Monday, March 24, 2014

Samsung: Pros in Placement

There was an interesting form of advertising displayed at this year's Oscars, which were hosted by Ellen DeGeneres. Throughout the show Ellen was interacting with the crowd while also interacting with her Samsung Galaxy Note 3. At one point Ellen even went as far as to take a selfie of some of the more notable faces of the night:
Quite the cast. Afterwards Ellen used the tablet to go on Twitter to tweet the picture that would crash the popular social networking site, as it became the most favorited and retweeted picture of all time. The picture received over 3 million retweets and nearly 2 million favorites. This becomes the most retweeted tweet since President Obama's twitter post after winning his second term in 2012.

It wasn't until later that it was revealed that this "spontaneous" tweet was revealed as perhaps one of the largest product placements of all time. In the days following it came out that Samsung had paid to have their product used to take selfless throughout the night in attempt to get their product some exposure and notoriety. Samsung got just that with articles like this one, from the Los Angeles Times, popping up all over the internet. It's apparent that Samsung scored big by making an executive decision in product placement, on one of the biggest nights in entertainment. 

2 comments:

  1. I can see why this was such a successful product placement. I wouldn't expect Ellen to product place in the middle of a huge event. Dancing, and snapping pictures is part of her fun personality. Ellen is such an inclusive and open person in life and on her show. She wraps you up in her energy. I understand Samsung's positioning, but for Ellen not to be clear on what's she's doing is a little misleading. It's hard to speculate if the campaign would have been a success to this magnitude if Ellen were to say that she was using the camera for a reason. She gives aways her favorite products on her show around Christmas, so this wouldn't be totally out of nature to talk about a product briefly. Also the real source of why these photos were tweeted so much is the candidness of the celebraties.

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  2. This is every advertiser's dream! I can't forget this picture if I tried, which is something to admire. The ad being misleading, I think highlights the beauty of the perfectly executed plan. The inclusion of all of these stars sharing a very special moment with one another is worth more than any ad Samsung could make. The discrete nature of this idea makes it even more perfect, in my eyes. This picture projects a sense of relatibility between consumers and these stars. They were able to capture this moment with the help of a Galaxy tablet, and you can too.

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