The truth about Ellen’s selfie ‘surprise’

LOS ANGELES: Samsung says the Oscars selfie that went viral was a “surprise for everyone,” after reports it was part of a pre-planned marketing stunt by the company, a sponsor of the Academy Awards.
But the South Korean tech giant, which earned huge publicity when Ellen DeGeneres used a Samsung device to take the photo, said it would donate $3 million to charities of the Oscar host’s choice.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the stunt “wasn’t entirely unplanned,” saying that a Samsung smartphone was used in the show as part of a sponsorship and $20 million advertising deal with Oscar broadcasters ABC.
During rehearsals Samsung executives trained DeGeneres in how to use the Samsung Galaxy, it reported.
Other media noted that, while the host used the Samsung device for the viral selfie, she used her own iPhone to tweet other posts from backstage.
In a statement which arguably fell short of a denial that the stunt was pre-planned, Samsung said the selfie was something “nobody expected.”
“While we were a sponsor of the Oscars and had an integration with ABC, we were delighted to see Ellen organically incorporate the device into the selfie moment that had everyone talking,” it wrote.
“A great surprise for everyone, she captured something that nobody expected,” it wrote.
It added that “in honor of this epic moment,” which has generated over 3 million retweets so far, it would donate $1.5 million to two charities chosen by DeGeneres: St. Jude’s and the Humane Society.
DeGeneres corralled a crowd of stars including Brad Pitt, Bradley Cooper, Meryl Streep, Kevin Spacey, Lupita Nyong’o and Jennifer Lawrence for the selfie.
The celeb-studded selfie from the most-watched Oscars telecast in a decade was a landmark social media moment at a time online conversation is boosting television viewership and vice versa.
DeGeneres, who said Twitter officials contacted her to say she broke the record, had her eyes on the prize even before posting the photo, encouraging viewers of the widely-watched show to retweet it and break the record.
Viewers obliged. Within five minutes, it had nearly 100,000 retweets. Less than 90 minutes after that, her tweet had garnered more than 1.9 million retweets and nearly 900,000 “favorites.”
By Wednesday the photo had been retweeted over 3.25 million times.
It’s also a murky example of what is or isn’t product placement in a hyper-marketed world. Would the world’s most retweeted photo have been shot by an iPhone if Samsung hadn’t been a commercial sponsor of the Academy Awards?
Samsung, however, was a big presence at the Oscars besides being a commercial sponsor. The company gave its phones to student presenters and encouraged them to tweet and post on Instagram with them. Dozens of Samsung phones, tablets and TVs were used to make a digital photo display in the backstage green room.
ABC said Samsung did not pay specifically for use of the camera in DeGeneres’ selfie segment and the company wasn’t explicitly named on the air as the stunt unfolded, but it is a noticeably larger device than an iPhone. Spokeswoman Nicole Marostica said once producers decided to do the segment, it made more sense to use a Samsung product because the company was an Oscars sponsor. Oddly, the audience snapshot wasn’t a new element for DeGeneres.
When she hosted the Oscars in 2007, she went into the audience and asked filmmaker Steven Spielberg to snap a picture of her with Clint Eastwood, saying she wanted to use it on Myspace.
Twitter said that most tweeted-about star on Oscar night was Jennifer Lawrence, with Brad Pitt coming in second. “Gravity” was the movie that was the subject of the most tweets during the show, followed by “Frozen.”