air with ABC. As head of the White Glove program, Lovato already headed
up Samsung’s Hollywood talent outreach.
Pendleton also dispatched Amber Mayo, director of media and
partnerships, to Los Angeles’s Dolby Theatre to work with Ellen DeGeneres
during rehearsals in person. Mayo instructed her assistants not to tell
anyone else—even her colleagues at Samsung—until the Friday before the
Oscars.
“Amber drove the brilliance of our media integration,” said another
marketer. Mayo knew that no matter how much money Samsung spent,
even a multimillion-dollar sponsorship had its limits. They’d heard stories
about corporate marketers showing up at Oscars rehearsals over the years,
needling scriptwriters to insert their products. It hardly ever worked.
Airtime was notoriously tight. Each award was planned down to the second
—and yet the stars frequently ad-libbed their presentations. Few marketers
were sure exactly what their sponsorship would earn them, even if they had
formal guarantees of a product placement. Corporate sponsors came and
went, but only the cleverest were written into the annals of Oscar history.
Samsung had to find a way around that.
“You have a loose idea, and there’s a certain amount of time and a
certain point [where it has to fit] in the show,” said another person on the
team. Another problem? “We didn’t want any rogue shots of iPhones being
posted by anyone saying it was from a Samsung phone.” That would be a
disaster. To get around that, Samsung marketers had to train the backstage
staffers on the Galaxy as well, since they might tweet something on behalf
of Ellen or the Oscars.
Samsung wasn’t sure how Ellen would choose to use its Galaxy phone,
until DeGeneres announced her intent to take a selfie, part of a lineup of
stunts and slapstick to lighten up the ceremony.
The selfie, the script declared, would happen after a commercial break,
when she would sit down next to Meryl Streep. “NOT IN
TELEPROMPTER,” read the script, emphasizing its quasi-planned nature.
Hopefully, she’d bring in Angelina Jolie and Julia Roberts for a second
shot, according to the script.
“Everyone say, ‘Hashtag Oscars 4 Ellen,’ ” she’d shout, followed by the
snap.
The comedian brought her idea to ABC, which delivered the news to
Samsung for approval. Pendleton’s team was ecstatic. Amber’s team