Oscar Selfie picture was pre planned

Oscar Selfie picture was pre planned

Ms. DeGeneres took the selfie picture with Samsung phone camera which was re-tweeted about 3 million times. She had been carrying the camera conspicuously during the broadcast of the Oscars.

While it felt as though the picture was unplanned and she took a decision impulsively, but it was not so, here are the reasons why:

1) While Ms. DeGeneres was also tweeting at the Oscar, she was using her Iphone.

2) Samsung and its advertising company Starcom MediaVest had negotiated to have its Galaxy smartphone integrated into the show.

    So Samsung gave ABC (TV channel that broadcast the show) smartphones to use during the broadcast and ABC promised that its phones will get airtime (called product placement).

3) A few days before the broadcast, Ms. DeGeneres came up with the idea of a selfie and ABC said that she should do it with samsung phone. So during the rehearsals, Samsung executives trained Ms. DeGeneres on how to use the Samsung galaxy (remember she is used to an iphone).

TV networks reserve such product placement for big spending advertisers.

Advertisers were paying about US$ 1.8 million for a 30 seconds worth of Oscar ad time.

So approximately Samsung must have spent about $18 million