There have been two momentous pieces of artwork that have surfaced in the past year: both happen to be selfies. The first was the Ellen DeGeneres selfie at the Oscars that featured many beloved stars such as Kevin Spacey. The faux political figure was replaced by the actual president in the second important selfie of the year.

Boston Red Sox player David Ortiz and President Barack Obama took a selfie seen around the world. Unfortunately, the White House is not happy.

It turns out that Ortiz does a little more than swing bats. He is also a “social media insider” for Samsung. So, the president thought he was simply taking a picture with a lovely constituent, but this snapshot turned into an ad for the cell phone company.

Samsung was also the artist behind the Oscar snapshot. It seems using stars in a selfie ad campaign does not translate well to using the president, because companies are not allowed to use the president for advertising.

We can imagine for one second that Ortiz was really excited to meet Obama, took a selfie to be cool and simply got retweeted by Samsung, in a congratulations from the boss kind of way.

Now that we are done with that delusion, can we take a moment to applaud this great marketing campaign?

Samsung took the current selfie craze and turned it into a very effective and talked-about campaign.

Samsung has a Samsung Galaxy Camera and plans to release Samsung’s NX Mini. Both of these cameras boast to be great at taking the perfect selfie to post on Instagram. What better way to promote taking selfies with a product than using selfies to sell the camera?

But did Samsung go too far using the fame of the president in their campaign? Technically yes, but it should not be a big deal. The president loves taking selfies. In fact, Obama’s selfie game is always on point; Vice President Joe Biden and him even took a selfie for their first post on Instagram.

If anything, Samsung is trying to take him to new heights. Obama’s skin radiated in his selfie with Ortiz. The leader of the free world looked as if there was no crushing debt, immigration policies or GOP takeover brewing: the power of a Samsung selfie.

Follow Sharnicia on Twitter @SharniciaZD