Some times things seem too good to be true. Equally, other times things seem so awful that they just can’t be accurate. Thankfully, the latter is the case today.
If you’ve been paying attention you’ll no doubt have seen stories flying around yesterday that had Samsung basically taking over London Heathrow’s Terminal 5, with a massive rebranding leaving the terminal with the ridiculous moniker of ‘Terminal Samsung Galaxy S5.’ We all mocked relentlessly, and after the fuss died down we sort of forgot about it. After all, would such a thing really surprise anyone when Samsung’s mammoth advertising budget is taken into account?
Well, it turns out that Samsung’s claims of taking control of ‘signage, wayfinding, website and every single digital screen’ in Heathrow’s Terminal 5 may have been somewhat overstating its reach, after iMore got confirmation from Heathrow itself that the story is indeed bogus. Yes, Samsung has entered a deal that will see space rented for advertising in the terminal, but not quite to the extent first believed.
"Heathrow Terminal 5’s signage and passenger wayfinding has not changed," a Heathrow spokesperson told iMore. "Samsung have rented advertising space in Terminal 5 with a tongue-in-cheek campaign using the line: ‘Terminal Samsung Galaxy 5S’."
The Samsung Galaxy S5 is the hottest ticket in the smartphone world right now, at least as far as advertising dollars are concerned. Nobody would have been surprised at Samsung trying to rename Terminal 5 at all, but the idea that Heathrow would let it? Yeah, that part we didn’t quite understand.
So, did someone in Samsung’s PR team get a little carried away with themselves, or has Heathrow backtracked on what it was planning to offer Samsung originally? At this point we’re not sure we really care all that much. While people will no doubt point to sports stadia having similar sponsorship deals, we’re not sure we like the idea of a company sponsoring part of a structure in the kind of way Samsung was proposing.
After all, what’s next? The Staples parking lot? The Walmart janitor closet? Or perhaps the Fedex restroom?
No, probably not.
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