The White House Social Media Policy: Is Ray-Ban Really Different From Samsung?

A few weeks back, the Boston Red Sox visited the White House to meet with the President because the team won the 2013 World Series. David Ortiz snapped a selfie with Obama and posted it to his Twitter feed, garnering thousands of favorites and retweets. A few days later, it came out that the selfie loosely came as a result of a newly signed sponsorship deal Ortiz had just started with Samsung. Lots of people threw hissy fits about marketing, advertising, authenticity, etc.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was quoted saying "As a rule, the White House objects to attempts to use the president's likeness for commercial purposes. And we certainly object in this case."

Two weeks later, a funny thing happened involving the White House once again (albeit, not with President Obama this time). Vice President Joe Biden joined the Instagram community today and his first photo looks awfully promotional, doesn't it:

For all of the ire that the Ortiz-Obama selfie drew, the reaction around the Biden Instagram photo is quite different. Time called the photo "utter perfection." Business Insider said that it was "incredibly on brand." Buzzfeed said his "'gram game is perfect Biden.

Sure, there are some differences between the two photos. Biden posted it himself. Obama did not. Biden was aware of the purpose behind the image. Obama was not.

But if you are going off of Carney's statement above as a general rule of thumb - and it is not an unreasonable assumption that the White House doesn't want the VP used for commercial purposes - explain to me how this is not commercial. Yeah, Biden wears Ray-Bans all the time and it is a trademark of his. But isn't a trademark of Obama being a fun guy who would participate in a selfie with a jubilant David Ortiz anyway? The tweet didn't even mention anything about Samsung, nor would your first thought be "oh, that's a Samsung Galaxy 5 in Ortiz's hand!!" That couldn't have been any less in-your-face branding.

Meanwhile, the Biden/Ray-Ban photo looks like it was taken straight from a final cut of advertisements for the company. It couldn't be any more promotional if it tried.

I understand that the White House would like to control the likeness of the President and Vice President to avoid any unknowing promotional purposes. But this does seem a little off, doesn't it? The White House shouldn't get to pick and choose when it is promotional, whether intentionally or not.