All Hail Oprah: The Queen of Messaging
The Media Mogul Had a Speaking Platform at Sunday’s Golden Globes and Smartly Took Advantage
The watercooler was bubbling today with talk of Oprah’s #MeToo speech at Sunday’s 75th annual Golden Globes Awards. If you haven’t had the opportunity to watch her full address you can do so above — it’s well worth the 9+ minutes of your time.
Perhaps what was most impressive to me as a PR professional, is how Oprah, in typical Oprah fashion, took what could have been a bland awards speech and used it to her advantage to gain support of the Time’s Up campaign against sexual harassment and assault.
Here’s a few things that I noted that Oprah did well from a messaging standpoint:
She was compelling.
Oprah opened her speech with the story of how, as a young girl, she watched Sidney Poitier win an Oscar for Best Actor for “Lilies of the Field,” and how life came full circle with her following him in achievement as the first black woman to receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2018. Her story was personal, and she immediately grabbed the audience’s attention.
She was relevant.
The #MeToo movement had overtaken Hollywood in the months leading up to the awards, and instead of shying away from the controversy, Oprah used her speech as a platform to address her thoughts, like many of Americans, on the issue. She struck the right balance of expressing her gratitude, but also making note of what the audience wanted and expected to hear from her. Oprah also made a statement by joining other celebrities in wearing black on the red carpet, to show solidarity with sexual assault and harassment victims.
She was strategic.
Good messaging should have a strategy behind it — and Oprah’s speech definitely did. It was a slow and riveting build, peaking with the story of Recy Taylor, a young black woman who was abducted and assaulted by six white men in Alabama in 1944. Oprah’s speech defined the issue (sexual assault and harassment); showed differentiation (women are now speaking up and change is coming); and addressed it with a call to action (support this change and the “Time’s Up” campaign). It was brilliantly delivered.
Lastly, she was memorable.
Oprah ended her speech with a rousing “a new day is on the horizon!” She gave the audience hope, as her last line expressed that she looked forward to “the time when nobody ever has to say ‘Me too’ again.” Oprah’s message made a lasting impression, so lasting, that people took to Twitter last night to campaign for her to run for President in 2020. Her longtime partner, Stedman Graham, hinted that she hadn’t ruled it out, so now we all have to wait and see what happens. But if she continues giving speeches like that, she can certainly be a contender!
What did you love (or hate) about Oprah’s Golden Globes speech? Hit me up in the comments below!
