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

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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