The poor schlep did what his manager told him to do. The manager used the schlep because he wasn’t given budget to do it right. So, don’t excuse the behaviour the organization enabled it.

Can confirm at least that it can be done better than this. I used to work at Apple and you better believe they cared about details like this all the way up the chain. Every photo we used had to come from a marketing-blessed source, all modifications were auditable in source control, and the end result was blessed again by marketing.

Despite that Apple shipped a watch face in iOS 6 that was ripped from Mondaine:

https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-accused-of-ripping-off-famou...

This crap can happen to anyone, it's how they handle it what matters most. Apple apologized (and paid for it).

Using a trademarked design doesn't misrepresent the capabilities of the device. Using a DSLR photo in promotional material about a phone camera obviously does. The two incidents are not comparable.

Both cases are due to lack diligence and supervision in the media assets accusation.

No, Samsung legitimately acquired the IPR for their promotional material, but used it to lie to consumers; Apple failed to secure rights to a watch face, but did nothing to mislead anyone. The two cases aren’t comparable, other than “both cases represent mistakes”.

What source control software did you use for the pictures?

It varied by department. I am sure there were better options, but we just used SVN because it (mostly) worked and the folder model / shallow checkouts made it easy to explain to nontechnical people.

Adobe has/had a version control software for their products.

i.e you could check out a version of a Photoshop file, make some changes, commit it back. My understanding was the it was aware of layers/etc, so you could diff changes somehow.

you could probably version-control a lightroom catalog file... it's binary but you can still check in a binary file.

Sidebar: Lightroom catalogs are simply sqlite3 databases with a different file suffix. If you ever have corruption issues with them, you can open them up in sqlite3 and export or repair as you see fit.

iGit

Exactly. Companies have as much oversight on their agencies as they want. The problem is that companies don't care and shady agencies will do whatever is cheap. Every person in person in the chain is culpable here.

> Often agencies use interns for these kinds of image search —and things fall through the cracks.

You mean... if we paid employees properly, it might prevent fuck ups like this?!?!

You’re asking that creative agencies all iver the world change how they do business. It’d be a good thing for employees and interns especially, no doubt. I just don’t see them seeing a need to change their hiring practices any time soon.

Maybe, but it would also cost more than it's worth. How much impact do you think this screw up will have on their bottom line? I'm betting about zero.

It won't have any dramatic impact but I would bet there's some. A decent number of people will read this article and think something like, "Wow, that's a pretty shady thing Samsung did there". This won't swing anyone from being a huge Samsung fan to someone who hates the company, but most people are somewhere on a spectrum in the middle.

The next time I buy a phone I'll probably be vacillating between several imperfect options and something like this could consciously or subconsciously tip a close decision towards picking a Pixel or LG phone.

>but most people are somewhere on a spectrum in the middle.

Are they though? I obviously don't know this to be true, but I imagine most are actually somewhere on the ambivalence scale. Samsung makes a phone they want? They're going to buy it. People have a hard rnough time sticking to their guns on things that _really_ matter, and this doesn't.

The intersection of people who care enough to speak with their wallets and those who didn't already abandon Samsung for their insidious bloatware is, I imagine, rather small. You also have to weigh that against the number of people who they fooled with their marketing and will never know the truth.