After 25 years of the Oprah Winfrey show it seemed to many that ending the show to start her OWN TV station was a bad idea. Nevertheless, Oprah Winfrey has dramatically turned it all around and in doing so has provided a model that every brand can learn from.
When Oprah Winfrey launched her OWN TV show, ratings were plummeting and there was cause for concern at Oprah Winfrey HQ. Furthermore, between January and July of 2011 the audience to Oprah Winfrey’s own website dropped by over half, from 5.1million unique users to 2.4million. Nevertheless, appreciating the power of social media Oprah sat down with her team, sought advice of Facebook and Twitter Execs and launched season two of her Lifeclass roadshow making Oprah Winfrey Queen of the social media limelight.
Oprah Winfrey has traveled the length and breadth of the USA with her Lifeclass, which is a live TV show that is simultaneously broadcast on her website, encouraging live interaction on both Facebook and Twitter. Viewers can even Skype into the show to ask questions.
If you have not had the opportunity to watch Oprah’s Lifeclass, you really should. It is incredible to see Oprah bring together respected leaders including the likes of Life Coach, Tony Robbins and Bishop TD to share words of wisdom encouraging the audience to ‘live their best life’.
With the whole stage being social media driven, with tweets and Facebook messages appearing in the background and Oprah and her ‘gurus’ commenting on messages as they happen, this truly is a social TV phenomenon. The lifeclass buzz on social networking sites is thriving and the Oprah Team stated that in the first week of April 2012 alone there were 414,780 mentions on Facebook, 3,026 answers posted to the Lifeclass wall on Oprah.com and over 29,000 views to the wall. Meanwhile, the web cast brought in a staggering 2.7 million viewer minutes from 149 countries.
Granted, not every brand has the Oprah Winfrey budget, nevertheless, the idea is as important as the figures. Oprah Winfrey’s Lifeclass hits it hard in simultaneous locations – The live show, TV, Facebook, Twitter, Orpah.com for a concentrated amount of time once a week, with the brand benefits rolling out from their on in.
Imagine a live TV commercial airing that also promotes a hashtag and immediate engagement on their Facebook wall, perhaps for the chance to win an awesome prize. Imagine a brand rolling out the fact that they were going to make a major product announcement live online at a certain time and date with carefully selected methods of promotion on Facebook. Or quite simply imagine TV shows taking their social media engagement to the next level as the presenters sit in front of a backdrop of tweets and Facebook messages enabling the public to interview celebrities in real time.
Oprah Winfrey is revolutionising social TV by brining all the elements together at once. This is the ultimate lifeclass lesson for brands. Think about your brand and your business, what could you do via social media, your website and other media avenues in order to see your brand stand out from the crowd?
A few years ago I came up with what I thought was a pretty amazing idea. The incredible awesome amazing idea was to try to convince Channel Five to hand over an hour of prime time programming to one member of the British public.
When I first came up with this idea, Hijack Five, Channel Five was being run by Dawn Airey, (as opposed to Five’s new owner Richard Desmond). Dawn had announced that she wanted all prime time programmes to gain an audience of 1million and my mission was to see whether the British public could make this happen!
My request was that members of the public uploaded a video to YouTube stating why they should Hijack Five, this could have been for any reason – for a chat show, to follow the story of a goal or a dream, to raise awareness of a personal story to to rally a cause for a charity. When Dawn Airey heard about this story through an article in a London newspaper her response was, ‘Cheeky sod! I love it’. I had a number of meetings with Channel Five but we did not really get much further. I had numerous meetings with TV production companies, including Endemol and I had a few meetings with Channel Five. Although Five loved the idea there was just not enough money going around in the TV world. So, Hijack Five had to be cancelled.
Move on to 2011 and I am addicted to a particular American TV show that I can only watch on Wednesday’s, four days after the show has aired in the USA. This particularly awesome show is Oprah’s OWN – to win your own TV show on the all new Oprah channel, OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network). It is flippin’ addictive. Just like Hijack Five, the public had to upload their video to youtube with regards to why they should be given their own show, 10 contestants were chosen and put through their paces, and one winner will be announced next week.
This show is absolutely addictive and we are now down to the final two – Kristina, who has a passion to create a new breed of cooking show and Zach who has cerebal palsy and is incredibly funny. Personally, I am hoping Zach wins as he is talented, hilarious, and an awesome role model.
So, the idea of one member of the public winning their own TV show was not a bad idea. However, it was only a good idea if a) you are a billionaire b) you have your own tv channel c) you are one of the highest rating TV stars in America. So, we learn for next time.
I encourage you to check out OWN: Win your OWN TV show.
