Huawei would like you to buy its P9 Android smartphone.
As part of its marketing campaign for the P9, the Chinese electronics giant uploaded a photograph supposedly to its Google+ page.
In the (now-deleted) Google+ post, Huawaei appeared to be suggesting that the photograph of an attractive woman caught in the morning sunlight was taken with its new smartphone.
Fortunately, AndroidPolice preserved a copy of the post for posterity:
We managed to catch a beautiful sunrise with Deliciously Ella. The #HuaweiP9’s dual Leica cameras makes taking photos in low light conditions like this a pleasure. Reinvent smartphone photography and share your sunrise pictures with us. #OO
Yes, I was surprised too. Who would have thought anyone was still using Google+?
But there was another shock to come. Because, Google+ preserves the EXIF meta data of uploaded pictures rather than automatically zapping it, and this revealed that the photograph wasn’t taken by a Huawei P9 smartphone.
Instead, it seems the photo was taken by a Canon 5D Mk. III with a rather tasty lens. Total cost? $4500.
Whoops!
Maybe it was all an innocent mistake, rather than a deliberate attempt to deceive consumers. I certainly hope so.
But it’s a useful reminder for everyone who shares their photos online, to consider erasing any meta-data contained within – just in case it might come back to bite you in the bum.
Don’t believe this is a problem? Just ask John McAfee.
Need to learn to read the blurb and realise that anything posted by a corporation is an advert "taking photos in low light conditions like this a pleasure."
No surprises really, but shows how lazy some marketing camps have become…