Things got a bit awkward on Wednesday when LeBron James totally dissed his sponsor and $100 million benefactor Samsung publicly on Twitter. LeBron tweeted that his Samsung Galaxy Note 2 had failed him - epically. He quickly deleted the tweet and posted a more complimentary one, presumably at Samsung's urging.
"My phone just erased everything I had in it and rebooted. One of the sickest feelings I've ever had in my life!!!" tweeted James in a fit of fury.
The tweet quickly amassed 518 retweets and 1,108 favorites before its rapid deletion from King James' Twitter account. Oops. Obviously, since Samsung had paid James big money - $100 million to be exact - to endorse its smartphones, his slip up was something of a disaster. After the incident, James tweeted several other semi-apologetic tweets and seemed like he was trying to draw everyone's attention away from what he had done. Even though LeBron removed the tweet, the story has been trending since Wednesday, so clearly, his blunder will stick in everyone's memory for a while now.
Think that's bad? LeBron ain't got nothing on other celebrities who signed up to endorse big-name products. Oddly enough, Samsung is the injured party in more than one of these epic fails.
Most recently, Ellen DeGeneres, who hosted the Oscars, purposefully posted backstage tweets from her iPhone instead of the Samsung Galaxy smartphone she was supposed to be using. Since Samsung was sponsoring the Oscars, Ellen did have the good grace to take the selfie that broke Twitter with the Galaxy smartphone Samsung provided. Still, the fact that she used a smartphone from Samsung's arch enemy Apple had to sting.
Earlier, filmmaker Michael Bay ran from the stage in the middle of a presentation at a Samsung event during CES 2014. Nobody really knows why he did it, but it certainly inspired a lot of viewer discomfort and many tweets about just how awkward it was.
Back in June last year, Jay-Z, who was supposed to endorse Samsung Galaxy smartphones after the company agreed to pay him $5 million for one million copies of his new album, "Magna Carta Holy Grail." Buzzfeed did a very memorable post in which is showed Jay-Z using an iPhone instead of a Samsung Galaxy smartphone 11 different times.
Poor Samsung. It's like putting salt in the wound, what with all these celebrities walking around with iPhones when they're supposed to be promoting Samsung's Galaxy lineup. I mean, if Samsung can't even pay these celebrities enough money to make them use Galaxy smartphones, that's a pretty bad sign.
To his credit, LeBron has yet to be caught with an iPhone - yet.
