The Oprah Effect: Winfrey Drives Most Emotions Surrounding the Golden Globes

B&C worked with emotional measurement company Canvs to get a quick take on the emotions swirling around the 75th annual Golden Globes, telecast on NBC Sunday night. The bottom line: Oprah Winfrey totally dominated the evening, thanks to her unavoidable front-row presence (and frequent mentions by awardees) plus her powerful acceptance speech for the annual Cecil B. DeMille Award. We also worked with TV ad analytics firm iSpot.tv, which has attention and conversion data from more than seven million smart TVs, to gain insight regarding the major marketers that backed the big show (see details, below).

Across the entire evening, according to Canvs, the top emotions prompted by the telecast were “love” (32.5%), “enjoy” (11.7%), “congrats” (10.8%), “beautiful” (6.4%), “crazy” (5.2%), “excited” (4.4%) and “dislike” (3.6%). Oprah was the biggest driver of emotionality around the Globes, prompting nearly 9% of Emotional Reactions (ERs) in all.

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With plenty of people on social media suggesting that Oprah’s acceptance speech almost sounded like a political speech, #Oprah2020 became a driver of ERs (.4%), as did #TimesUp (3.7%) — an Oprah line (as in “time’s up” for the abusive men who keep getting outed and ousted from the entertainment-industrial complex).

And #WhyWeWearBlack—a reference to the many Globes nominees and winners who wore black to draw attention to the #MeToo movement—drove .7% of ERs.

As for the advertisers backing the Globes telecast — and enjoying the Oprah glow — no brand was more active than L’Oreal Paris, which ran ads for 180 seconds across its cosmetics, hair care and skin care lines. In total, more than 50 brands ran ads during the Globes broadcast and its later rebroadcast.

Notably, media brands showed up in force — Hulu, Netflix, Facebook and The New York Times all aired ads during the Golden Globes telecast. TV’s typically dominant marketer categories, including auto makers and wireless providers, were also backers of the big show, including Honda, Volkswagen, T-Mobile and Verizon.