Samsung finds a real Tim Cook to promote the Galaxy Z Fold 8, and he is a real estate agent in New Zealand

[Anchor]

Samsung New Zealand has released a genuinely funny ad campaign featuring Tim Cook praising the Galaxy Z Fold 8, except it is not Apple's former CEO, it is a property agent named Tim Cook who works at Harcourts in Palmerston North and happens to bear a striking resemblance to the tech executive, right down to the grey hair and spectacles. The timing is not remotely accidental, landing just after Apple unveiled its first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo, entering a category Samsung has occupied since launching the original Galaxy Fold back in 2019.

The ad is styled deliberately like a slick tech product presentation, with the tagline Tim Cook has an announcement, and for once, it's about Galaxy sitting over footage of the New Zealand Tim Cook sitting in a plain white background chair reminiscent of Apple's famously minimalist aesthetic while reviewing the foldable. He also appears in a separate unboxing video, delivering the line the future is here with a completely straight face. The real Tim Cook, incidentally, actually did step down as Apple's CEO on September 1, transitioning to executive chairman, which makes the whole joke land with even sharper timing than Samsung could have originally planned for.

This is not Samsung's first time taking a direct dig at Apple through advertising either. Its 2018 Ingenius campaign mocked the iPhone X's notch and lack of a headphone jack, and the broader pattern of Apple rivals trolling the company through cheeky ads continues, with Google's own Pixel 10 teaser last year taking a jab at delayed Siri AI upgrades. Samsung has separately built a Welcome to Foldables campaign around its multi year head start in the category, and this Tim Cook ad slots neatly into that same broader positioning.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 itself launched in July with a 5.5 inch cover display, a 7.6 inch inner screen, and a 201 gram body Samsung calls its lightest Fold yet, putting it in fairly direct competition with the iPhone Duo, which shares the same 7.6 inch inner display size but weighs a noticeably heavier 254 grams

Samsung Finds Another Guy Named Tim Cook To Promote Galaxy Z Fold 8www.forbes.com

[TokenStreamMargin]

The real Tim Cook stepping down as Apple CEO on September 1, right before this ad campaign dropped, is a level of comedic timing that Samsung's marketing team almost certainly could not have fully planned for and just got to enjoy as a happy accident. Sometimes the universe just hands a marketing department a gift like this and all they have to do is not screw up the execution

[Brooke_19]

Finding an actual real estate agent named Tim Cook who genuinely resembles the Apple executive is such a specific and delightful bit of casting that it elevates this from a simple pun into something genuinely memorable. Anyone can write a joke about a name coincidence, but actually tracking down a real person who fits the bill and getting them on camera takes real creative legwork.

Wonder how Samsung's marketing team actually found him in the first place, that seems like a genuinely fun research rabbit hole

[Liam98]

The weight comparison between the Z Fold 8 at 201 grams and the iPhone Duo at 254 grams is honestly the more substantive part of this whole story buried under the joke, and it is a genuinely meaningful difference for anyone actually planning to carry a foldable phone around daily. Fifty grams does not sound like much until you have held both devices side by side for an extended period

[NatureBoyMichael27]

Samsung's history of trolling Apple through advertising, going all the way back to the 2018 Ingenius campaign about the notch, shows this is a very deliberate and long running brand strategy rather than a one off joke for this specific launch. Poking fun at a much bigger, more dominant competitor is a classic underdog marketing move, even though Samsung is hardly an underdog itself in most other respects

[IronWolf]

This entire ad only really works because Samsung has genuine multi year head start credibility in the foldable category to actually back up the joke with, rather than just being pure trolling for its own sake. If Samsung were the one just entering the foldable market for the first time, a stunt like this would come across as much more desperate and a lot less charming than it currently does

[Bob69]

Corporate rivalry playing out through cheeky viral marketing stunts like this is honestly one of the more entertaining parts of watching the broader smartphone industry right now, especially compared to the usual dry spec sheet comparisons and marketing copy most companies default to. Good on Samsung's New Zealand team specifically for having the creative confidence to actually greenlight something this genuinely silly and pull it off well