As you might recall, a recent selfie taken by celebrity talk show host during the Oscars, Ellen Degeneres, has become viral. In fact the tweeted photo was retweeted several million times over, surpassing that of President Obama’s “Four more years” tweet.If you have been following the Oscars, the moment when Degeneres gathered the celebrities for a selfie did seem very spontaneous. In fact if you’ve ever watched her own talk show, pulling this kind of stunt does seem very inline with her personality. However according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, that “impromptu” selfie might not have been so spontaneous after all.
According to the report, they claimed that the idea of taking selfies was one that was cooked up by Degeneres several days before the broadcast. However since Samsung was the one sponsoring the event, ABC suggested that she use a Samsung phone, in which Samsung executives then trained her in the use of the phone.
In a way hearing that this stunt was actually rehearsed isn’t such a stretch of the imagination. After all we have seen similar stunts pulled off in the past which seems real, but was later proven to be a carefully orchestrated affair.
Readers might recall back in 2009 during the MTV Awards that a supposed “altercation” between Eminem and Sacha Baron Cohen turned out to be an outrageous idea that both of them cooked up together, despite it looking very real. In any case orchestrated or not, the selfie has gone viral and undoubtedly gave Samsung probably more than what they asked for in terms of coverage.
According to Allen Adamson, managing director at Landor Associates, “Ellen’s selfie is going to be more impactful than their commercials. You can’t buy that magic of going viral.”
Filed in . Read more about Samsung.