huawei nova 3

huawei nova 3

The age-old saying “buyer-beware” simply means that if you’re purchasing something, then it’s your responsibility to weigh the pros and cons.  If you buy something, and you haven’t had the opportunity to really look at it for what it is, then you shouldn’t get upset when it turns out to be faulty.  This can be applied to even concepts that we “buy into”.  Meaning, if someone is preaching something then it’s your responsibility to ensure that you’re comfortable with what they’re saying. But what if someone is purposely making up information about their product?  What if you’re not being given the whole story?

That’s what seems to be happening with Huawei.  Which isn’t a surprise since Huawei doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to advertising.  Campaigns for both their P8 and P9 phones were revealed to be a little dishonest.  And how, the advertising around their newest launch (Nova 3) falls into that same category, but some might argue that it’s actually worse.

The 30-second advertisement (shown below) for the phone shows a couple.  In the video, the man wants to take a quick selfie, but because the woman is hanging out at home, and doesn’t have any makeup on, she doesn’t want to participate in the photo.  But the beauty of the Nova 3 is the fact that its AI capabilities can make it look like she’s got makeup on.  Then the couple manages to take that selfie.  I am not going to get into the dramatic nature of the whole no makeup thing, but I would like to mention the message that this is sending.

The actress in the advertisement, Sarah Elshamy, posted a few behind-the-scenes photos of the filming on her Instagram account.  And it turns out that the selfie in the video was actually captured by a large DSLR camera, and not the Huawei Nova 3.   Huawei never explicitly says that the advertisement was shot on the Nova 3, which makes you wonder why they’re doing this in the first place.  I guess the bigger question is whether or not this is ok?

When it comes to technology, I’m not sure that the buyer beware adage applies.  Mostly because you need to know what you’re getting when you sign up for it or purchase it.  Yes, you can see how this could turn into a Facebook rant about how user data is stored and subsequently used, but I’ll keep this post to just Huawei. I’m not saying that I’m naive to think there aren’t touchups done on the actors after the fact.  But when I think about what the product is – which is selling you a camera – then I think they need to be honest about its capabilities.  Otherwise, what do we have?  And further, who can we trust?

Again, I’m not naive to think that everyone is going to be upfront and honest with me, or consumers in general about what they have to sell.  But like I said, this feels a bit underhanded as we consider what they would have had to do, in order to pull off this rouse.  While I understand that maybe DSLR’s are used to shoot short advertisements, I still think they should have used an image from the actual Nova 3 and included it as part of the advertisement. Otherwise, it is false advertising.

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