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Personal messages motivate action more than impersonal ones, but what criteria should you use to determine if a message is personal or impersonal? If your message carries triggers for personal feelings and emotional involvement, the receivers may react to it as a personal message even if it is delivered by a broadcast medium such as network television. This explains, in part, the power of someone like Oprah, and helps explain why a book she mentions or discusses on her show becomes a bestseller. Along with every other message she may send, she communicates the message that she relates to people personally.

When the books she recommends become a part of the life of her viewers, through the purchase, reading, and discussion groups that invariably arise, that sustained contact with the recommended book reinforces Oprah as a trusted source. As a result, future recommendations from Oprah are judged on the basis of the viewer's experience with the books previously experienced, and the growth gains a momentum which is compounded by the social network that grows organically around book circles organized at local levels. The messages that reach millions of people feels like the recommendation of a close friend, even though the vast majority of her viewers will never meet Oprah, or even see her in person. The illusion of Oprah's close friendship is validated by the discussions her recommendations have engendered with other Oprah fans, and the friendships which develop as a result remain grounded in the belief, or the meme, that Oprah recommends good books.