Oprah’s on-air endorsements correlated strongly with advertisers’ spending

Evidence

It never fully escaped notice that Winfrey’s advertisers were those whose products often, if not invariably, enjoyed her on-air or in-print blessing as well. Over the mid-2000s, for example, Dove soap was the subject of major segments featuring its various products and their merits. True, the ostensible topic was the brand’s new advertising campaign, which promoted “real beauty” by featuring ordinary women as models. The messaging was a good fit with Winfrey’s goal of encouraging self-esteem. It’s also true, however, that Dove spent 16.4 million for commercial spots on the syndicated TV show and another 32.8 million on print ads in O. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 803

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The celebrity-endorsement-as-attention-harvest dynamic here parallels the manipulation of self-esteem in the ‘immodesty’ moral panics article — both use inner-confidence narratives to sell.
• XREF: connects to: Oprah blended unpaid endorsements with paid advertising in her broadcasts — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 801

Broader Connections

• Oprah blended unpaid endorsements with paid advertising in her broadcasts #qualifies (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 801