Now that’s a fun way to raise awareness! 😀
Young activist from the Brand Protection Group gathered on March 15th, which is the Anti-Counterfeit Day, in City Mall Beirut to create awareness about imitated-fake products and brands, which can be harmful and dangerous to Lebanese consumers.
They started imitating random shoppers, which created lots of buzz in the mall. Many people even approached the imitators for interaction and to challenge them!
Really cool ! Nice seeing people doing cartwheels in City mall for a change 🙂
I wonder if that’s linked to the whole facebook fake profiles epidemic. some people got a link to the brand protection website on their profile
@Anastasia
Thanks for raising the issue! It makes sense now… Some of my friends reported noticing fake accounts using their own display pictures being created but with a slightly different family name.
Now I just asked one of my friends to give me the link she saw and it turned out to be http://www.brandprotectiongroup.org/
It was funny maybe, but whoever came with that idea forgot that people usually panic when they see someone impersonating them on Facebook and immediately ask their friends to report the account in question…
Well they impersonated me… i know who are they now and i can sue them…
Maybe this campaign would have been more productive if these girls and boys went and stood in front of stores selling fake international branded products inside this specific mall
What do you think about the Facebook campaign Rami? I saw that they copied Farah!! Interested to know what you thought!
@Danielle
I was first saying it wasn’t executed very well… but after giving it another thought, I guess it served its purpose, after all the whole thing is about fighting counterfeit product, i.e. reporting the fake profiles.
Some might claim it’s an invasion of privacy… but I don’t think they compromised anyone’s private data (no one is able to do so by simply creating a fake profile!), and that wasn’t what they were aiming for in the first place.
@Rami you are right at some point but i still believe they should have asked for our permission to do it and i would be so helpful in executing the scenario cc: @Danielle
And of course they managed to take advantage of the bloggers and facebook users without making any efforts or socializing with the concerned people.
@Farah
I don’t think they needed any help to execute the “scenario”, the whole thing was about fighting the fake product (in this case reporting your fake profile) and now one was hurt in the process. Did anyone compromise any of your private data?
As for taking advantage of people, you can’t really call it that way because that’s how viral stuff go on the internet, you usually rely on social media users and bloggers to share your viral material, you don’t go ask each and ask every person to share it because the material will speak for itself!
Great job in the mall, thanks for sharing the vid.
Besides the fake facebook profiles and the city mall imitation mob, have you seen the fake Marcel Ghanem on Kalam el nas?? or the fake newspapers?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfF5Jxopc68
I think it was nicely played on many channels simultaneously.. Masterminded! 🙂
About the facebook thing, it didn’t happen to me, but if it would, i would have been stressed out at first, but at the end, they didn’t really harm anyone.. The probably just make bloggers feel the seriousness of fake and imitated products, making them engage and talk about it without the need of explaining to them or trying to pay them to cover the subject. Weather we like it or not, i think we have to admit that it was smartly played.