Well……kind of. And it was in 2016.
It was not in the sense that Scarlett Johansson came to my house, knocked on my door and told me I had to buy a new mobile phone. Or that she sent me an email, or a text message saying I had to buy a new phone. Or any contact whatsoever, actually. No.
What Scarlett Johansson did do however, was to appear in an advertising campaign, along with Superman actor Henry Cavill, to advertise a new phone that was to be launched on June 3rd 2016 (in the UK).
And yes dear Scarlett, I bought one. So why did I buy one – in fact I pre-ordered it before it was launched? Gullible?….. Who, me?
I wanted a new phone anyway, despite Scarlett Johansson!
Before judgement is passed and I am classified as a gullible old fool susceptible to beliefs in the endorsement of celebrity, there were several factors that were in play before buying this phone:
- I was already on the lookout for a new phone. My existing HTC M8 was just over two years old and was due for replacement.
- I wanted a change from HTC if possible. Looking at pure Android phones like the Google Nexus, for example.
- For no readily apparent reason, I wanted a slightly better camera on the phone than the HTC M8. (It was a little bit pants, despite the funky effects.)
The point was that I was already on the lookout for a new phone. Prior to Scarlett “speaking to me”, the Google Nexus and the HTC M10 were in the running. Given that the Nexus phones are going to be built by HTC anyway, that left pretty much only the HTC M10 until the HTC Nexus was released. (An Apple or a Samsung product would not be considered, due to bad experiences with these products.)
So up until a couple of weeks before Scarlett, it was looking like the HTC M10 was going to be my phone for the next few years. Although cost has never been too much of an issue for me (I was working at the time), the HTC M10 was in the upper price range (I always buy mine outright) at around £480 – £520 (in 2016).
The power of social media.
Then one day, browsing through Instagram, I spotted the ad campaign for Huawei. Or rather – and more to the point – I spotted a picture of Scarlett Johansson holding the Huawei P9 phone.
That led on to do some research (about Huawei, not Scarlett Johansson!) which in turn led to the glossy advertising campaign that both Scarlett and Henry Cavill led at the time to launch the Huawei P9. (In the UK, the phone was launched on June 3rd 2016.) Slick And glossy it was, too.
There were television adverts, there were Instagram and Facebook pages and posts, sponsored tweets, posters, YouTube videos – all manner of social media machinations and manipulations to plug this phone. But the focus (haha) of the ad campaign was primarily on the photography aspect of the new P9. The TV advert (with Scarlett and Henry) is very photosnap-orientated, as the “story” of the ad is centred around their “photo war”, extolling the virtues of the collaboration and co-engineering with the very well-known German camera manufacturing company Leica by sending photos (taken with the phone, of course) of places that they are in. Incidentally, there was even an in-depth YouTube video, explaining how all this new photo technology works.
Once you spot an ad, they’re everywhere!
I can’t help but think that the Huawei PR department chose very well, for their choice of celebrities to advertise their latest wares.
Both Scarlett Johansson and Henry Cavill were – and still are – “A-list” celebrities, both had recent films at the time (Captain America : Civil War and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice) that did very well at the box-office.
And the adverts are literally everywhere! Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Google Ads…
Despite the advertising, is it the right phone for me?
The big question was: given the big advertising push on the photography aspect, is it the right phone for me? I had a very nice digital SLR camera for nice photos, so I had no need (in theory) for a good camera phone. However, there is always a moment when you wish you did have something a little more compact at your fingertips, to take that once-in-a-moment snap with. It’s true to say that I have sometimes bemoaned the quality of the HTC M8 camera, after all. This might just be the gadget to address that gap.
As for the rest of the phone, I find that they are much of a muchness nowadays. They’re all basically the same size, have the same memory and processor power and battery life. For the apps that I run on them (which is not very many at all!) it would be just fine. So I ordered, sat back and awaited the delivery of the phone that Scarlett Johansson encouraged me to buy.
I’ll be the first to admit that I am a real stickler for brand-loyalty. Once I like a brand of something, I will generally stick with it (until something untoward happens, or it just pisses me off!). In a total contradiction to that statement, I was switching from HTC to Huawei (although I could have switched back to HTC if I wasn’t impressed) for no other readily apparent reason, other than the camera is better (oh and Scarlett Johansson told me to.). But then sometimes it’s good to break the rules a little.
Celebrity Endorsements
Not that anyone cares whether or not I got to buy a new phone (let alone what make it is) of course, but it did raise an interesting question that I’ve often pondered upon. And that is: “Do the celebrities really use the products they advertise”?
The multiple layers of celebrity product placement
If you have any of the varied social media accounts and you follow some celebs on those platforms, you’ll be familiar with celebrity product endorsements. Whether they’ve actually gone and bought the products or have been “given” them by a company is just as relevant a question, as is whether or not they choose to use the products when the cameras are switched off. There is a big difference between deliberately buying a product that you want to use and to be given a product with the caveat of “you can have this free, as long as you post a selfie with it”.
We’ve all seen the celebs that just “casually mention” a product in an Instagram post; they’ll post a selfie that has a bottle of juice (for example) to one side or in the foreground and post the caption “so glad I had my Smiths Organic juice today”.
And this is what I would define as the “least likely to be a fib” of celeb advertising. Odds on that the celeb in question has actually sampled (and therefore bought) some of the product at some stage beforehand and the company has subsequently discovered this. The PR or advertising man has cottoned on to that and has sent a few “free samples” and a note asking for a photo with it. So in this case, I think it’s likely that the celeb is actually using the products and is happy to tell the world. A bit of casual advertising is great, so long as it stays occasional.
But let’s take a small time-out and just look at Scarlett Johansson for a moment…
- An “A” list celebrity who commands millions of dollars per movie.
- She has been the face of several large make-up companies and couture clothing houses.
- She’s endorsed fizzy drinks (albeit controversially) and has been linked with various charities and political campaigns etc.
- In 2015, it was reported that her net worth was running into $65 million.
And then comes along this obviously paid-for, high profile, glossy advertising campaign for Huawei phones.
It seems reasonable to assume that for this high-profile, high-visibility campaign for Huawei, Scarlett was financially renumerated (probably considerably) for her efforts to promoting the P9.
But would she use it in “real-life”? You could make quite a good educated guess to say that most people will use make-up, wear nice clothes and eat\drink certain brands of foods and drinks at some point travailing through their days. Obviously we eat and drink more frequently than dressing up for the red carpet, but I doubt very much that anyone would stick to just one brand of food for more than a few days. Or walk around in a sponsored tutu.
The point I’m trying to make here is that although Scarlett endorses products, she wouldn’t necessarily use them all of the time. But what about a mobile phone? A mobile phone is the kind of thing that you would normally carry with you on a day-to-day basis. Especially nowadays in the age of smartphones and social media and although Scarlett doesn’t have any social media accounts, the phone is a functional item that you are likely to use more than once on a daily basis.
So could it be that Scarlett does actually rate the phone and uses it on a daily basis? Most celebrities that you see wielding their phones in the media generally tend to use phones like Apple iPhones, so could it be that Scarlett’s gone a bit rogue and has baulked against the general celebrity trend and gone for something different? It would be nice to think so.
Probably not. She most likely went back to her iPhone no sooner had the cameras been turned off. Of course we shall never know. It could just be that she was given the phone as part of the campaign and couldn’t be arsed to get another one (or she uses an Apple iPhone).
Epilogue
I originally wrote this post when I was genuinely looking for a new phone in 2016. I did buy a Huawei P9 (as Scarlett suggested) and kept it for a good couple of years. I then upgraded to another Huawei – the P20 Pro and now the P30 Pro. I’ll be looking to upgrade to the P50 pro very soon (looking forward to losing the awful Google services).
So that was a good call from Scarlett in the end. Regardless of what she uses as her phone, she succeeded in her paid-for quest to inform me (the consumer) about a brand that (at the time) I’d never heard of. Which is of course, the point of advertising.
And I’ve had many years of good service out of my Huawei’s. ‘Course, if she’d have phoned me, she’d have known. 😉