lives when the company played a cruel prank on them that has been turned into an amusing TV advertisement.
To promote just how life-like images appear on the company’s 82-inch “Ultra HD” TV, LG created a fake office in which one of its screen was positioned to look like a window.
Four unlucky applicants – two men and two women – were then filmed in the fake office being interviewed for a job with the company.
To begin with, the interview process seems perfectly normal as the interviewer shakes their hand and starts to look at their resume.
But then the cityscape outside starts to change, the blue sky turns black, a meteor emerges from the clouds and suddenly the city explodes.
To promote just how life-like images appear on the company’s 82-inch “Ultra HD” TV, LG created a fake office in which one of its screen was positioned to look like a window.
The combination of high-def images and sound is – apparently – so realistic that each of the four interviewees freaks out, panicking and screaming as they see what they think is their city being destroyed.
Next the lights go out and the poor unsuspecting victims are left in the dark for a couple of minutes to add to the drama.
When the lights go back on, the door suddenly opens and in walks the LG team behind the prank to congratulation the poor unsuspecting targets.
The interviewee reactions after the prank are just as animated as some scream and shout, while others are quick to see the funny side of things and are probably just grateful that they haven’t just experienced the apocalypse.
It is a cruel but entertaining prank which does a highly effective job of promoting LG’s ultra high-def televisions.
However, some comments online by those who have seen the ad claim the whole process was faked. They claim actors are playing the parts of applicants and interviewers to promote the company’s latest television. Either way, it’s not yet known which is true.
This type of marketing is called a prankvertisement and since the clip appeared on YouTube on Monday it has been viewed more than 700,000 times.
[youtube 9Dtl7pRQ_4g]
LG Electronics has released what is described as the world’s biggest ultra-definition (UD) TV.
LG UD TV sports an 84 in (213 cm) screen, smaller than a 90 in model made by Sharp, but LG boasts support for 4K, a more advanced picture format.
The screen offers 8 million pixels per frame, four times the resolution of 1080p high-definition displays.
The firm sees this technology as a key marketing tool to help challenge market leader Samsung.
LG Electronics has released what is described as the world's biggest ultra-definition (UD) TV
Toshiba already offers a smaller 55 in 4K screen, and Panasonic a 20 in model. Sony and Samsung are also developing their own devices.
However, LG’s 25 million-won ($22,010) price tag is likely to dissuade many from investing in its technology at present.
“The 4K display market is still in its infancy but it was important for LG to claim a stake in this space,” said the chief executive of LG Electronics Home Entertainment, Havis Kwon.
The South Korean company is the second-largest seller of flatscreen television screens, and is known to compete with its domestic rival, Samsung, for bragging rights.
Earlier this year it sought to upstage its rival by showing off the world’s largest OLED (organic light-emitting diode) at the Consumer Electronics Show trade show in Las Vegas. But when Samsung heard about the news it shipped an identically sized model to the event.
One analyst said that sales of the latest release were likely to be limited, but it provided an indication of where the industry was pointed.
“4K is a technology that is an evolutionary step that – maybe a long way down the line – will be the successor to today’s HD televisions,” said Daniel Simmons from IHS Screen Digest.
“It’s a step up in image quality, offering the opportunity to have cinema-quality resolution in the home and is a noticeable improvement.
“But it is worth recognizing that many people only upgraded their televisions from CRT [cathode ray tube] models in order to have a larger flatscreen model – the high-definition feature was not the primary motivator.
“4K allows people to have even bigger screens in their homes and it may be the screen size, rather than the resolution itself, that makes it attractive.”
LG’s 84 in model has initially been released in South Korea ahead of its launch elsewhere in the world in September. It will also show off the device at the IFA tech trade show in Berlin at the end of August.
