Including LeBron James, Samsung Has Many Celebrity Friends

Oh dear Lebron James probably didn't make Samsung execs too happy on Wednesday when he took to Twitter to complain about his phone erasing itself. You see, James is being paid big money by Samsung to promote their products so his angry tweet wasn't very good publicity. Of course the tweet was then soon deleted. But James isn't the only celebrity Samsung has on speed dial, lately it seems many celebs have been all to keen to show off their Samsung products.

LeBron James was left unhappy when his phone got erased

Remember when Ellen DeGeneres took that famous selfie at this year’s Oscars? Well, whilst we were all looking to see just how many famous faces we could spot what we were really meant to be looking at was the phone Ellen used, it was a Samsung Galaxy 3 Note. Samsung were big sponsors at the Oscars and their cheeky bit of product placement with Ellen served them very well, the picture she tweeted was then retweeted 3 million times within 24 hours. With those retweets Samsung got an estimated 900 Samsung mentions a minute on social media. Not bad at all, until Ellen sent out her next tweet which happened to come from an iPhone, oops.

Of course Samsung doesn't just use celebrities to share their photos with their devices, their also using them to show their phone’s musical capabilities. The best example of this comes from Jay-Z, the rapper teamed up with Samsung during the release of his ‘Magna Carta: Holy Grail’ album. He released 1m copies of the album to Samsung users for free a full 3 days before it went on official sale.

If it seems as if Samsung devices are the newest celebrity trend it’s no coincidence. It’s all part of the Korean companies ‘White Glove’ campaign, which gives out free phones to the rich and famous. What the company do is approach celebrities and let them try out their handsets hoping they’ll fall in love with the product and want to be seen everywhere with it. The best example of its success came with Dana Brunetti the president Trigger Street Productions which is responsible for the hugely successful Netflix’s series 'House of Cards'. He was given a Samsung at the launch party for his ‘Social Network’ movie. The diehard Apple fan didn't expect to be converted, but he was. Then he was all to happy to sing the phone’s praises to his Hollywood friends. He’s since spoken about his experiences explaining why the 'White Glove' campaign has been such a smart move saying, ‘People love things that are free, particularly celebrities. They're the last people that need something free, but it's smart. They wouldn't buy it otherwise.’

Jay Z gave 'Magna Carta and the Holy Grail' early to Samsung users

LeBron James’s gaff show’s the potential perils of celebrity endorsements. Stars that are paid the big money need to be really careful about what they say once they lend their name to the product. However LeBron’s mistake aside, Samsung seem to really have it worked out when it comes to getting celebrities to use their products. Their 'White Glove' campaign is seeing more celebs seemingly ditch their Iphones in favour of a Samsung device. Now all they’ve got to do is make sure something like the LeBron incident doesn't happen again, or at least maybe they should get him to tweet how good their customer service is.

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