Behind the Preplanned Oscar Selfie: Samsung's Ad Strategy
Behind the Preplanned Oscar Selfie: Samsung's Ad Strategy
Marketer Spent Nearly $20 Million on Ad Time—and Got
Product Placement for Galaxy Phone
By SUZANNE VRANICA CONNECT
Updated March 3, 2014 6:41 p.m. ET
It's no accident that Ellen DeGeneres used a Samsung
Galaxy Note. The WSJ's Min-Jeong Lee has the details. Photo: ABC
Samsung Electronics Co. spent an estimated $20 million on
ads to run during breaks in the Academy Awards broadcast on Sunday night. But
Samsung may have got more promotional mileage from Oscars host Ellen DeGeneres
during the show itself.
Ms. DeGeneres toyed with a white Samsung phone during the
broadcast, including when she handed a Galaxy Note 3 to actor Bradley Cooper so
he could take a "selfie" photo of himself and other stars including
Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep, Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Lawrence surrounding the
host.
While the stunt felt spontaneous, it wasn't entirely
unplanned. As part of its sponsorship and ad pact for the Oscars with ABC, the
TV network airing the show, Samsung and its media buying firm Starcom MediaVest
negotiated to have its Galaxy smartphone integrated into the show, according to
two people familiar with the matter. ABC is a unit of Walt Disney Co.
Samsung gave ABC smartphones to use during the broadcast
and was promised its devices would get airtime, these people said. At least one
of the product plugs was planned: during the "red carpet" preshow,
ABC ran a clip of six aspiring young filmmakers touring Disney Studios. The
group were seen in the video using Samsung devices.
The origin of the "selfie" shot was a little
different. Ms. DeGeneres, in the days leading up to the broadcast, decided she
wanted to take "selfies" during the show and ABC suggested she use a
Samsung since it was a sponsor, another person familiar with the matter said.
During rehearsals Samsung executives trained Ms.
DeGeneres on how to use the Samsung Galaxy, two people familiar with the matter
said.
"It was a great plug for the Samsung brand,"
said Allen Adamson, managing director at Landor Associates, a branding firm
owned by WPP PLC. "Ellen's selfie is going to be more impactful than their
commercials. You can't buy that magic of going viral," he added.
Having products appear in a program—product placement—has
been a part of the TV business since the early days of the medium.
But it has become a more popular marketing technique in
recent years as ad-skipping via digital video recorders has prompted marketers
to look for ways to break free of the confines of the commercial break.
Oscars host Ellen Degeneres set a record for most
retweets during the Oscars telecast. Who else were the social-media winners and
losers at the Oscars? David Neuman, social-media manager at Prime Visibility,
joins digits.
Ad-skipping is far less common during an event like the
Academy Awards, which most viewers are watching live. Even so, advertisers say,
product placement combined with ad buys help viewers better remember the
products being promoted.
At the same time, TV networks typically reserve such
product placement for big spending advertisers, media buyers say. Samsung was
one of the biggest sponsors of this year's Oscars broadcast, buying five
minutes of commercial time.
While Samsung declined to comment on the financial
details of its ad deal with ABC, ad tracker Kantar Media estimates that
advertisers were paying roughly $1.8 million for 30 seconds worth of Oscar ad
time this year.
That implies Samsung could have spent $18 million on ad
time this year. By comparison, the company spent a total of $24 million
advertising on the Oscars since 2009, according to Kantar.
The cost of the product placement was included in
Samsung's overall package, said one person familiar with the situation.
Helping reinforce the value of the plug was Ms.
DeGeneres' tweeting of the selfie. It was retweeted nearly 3 million times as
of Monday afternoon. While the tweet didn't mention Samsung, the fact it was
taken by a Samsung phone was clear on the TV screen at the time.
At one point Samsung was getting about 900 mentions a
minute on social media, according to Kontera, a company that tracks content on
social media sites.
The Science Behind the Selfie
The president has done it, the pope has done it and let's
be honest, we've taken selfies, too. What can selfies teach us about our
culture and technology? Professor Lev Manovich from the Graduate Center at City
University of New York joins Digits with a look.
Still, as the lines between entertainment and advertising
continue to blur ad experts warn that these overly promotional gimmicks could
turn off consumers.
So far, there has been few complaints about Samsung's
Oscar plug. Kontera said that 23% of the online commentary around the
"selfie" on social media has been positive and about 69% of the
comments have been neutral. Only 8% of the comments were negative, the company
added.
The Samsung stunt didn't come off without a hitch: many
people were quick to note on Twitter TWTR 06%
that the Oscar host was also tweeting during the evening with rival
Apple's iPhone.
Samsung declined to comment about Ms. DeGeneres' iPhone
usage.
Samsung wasn't the only brand that got a big plug last
night. Ms DeGeneres ordered pizza for some in the audience from Big Mama's and
Papa's Pizzeria in Los Angeles.
The boxes carried a Coca-Cola logo, which didn't
advertise during the program. Rival Pepsi was an Oscar advertiser.
"Big Mama's and Papa's Pizzeria getting a thank-you
note tomorrow," read a tweet sent out last night from Wendy Clark,
Coca-Cola's senior vice president of integrated marketing communications.
Write to Suzanne Vranica at suzanne.vranica@wsj.com
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