Oprah's lesson

Andy Beaupre blogged in September that caring consistency is Apple’s #1 brand-building weapon.

 

Oprah’s performance last week in South Africa (read, watch) epitomized the principle. It was a tour de force of caring, and oh, what a brand she has built. Her press conference on the child abuse scandal that broke Nov. 5 at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls was an object lesson in crisis management. I never dreamed I could sympathize with a billionaire.

 

Rather than go underground with her legal team, she contacted authorities, launched her own investigation, looked students and parents in the eye, apologized, and laid everything she could out for the media – at the earliest possible opportunity.

 

The day the accused dorm mother appeared in court, Oprah stood at a podium flanked by local authorities and stared into the barrel of the global press corps. She detailed the timeline and the facts, starting with the first inkling of a problem. She was the first to utter the explosive words “sexual abuse.” She publicly acknowledged the gravity of the situation, accepted her share of responsibility as founder, took hard questions, and expressed true emotion: “This has been one of the most devastating, if not the most devastating experience, of my life.”

 

No stonewalling. None.

 

Oprah, who earns $260 million a year and has a net worth of $1.5 billion, made the kind of statements and took the kind of actions that would make any plaintiff’s lawyer drool. She had urged students to come forward if they’d been harmed. More girls had come forward, which under the circumstances, was good: “No one ever, ever abuses just one child,” she declared.

 

Oprah was more than accountable; she was inspiring. The debacle could have closed the school, snuffed out hope for its students, and emptied the talk show empress’s deep pockets. Whether it was spin, courage or both, her on-the-record statement was authentic:

 

“I’m happy for the attention because it is one of my goals in life to put child abusers, whether they be in my home, whether they be in my workplace, or in this case, in the academy, to put them where they belong. And that is behind bars.”

 

The students who came forward, she said, represent “the new generation of youth in South Africa who fearlessly take back their voices to speak up about their concern for their fellow classmates. This is really what we’re trying to teach.”

 

And if there was any doubt about her resolve in light of the crisis, she added: “I am prepared to do whatever is necessary to make sure that the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls becomes the safe, the nurturing and enriched setting that I had envisioned.”

 

This was refreshing, uplifting and rather straight talk (especially during presidential campaign season).

 

The Principled Profit blog hailed the appearance as a shining example of “How a Class Act Accepts Responsibility.”

 

All of this is in line with Oprah’s established (and quite credible) persona of caring consistency: This is how a beloved brand endures.