Is Oprah more powerful?

Published on Wednesday 12 December 2007 00:37

CELEBRITY endorsement is a wonderful thing for any organisation looking to sell its product to the public. When a group of models including Erin O'Connor and Twiggy modelled for Marks & Spencer's ad campaigns they were credited with turning round the company's fashion credibility and massively boosting clothing sales. Tesco too is reporting an increase in sales since The Spice Girls appeared snapping up iPods, toys and sweaters in its current Christmas TV commercials.

And when US talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey gives something her blessing on air, her 30 million viewers sit up and take notice. Thanks to her intimate interviewing style, her ability to laugh and cry along with her interviewees, and her openness about her personal life, in the US Oprah is everyone's best gal pal, and, as a result, whenever she endorses a product sales soar overnight.

It's called the "Oprah effect", and this week it became clear that the same formula can be applied to politics. At the weekend, Winfrey threw her weight behind US Democratic Party presidential hopeful Barack Obama, stirring up a nationwide media storm and posing the question: "Can the endorsement of a stellar celebrity bag the presidency for Obama?"

Winfrey has joked that she knows that endorsing Obama is not the same as endorsing a new refrigerator. However, her endorsement equals money and influence. She voiced her support for Obama during a three-day campaign tour, addressing crowds in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Iowa, where Obama is leading in the polls. Voters braved the cold, turning up in tens of thousands to see Winfrey. The fact that Obama was there too, well, that was a bonus.

At the moment, the race is between Clinton and Obama. A recent poll showed Clinton is viewed favourably by 68 per cent of Democrats, followed by Obama at 54 per cent. John Edwards is viewed favorably by 36 percent. In the polls, Clinton leads in New Hampshire with 30 per cent; Obama follows with 27 per cent. Clinton's three per cent lead over Obama is the closest this race has been. In South Carolina and Nevada the gap is narrowing.

During the tour, Winfrey - who until now had not voiced a preference for any political party or candidate - praised her "favourite guy" for possessing a "tongue dipped in the unvarnished truth" and played down suggestions he is too inexperienced to take on the job. "Experience in the hallways of government isn't as important to me as experience on the pathway of life," she said.

In a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Winfrey said she would not use her "platform" on Obama's behalf - meaning her daytime TV talk-show, website and magazine - but would instead speak for him with her "personal voice". Why? "I felt it was the right thing to do. I know him well enough to believe in his moral authority. That is the No 1 reason why I'm supporting him."

Pundits are now speculating as to whether Winfrey's presence on the campaign trail will bring Obama more voters. Perhaps the closest we have had in the UK is Robert Kilroy-Silk, once a Labour MP, then TV host, now an independent MEP. From 1986 until 2004 he was a popular daytime talk show host, until he was taken off air following controversy over an article he wrote for the Daily Express. The prospect of Five's queen of confrontation, Trisha Goddard, having any sort of political influence seems laughable. However, things are rather different in the US, where Winfrey - whose talk show reaches 30 million viewers a week in more than 100 countries - is arguably the most influential woman in the country.

She has been called "one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century" by Time magazine; in 1999, Life listed her as both the most influential woman and the most influential black person of her generation. A Pew Research Centre survey taken in September this year, after Winfrey hosted a star-studded fundraiser at her home which netted an estimated $3 million (1.48m) for Obama's campaign, showed that 60 per cent of those polled thought she would help Obama's candidacy. Fifteen per cent said they were more likely to support him because of her endorsement. The survey also showed Winfrey's approval would give Obama's boost popularity among African Americans and women.

"This is not just a case of an entertainer endorsing a candidate, but more like a two-politicians-for-the-price-of-one offer," says Professor Ellis Cashmore, professor of culture, media and sport at Staffordshire University and the author of both Celebrity Culture and The Black Culture Industry. "Oprah is out there performing like a proper US politician, making speeches, answering questions and taking swipes at the competition.

"The fascinating aspect is, of course, whether a celebrity can actually win a campaign for someone who is bright and full of interesting policy ideas, but relatively untested in the big political arena - and black," he continues. "In the US, people are not discussing his ethnic background, and this is where her influence is most pronounced. Oprah transcends racial and ethnic factors; we never refer to this facet of her make-up.

"Can she transfer this race neutrality to Obama so that voters will not so much forget that he's an African-American, as regard it as utterly irrelevant? Quite possibly. She is so close to Obama that any vote for him will be a vote for Oprah. My suspicion is that she will be the greatest asset any politician ever had."

While conventional wisdom says that celebrity endorsements shouldn't mean all that much in politics, it also dictates that a long, heavy 19th-century novel shouldn't suddenly shoot to the top of the bestseller list in 2004 - but that's exactly what happened when Winfrey praised Anna Karenina on TV. Oprah's Book Club, in which she recommends titles to her audiences, is one of the most powerful forces in US publishing: her mention virtually guarantees a bestseller.

Her influence swings both ways, though. During a 1996 show about mad cow disease, Winfrey said: "It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger." She was promptly sued by Texas cattlemen for "false defamation of perishable food" and "business disparagement". They claimed that her remarks sent cattle prices tumbling, costing beef producers some $12 million.

One has to wonder, then, what effect Winfrey's comments about Obama's rival for the Democrat leadership, Hillary Clinton, could have on her campaign. In Iowa, Winfrey asked the 23,000-strong crowd to "see through" Washington insiders like Clinton.

"Unofficial endorsement, where a celebrity is simply seen wearing or using a product - or in Oprah's case mentioning it on her talk show - is really big business and it's a growing area," says Russell Ferguson, the director of Glasgow-based Russell Ferguson Marketing. "The exposure that a celebrity can give a product is huge, and in her case it's astronomical. It's all about brand identity created by association, and a brand would be wise to identify itself with her. She's friendly, approachable and a great communicator: a marketers's dream."

Her common touch, along with her honesty and apparent integrity, make Winfrey more popular in the US than any politician, and there are even groups calling for her to run for president herself.

Documentary film-maker and author Michael Moore has started a petition to get Winfrey to run for president. His reasoning? "America loves Oprah. She's got good politics, a great heart - and she'll have us all exercising and reading."

"Oprah comes from a poor, broken family and has endured a lot of hardship. She is open, honest and slightly vulnerable: people relate to her," says Zoe Drewitt, celebrity features editor at magazine website Handbag.com. "They like to buy into what she's thinking, and [with her] endorsing Obama, it's like having a friend vouch for him, telling voters, 'This guy's OK.'"

If she can sell Tolstoy to a mainstream audience, can she persuade the US to elect Obama as their president? "Oprah's endorsement should initially help Obama to target a huge swathe of untapped voters," says Jessica Evans, author of the book Celebrity, Media and History. "I think she will definitely get "floating voters" who might otherwise be relatively uninterested in politics to sit up and listen."

Sir Robert Worcester, the founder of the MORI polling and research organisation in the UK is more circumspect: "Winfrey is a mega-celebrity in a celebrity-conscious culture, but while her endorsement may have some effect, quite simply she is preaching to the converted. Many of the African-Americans whom she is courting would have voted for Obama anyway. It's unlikely that she'll attract any new voters."

COULD IT HAPPEN HERE?

WHETHER Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of his campaign will swing things for Barack Obama remains to be seen. However, her influence suggests such a feat could be in her power. But could British voters be so easily swayed? Were Ant and Dec to tell us all to vote for a particular party, would it lead to a change of government? Could Kate Moss, below, draw younger voters? Could Lorraine Kelly or Richard and Judy pull in the daytime crowd?

According to Professor Ellis Cashmore, the author of Celebrity Culture, Britain: "There simply isn't a British equivalent to Oprah," adding: "The only person who could lay claim to have trans-cended race, class, religion and gender in her way was, of course, Princess Diana. Imagine what would have happened if she had gone on a campaign trail with, say, Paddy Ashdown, when he was the leader of the Lib-Dems in the late 1990s!"

Zoe Drewitt, the celebrity features editor at handbag.com, agrees that no celebrity in this country has anything like the clout Oprah does. "I really don't think it's possible. British voters are just a bit more cynical about that sort of thing."

THE BIG 'O'

IT SEEMS that just about every product Oprah Winfrey touches turns to cash for the person behind it. So whose fortunes have been turned around by the wave of a wand by the fairy godmother of American daytime TV?

From day one, entrepreneur Stephen Lincoln, founder of The Protein Bakery, wanted to make his tin of cookies worthy of the "O-List", an inventory in Winfrey's O Magazine of products that she likes. He even redesigned his company website to cope with demand, should there be an onslaught of Oprah fans. When he did eventually make the "O List" in 2005, sales jumped by 30 per cent and he renamed his cookie-tin the "O Tin".

When Fat Witch brownies featured on Oprah's Favourite Things TV special in 2002, demand for them soared to the extent that, mere hours after airing, the business's website was completely overloaded. It took the mail-order firm four months to finish shipping all the orders that came from Oprah fans.

In 2006, the clothing line Adam + Eve received a phone call from Winfrey herself to say that she said that she was wearing one of their sweaters. Oprah invited the company founder to appear on her show, and that same day its website was down for hours, owing to uncontrollable demand, while the phone lines went crazy. The company took around 3,000 orders in 2005, yet in the three months following Oprah's TV endorsement they received more than 12,000 orders.

Jeanne Fitzmaurice created www.designhergals.com in 2005, a website for creating stationery personalised with a cartoon likeness of the customer. When she learned that Winfrey had adopted two dogs, she sent her a congratulations card depicting her and her new pets.

The idea paid off when Winfrey featured the company's cards on her "O List" later that year and, of the company's 110,000 customers, about half were introduced to it through Oprah.

In 2002 Maribel Lieberman sent a sample of her gourmet MarieBelle chocolate to Oprah's magazine. Winfrey decided to feature the product on her Favourite Things show and, by 11pm on the day of airing, Lieberman's website had received $30,000 worth of orders for hot chocolate alone.