Reality TV is a recent type of real life based TV show, in the participants are being filmed during most of their day and are supposed to live their lives in front of the camera. The most famous reality TV today that we can cite is Keeping up with the Kardashians, a show portraying the story of the life of five sisters in the United States of America.
This show has been on air for 10 years and has known a real success first in the US and now worldwide. The protagonists : Kylie, Kim, Khloé, Kourtney and Kendall are amongst the most famous persons of our generation and the most followed on social media. As a matter of fact, they are experts in terms of virality. Nothing is left to chance in this industry and especially not on social media, where everything you say and post is calculated in order to make the highest number of views and likes possible. Focus on the most famous Kardashian sisters, Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian West, and on their brands and the strategies they used.
Kylie Jenner
Thanks to their celebrity, the Kardashian sisters have been able to grow businesses and sales and they have used their fames to advertise their products. For example, Kylie Jenner launched her line of cosmetics Kylie Cosmetics in November 2015, thanks to which she became the youngest self-made female billionaire. The reason why her brand worked so well is only due to her celebrity. Indeed, the industry of cosmetics is highly saturated with very qualitative brands, and her products are known for not being as qualitative.
Kylie Cosmetics
Kylie Cosmetics became one of the fastest-growing beauty brands ever and here is why : she did the promotion of her brand through her social networks, in which she is followed by 174 million. That, added to their community of her four other sisters as well as her mother and her friends who are all Instagram famous, makes an incredibly large audience and gives room for a lot of conversions on her website. Also, being one of the most famous young females of the world nowadays, and known for her supposedly stylish and fashionable appearance, it is safe to say that she inspires trends, and that wearing Kylie Cosmetics makeup became a trend in 2015. That means that people would buy the products for different reasons but most importantly because it became a statement to prove if one was trendy or not.
Kylie Jenner’s lipsticks became so popular that it even lead to a challenge on social media : the #KylieJennerLipChallenge. The challenge’s goal was to try to have the same lips as Kylie, famous for her luscious lips. To do so, internet users had to film themselves while they put an empty glass around their lips during a few minutes, which would make their lips look bigger temporarily.
Her brand also worked very well because of her marketing strategies. She has developed a whole universe dedicated to Kylie Cosmetics in which even the products have names that echo her personality : Kyshadows, Kyliners… and her packaging is trendy and most importantly it is instagrammable. To be « instagrammable » is a new concept and it derives from virality. According to the urban dictionary, it means that a photo is worth being posted on Instagram, and will probably get likes and shares. Kylie, as well as her other sistres such as Kim or Kendall, works a lot with social media and especially with Instagram. They all post everyday, whether it is through posts or Insta stories. Through their social medias, the Kardashians expose their lives, and they combine it to the communication of their brands. Indeed, Kylie is not the only Kardashian that launched her own brand.
Kim Kardashian West
Skims
Kim, for instance, also launched her own brands : KKWBeauty, KKW Fragrance and Skims. KKW Beauty is a line of cosmetics, such as Kylie’s, who she has partnered with more than once to do collaborations. Skims, on the other hand, is an underwear brand that focuses on providing solutions to shape the body. Her concept echoes the fact that this family of sisters has changed how society views the female body. With their millions of followers, they dictate the new standards of beauty and they use their fame to convince younger generations that they should look like them. As manipulative as it sounds, it is one of their techniques to increase their sales. For example, through her brand Skims, Kim is actually selling the idea of a body that would look like hers.
KKW Fragrance
KKW Fragrance is Kim’s own line of perfumes. What really helped her new brand work was her communication. Indeed, for the first edition of her fragrances, she designed a very funny, unusual packaging that had the shape of a heart. As a communication campaign, she sent a gift to all the celebrities she knew and was close to such as her sisters or her friends Gigi Hadid, Bella Hadid or even Ellen Degeneres. The gift was a big box with the shape of the fragrance, that people had to break in order to access to the actual parfume that was hidden inside. Obviously, people filmed themselves while breaking the box as it was so unusual and funny. Then, they posted the video on their own social media (also followed by very large communities) and tagged Kim Kardashian as well as her brand.
With such a large audience comes power, and that is how the Kardashians have changed the game in the industries of fashion, cosmetics, perfume, television and social media. Even if they are not always an example of intelligence or wisdom, they do have one belief, which is that there is no such thing as bad publicity. And that is their biggest marketing strategy, they are constantly on tabloïds and the press is always talking about them. But even the critiques can help them, as that makes them gain even more visibilty, which happens to be the key for success and sales.