One Definition of Success

Posted on 15 September 2004 @ 13:24 in Opinion

YP posted some thoughts about the meaning of success at her site recently. Yesterday, I found one good example of it online.

Oprah: A brand new car — for everybody!

From Oprah’s example, I came up with the following definition of success:

Having the ability to help others fulfill their dreams and needs

No, she didn’t pay for the cars herself. Her celebrity status gave her the clout to get Pontiac to sponsor the cars in full. All 276 of them. At a cost of US$28,000 each.

Of course, for Pontiac, it was the PR coup of the year.

Okay, it probably boosted the ratings for Oprah’s talk show, too. In fact, it’d been done to celebrate the premiere of the 19th season of her show.

But she couldn’t have done it if she hadn’t been successful. With more than a dash of fame thrown in.

And it wasn’t to any members of the audience. It was a carefully selected audience, based on their need for a new car.

The story, with a huge colour picture of Oprah on top of one of the cars and surrounded by some of the car recipients, was splashed on the front page of one of our local English dailies, The Star, today.

I showed it to two of my male colleagues. One of them commented that the recipients were women.

Later, I drew my department head’s attention to the same picture. What caught her attention was how slim Oprah looks in the picture.

Near lunchtime, I shared the story with J, a freelance translator currently working with us on our annual report. Her face lit up and she almost screamed when she heard about the gift of cars. It was the best reaction I’ve seen to the story.

While the cars were perhaps the flashiest part of the show, Oprah had more touching gifts later in the same show.


“In other segments on the show, taped Thursday, Winfrey surprised a 20-year-old girl who had spent years in foster care and homeless shelters with a four-year college scholarship, a makeover and $10,000 in clothes. And a family with eight foster children who were going to be kicked out of their house were given $130,000 to buy and repair the home.”

So maybe there was a motive for the gifts – to boost the ratings of the premiere of her 19th season. But it benefitted 276 members of the audience, a 20-year-old college-going girl, and a family with eight foster kids. And she didn’t have to pay for any of the gifts. Her celebrity status got other people in on the giving, too. That, to me, is one definition of success. And a very good definition it is, too.

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