Samsung New Zealand has launched a satirical marketing campaign for the Galaxy Z Fold 8, featuring a local resident named Tim Cook from Palmerston North to mock Apple’s newly announced iPhone Duo and hardware lineup.
The Palmerston North Doppelgänger Campaign
Samsung New Zealand released a promotional video on YouTube and Instagram starring a local man who shares a name and stylistic resemblance with Apple’s former chief executive, according to Gizmodo and Liputan6.com reporting from September 2026. The campaign emerged right on the heels of Apple’s ‘Surprise and Shine’ event on September 9, 2026, where the Cupertino giant revealed its hardware updates, including the iPhone 18 Pro series, Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4, AirPods 5, and its first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo.
“Hai, saya Tim Cook, dari Palmy. Dan saya mengulas Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 baru saya,” the local resident states at the beginning of the video, as cited by Gizmodo. The ad replicates Apple’s signature cinematic product launch style, complete with phrases like “the future is here” and “with this phone, everything changes.” The video concludes with the line: “Best phone I’ve ever owned. You can quote me, Tim Cook from Palmerston North.”
Hardware Form Factors and the Foldable Race
The timing of Samsung’s marketing push targets Apple’s delayed entry into the foldable device market.
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In the promotional material, the Palmerston North doppelgänger demonstrates the device in both folded and unfolded configurations, emphasizing a “nice and compact folded” profile alongside expanded screen real estate for multitasking. Samsung’s regional marketing also highlights integrated on-device machine learning capabilities under an “Amazing AI” banner, contrasting its mature foldable iteration against Apple’s first-generation hardware.
Escalating Marketing Warfare
This stunt represents the latest salvo in a long-standing tradition of aggressive comparative advertising between the two tech giants. As detailed by The Verge, historical examples include campaigns mocking long queues for iPhones, targeting the physical iPhone notch with hairstyle parodies, and running the “Ingenious” series against Apple Store support staff. Furthermore, following the official unveiling of the iPhone Duo, Samsung’s United States division took to X to claim that Apple was merely “reheating leftovers” by releasing a foldable phone while Samsung was already shipping its eighth generation of foldable hardware.
