14 DAY TRIAL // It was named the photo that broke Twitter and went on to become the biggest viral of the year, despite the fact that it's still April and a lot can still happen. It all started during the 2014 Oscars, when Ellen DeGeneres, the host of the show, gathered some of the most famous faces in Hollywood for a quick photo.
The result was a selfie that was shared so many times that it temporarily put Twitter out of order and also sparked a number of scandals. Now, the Hollywood Reporter is saying that the photo in question is worth between eight hundred million and one billion dollars.
This information comes via CEO Maurice Levy, whose company Publicis represents Samsung. He gave out this interesting tidbit during a recent advertising industry conference and added that the estimate is based on the number of time to photo was reshared on social media.
The photo included Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Lupita Nyong'o, Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, apart from Ellen DeGeneres and was reportedly seen by 37 million people across the world, while the Oscars were watched by 43 million.
Levy also boasted about another famous selfie, the one with President Obama, taken by baseball player David Ortiz, that might cause the White House to ban selfies with the chief of state altogether. His staff was said to be crossed when it found out that the photo op, which seemed spontaneous, was actually a contractual obligation for Ortiz, who was promoting Samsung phones.
Both incidents went on to cause stirs because they played with the concept of spontaneous photos, when, in fact, they were highly orchestrated affairs, aimed only at increasing awareness for the Samsung brand and also boosting its image in a way that paid advertising never could.
Product placement is just about as old as television, and there should be no issue here, but the reality is that more and more people, the President included, are now bothered by this new trend of advertising. It crosses the boundary between what's real and staged, and it leads to confusion as to what exactly is real and what is not.
The dilemma arises the next time someone casually offers to take a photo in what seems to be a spontaneous and exciting moment, and it later turns out that he was paid to do so by the company that made the phone. Of course, this only applies to famous people.