14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung is resorting to some very unorthodox yet highly effective means of promoting its products these days. Sadly, the latest effort to covertly expose one of its products has ended in scandal. The entire issue started when David Ortiz, a Boston Red Sox slugger, took a photo of himself with the President last week.
That photo could out to be the last presidential selfie we'll ever see because the White House has caught on to the fact that Ortiz was contractually obliged to take the photo using his phone in order to promote Samsung.
The NY Daily News says that Ortiz's photo with Obama seemed spontaneous, but it was actually an orchestrated thing, since the baseball player had a deal with Samsung to promote its Galaxy Note 3 phone as a public relations stunt.
The White House caught on to the fact that the entire event was staged and wasn't happy at all that a company was using the President's image to promote its products. “Maybe this will be the end of selfies,” said White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer in an interview. “[The President] obviously didn't know anything about Samsung's connection to this.”
After the news came out in the media, Samsung admitted that it had a marketing deal with Ortiz and added that company officials had “worked with David and the team on how to share images with fans.”
After Ortiz took the photo, he posted it on Twitter, and it was shared over 38,000 times, including by the official Samsung account that has over 5 million followers on the social media platform.
If this reminds you of the infamous Oscar selfie Ellen DeGeneres took, your instincts are spot on. At the time, DeGeneres was also blasted for faking what has now become the most famous photo on the internet as a shameless Samsung plug, when it was uncovered that she had a deal with the electronics giant to push its products as best she could.
As for Obama, this isn't the first time a selfie lands him into trouble. At the Nelson Mandela memorial, he was criticized when he agreed to take a selfie with Denmark Prime Minister Helle Thorning and British Prime Minister David Cameron.
So don't expect Barack Obama to appear in a selfie anytime soon and certainly not on any Samsung phone, not after this scandal. Hopefully, this will be a lesson for all politicians on the cunning of today's viral marketing techniques employed by major corporations.