Why Every Ellen Oscars Selfie Parody is a #fail

So probably by now you have seen at least one parody attempt of the most re-tweeted selfie ever.  This Lego one is probably one of the better ones.

There have been numerous attempts to parody the shot. You can see a collection of some of them here.  Some of them are clever, but none of the company/brand ones are winners. There are even lame attempts by brand marketers to put in their tweets “Let’s see if we can get more retweets than Ellen”.

The only winner here (apart from maybe Ellen herself) is Samsung.  They were a major sponsor of The Oscars and although it is rumoured that Ellen has an iphone, it was a Samsung she grabbed to get the shot.  This was corporate branding and product placement at its best.  Samsung is really getting clever in its marketing and product development to the point where could be seriously threatening Apple’s dominance.

Gary Vaynerchuk points out in his book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook a great social media reaction by Oreo during the Superbowl blackout that got them incredible coverage because they reacted to an event and improved on it. The parodies are cute but they do not advance things.

What creative idea could you have had to ride the wave of the Oscar selfie?