Last week we brought you a peculiar story about a flashmob protest that took place outside an Apple Store in Australia. It seems that a group of black-clad protesters pulled up outside the store in a black bus with “WAKE UP” emblazoned on the side and stood outside the store holding black “WAKE UP” signs and chanting “WAKE UP.”
At the time, it was widely believed that Samsung was behind the campaign. Samsung has a history of taking shots at Apple fans, so it didn’t seem much of a stretch to think that they might be behind this protest. The protest drew a lot of confused criticism, and was widely regarded as pretty ridiculous.
That it was a marketing stunt and not a legitimate protest was made pretty clear in a blog post by Mumbrella, which discovered the Wake Up Australia website and traced it to a marketing agency called Tongue (formerly New Dialogue). The page consists of the phrase “WAKE UP” above a counter that appears to be counting down toward May 6th, three days after the London unveiling of the Galaxy S III.
The day after the news broke, though, Samsung denied having anything to do with it. That left us with a burning question: if Samsung wasn’t behind this nonsense, then who was?
Well, the answer appears – appears – to be BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. After Samsung’s denial James Croft of MacTalk, did a little more digging. He looked through the source code for the Wake Up Australia website, and found the following:
http://fls.doubleclick.net/activityi;src=2215527;type=black822;);
It seems that the “src=2215527” is an account identifier for Doubleclick. A Google search for that Doubleclick identifier brought up lots of different RIM Australia websites. While that doesn’t constitute ironclad proof, it’s a lot more solid than the Samsung theory, which was based mainly on the timing for that counter on the Wake Up Australia site, and Samsung’s weird infatuation with Apple. On top of the Doubleclick ID, MacTalk also points out that Nate Burr, the blogger who happened on-site when the protest began, has done work for RIM in the past, including a highly favorable review of the BlackBerry PlayBook prior to its Australian release.
A request for comment sent to RIM has not yet been answered.