[QUOTE=Antinor01]
A store? Pfft, that is totally small time. She’s getting her own cable TV network named OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network.
[/QUOTE]
The acronym works on so many levels.
[QUOTE=JohnBckWILD]
There are countless bands, performers, artists, actors, what have you that have an ‘official store’ on their websites, the only difference here is Oprah’s Store is brick & mortar.
[/QUOTE]
What’s fascinating about the Oprah thing, though, is how perfectly self-referential her brand his. She used to be an actress, but her brand has nothing to do with that, really. Her brand is that she’s Oprah. And why is being Oprah special? Because she’s Oprah, and of course Oprah is famous, because she’s Oprah. But why is Oprah so famous, you ask? Why, because she’s Oprah. Oprah magazine must be about Oprah, since Oprah is so wonderful for being Oprah, and the Oprah store is necessary to sell Oprah things because people love Oprah for being Oprah.
Artists sell art. People may get silly over an artist, but at least he/she sold some art. Musicians sell music, actors sell acting performances; the brand is, usually, attached to some product. But in the case of Oprah her brand is her, and nothing else; she doesn’t produce any other product except her own existence. She is a person of evidently unlimited charm and self-promotional skills - she was anchoring a local newscast while still a teenager - but what she promotes is simply her. I cannot think of anything else like it with this much longetivity. You’ve got other ones like Paris Hilton, but Hilton was failing Grade 2 when Oprah was already a huge daytime TV star, and will be long forgotten when Oprah is still a major star.
Do not mistake this for criticism. I think Oprah is one of the most amazing marketing achievements in the history of the world. I once thought it would be a neat idea to design an entire amusement/theme oark about myself, an ugly asshole from Canada. I would call it Rickworld, there’s be a Rickcoaster and you could get Rickslurpees at Ricksnack kiosks, and everything would have my grinning face on it. It would be so absurd and hilarious and yet presented with complete seriousness that I thought it might actually work by convincing people that somehow the Rick brand must mean something because, hey, his face is on everything.
Well, that’s exactly what Oprah Winfrey has done; she’s created an entire brand around nothing more than an ordinary person, and it worked. She’s managed to hit the white soccer mom demographic (despite being neither middle class, nor white, nor a soccer mom) by somehow convincing them that she is, in fact, their spokeswoman. I remember once seeing a crowd shot of her audience and every audience member was exactly the same. They were all white, all women, all thin, all wore black or brown pants and all wore either a solid, restrained-colour short sleeved blouse or an equivalent light sweater. It’s as if they issued uniforms at the door. She’s created a Brand of Me, and presented it with such forceful sincerity, such unabashed shamelessness, that people seem to have been convinced that it means something.
I’m not doing a very good job explaining how she did it, but this level of marketing genius is hard to explain.