The Largest MicroLED Display In Latin America Lights Up, But It Probably Doesn’t Look Like What’s In The PR
November 29, 2022 by Dave Haynes
This is either very cheeky or just lazy – press about a big LED video wall installation that probably isn’t as big as the supplied photos from Samsung suggest.
I came across news that a shopping mall in Bogota, Colombia had lit up what is billed as the largest Micro LED screen in Latin America, and looked at the supplied photos with considerable curiosity.
- First, sitting up high on a bulkhead, as the supplied photo shows, using a premium fine pitch display borders on expensive overkill. Viewers are going to be too far away to see much if any difference between this and, let’s say, a 2mm pitch, more conventional LED video wall display;
- Second, that location really doesn’t look like a shopping mall;
- Third, that image is either as stretched as some of the images you see on online real estate sites, or that’s not what was installed. The product installed at the Colombian mall is described as roughly 4 meters wide and 2.7 meters tall, and two of the three photos used for the press release show a video wall that is more like six or eight meters wide by two tall.
Hmmmm …
I reverse image-searched and the supplied photos were also used in July 2021 for PR about The Wall as a giant consumer-focused TV.
There is, I will stress, a not-great photo in the Samsung Colombia press release, embedded in the copy, that is probably what’s really installed. It does look like a very big, roughly 4:3 aspect ratio TV – which would match up with the PR description.
I am guessing here that there was a lot of enthusiasm to get the story out about a commercial application for Samsung’s flagship premium LED product, but the one supplied photo was kinda crappy. Rather than wait to get something better, they just went with other, unrelated photos that kinda sorta not really looked like a mall project.
Several trade media outlets just went with the supplied photos, so I guess that mostly worked. But my first thoughts on seeing this were how that set-up didn’t make a pile of sense … and that looked a lot more like an office lobby than a a shopping mall.
It’s no big deal and not a knock on any one or company, but reinforces the importance of getting photos taken when projects are finished. It used to be that photo shoots were costly and time consuming exercises. But smartphone cameras are soooo good now it takes seconds for a technician or sales person to grab a few shots that, with a little tweaking, more than do the job.
At least photos were provided. I still regularly get emails from PR that glowingly describe visual display projects and how all the bosses are excited/delight/thrilled about them. But the PR pitches don’t even include photos!
UPDATE: Samsung’s US PR wing sent along a new photo that shows the screen on site, and it is indeed nothing like the featured images. Very odd decision. This one is much better, though I’m not convinced a super-premium product like The Wall was needed here, given where it is and the distance at which the screen will be seen by shoppers.
It will eventually make sense when we see Samsung as one of the advertisers on the screen 🙂