Ellen DeGeneres' record-breaking Oscar selfie was a product placement for Samsung, which probably spent close to $20 million on advertising in this year's ceremony, according to the Wall Street Journal; but the tech giant denied the news and said, "it was a surprise nobody expected."
Second-time Oscar host DeGeneres broke the record for Twitter retweets Sunday when she tweeted a selfie with a gaggle of fellow A-list stars at the ceremony. Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Kevin Spacey were in the shot. Bradley Cooper, who lost out on the Best Supporting Actor award to Jared Leto, took the photo.
DeGeneres played with a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 during the ceremony, and handed Cooper the phone to take the picture. The device was given to DeGeneres as part of Samsung's ad deal with ABC, which included the phone being integrated into the show, the Wall Street Journal said.
DeGeneres had suggested taking selfies during the ceremony, and ABC recommended using a Samsung phone because the company was a sponsor, someone familiar with the matter was cited as saying.
Samsung was one of the biggest sponsors of this year's Academy Awards ceremony, the Wall Street Journal said – the company bought five minutes of ad time. Although the company has not disclosed details of the ABC deal, the Wall Street Journal estimates that Samsung spent some $18 million on advertising in this year's ceremony.
In another news article from NDTV, Samsung however, says the Oscars selfie that went viral was a "surprise for everyone," and not a part of a pre-planned marketing stunt as a sponsor of the Academy Awards.
 |
| Ellen DeGeneres using a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 to image-capture a crowd of stars including Brad Pitt, Bradley Cooper, Meryl Streep, Kevin Spacey, Julia Roberts, Lupita Nyong'o and Jennifer Lawrence. |
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.
During rehearsals Samsung executives trained Ellen 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."
It wrote:
"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,"
"A great surprise for everyone, she captured something that nobody expected,"Samsung 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.
Since 2009, Samsung has spent a total of $24 million on Oscars advertising.
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.--Source: Wall Street Journal/Haaretz/NDTV