Longtime Partner Toyota to Integrate Lexus Brand Into Spinoff Featuring Elite Chefs
Bravo is cooking up a high-end special based on its “Top Chef” franchise. On June 10 the network will premiere “Top Chef Masters,” a 10-episode spinoff in which established chefs will compete for charity. The cream-of-the-crop approach has translated to the show’s sponsors as well.
Longtime sponsor Toyota Motor Co. has upgraded its involvement to focus on Lexus, which will provide the winners of each of the nine qualifying rounds with $10,000 for the charities of their choice, totaling $90,000 in donations. The luxury brand will also sponsor new online features on BravoTV.com such as the “Top Chef Masters Recipe Finder” and “Rate the Plate.”
Glad Products Co. is also returning, to award a $100,000 cash prize to the winner’s charity of choice. Its products will be integrated throughout the season.
New this year is Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Stella Artois, which will sponsor weekly on-air tune-in spots and billboards. Online, Stacy’s Pita Chips will host an online viewing party in Bravo’s BHive, providing fans with party kits, game ideas and other branded features.
Susan Malfa, Bravo’s senior VP-ad sales, said this round of “Top Chef” sponsorships includes the most platforms yet, a result of the double- and even triple-digit growth of Bravo’s digital and mobile properties since the fall.
“Not only do they want to align with our content on TV, but they’re taking the opportunity of connecting with our customer everywhere they go,” she said.
The individual challenges on “Top Chef Masters” will also be put through Bravo’s rigorous “brand filter” for integrations and product placements. In recent seasons they’ve included everyone from Diet Dr Pepper to Butterball to Quaker Oats, amid occasional fan backlash. “We’re so selective about the execution of the integration, though; it’s really a matter of making sure it delivers on a great viewer experience,” Ms. Malfa said. “We live and breathe these interactive conversations between client group and agency to make sure we’re delivering the credible quality programming our viewers want.”
Although “Top Chef” integrations routinely top Nielsen IAG’s product-placement lists, Ms. Malfa said success is measured in anecdotes and repeat business rather than sales of a particular product.
“Very few clients will share that data with you, but to me, the proof is in the pudding when somebody comes back again and again and again and wants to align with your show on-air and off-channel,” she said.
Bravo Media is launching a multiplatform creative redesign of its network, websites and mobile division, replacing the long running “Watch What Happens” tagline for a new one: “by Bravo” The redesign is slated to coincide with the launch of NYC Prep, Bravo’s docudrama about life at a New York City prep school. The series and design refresh will launch June 23.
The “by Bravo” tagline will be incorporated into interstitials and promos by adding adjectives that describe the network’s programming. For example, the tagline would say “Drama by Bravo” to promote an episode of The Real Housewives franchise, “Food by Bravo” for Top Chef or one of its upcoming spinoffs or “Funny by Bravo” for Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List.
The tagline will also connect with the network’s other properties, such as its growing consumer products division (Shop by Bravo) or mobile unit (Mobile by Bravo). The look of the refresh is described by the network as pop art-inspired, with bright colors prominent throughout the campaign.
“The goal of this redesign is to give Bravo a fresh look that illustrates where our brand is going while staying true to our roots,” said Frances Berwick, General Manager and Executive Vice President, Bravo Media, announcing the redesign. “Bravo is more than a television network – it’s a trendsetting, multiplatform brand. We’re reflecting the strength of our brand and communicating this to our audience by transforming the signature talk bubble logo from a television message, ‘Watch What Happens,’ to a position of curation and ownership, ‘by Bravo.’”
Event marks the first time the network has done a multi-platform campaign in conjunction with a live telecast
Fans and cast members will both have the chance to get in on the hooplah during the finale of The Real Housewives of New York City on May 5. Bravo is launching a multiplatform viewing party that will allow viewers to voice their opinions on Twitter, Facebook Connect and live mobile chat.
Viewers will be able to interact directly with Housewives cast members through Q&A via mobile and online chats. Wives Bethenny Frankel from this season and Tamra Barney (from the Orange County season) will also be Twittering during the finale. BravoTv.com is streaming the finale live.
“The Real Housewives franchise has been lightning in a bottle for Bravo, and we wanted to capitalize on our fans’ passion for the series and create a social media watercooler event that gives viewers many different layers of engagement and interactivity,” said Lisa Hsia, SVP of Bravo Digital Media, in a statement.
The event marks the first time the network has done a multi-platform campaign in conjunction with a live telecast. The season finale airs at 10 p.m. on May 5. A two-part reunion special is scheduled for May 12 at 9 p.m. and concluding May 14 at 9 p.m.
For several years, Bravo’s reality series — “Top Chef,” the “Real Housewives” franchise or the now-departed “Project Runway” — have offered a run of compelling characters. And while real life may be stranger — and thus more intriguing — than fiction, the network is now developing two scripted series it hopes will provide the same magnetic draw for viewers.
Frances Berwick, the general manager of Bravo Media, said the goal is to transfer some of what’s worked on the “personality-driven” reality shows to the new dramas. Bravo may have a head start with skeptics, suggesting that much of what happens on reality series is actually scripted.
Furthermore, the two dramas appear as if they could easily have been created as Bravo-style reality shows. “Blueprint” focuses on two best friends, one straight and one gay, who own a successful New York architecture and interior design firm. “30 Under 30″ highlights successful young professionals floating through the New York social scene, “living dynamic, glamorous and sometimes scandalous lives.”
Word that Bravo has looked to experiment with scripted series has been percolating for a while. That rumor was confirmed Tuesday at a network upfront event. Still, no timetables for the series debuts were given.
Executive producers on “Blueprint” are also involved with CW’s “Gossip Girl,” while a driving force behind “30 Under 30″ played a role in “Murphy Brown’s” success many years ago.
Bravo also announced Tuesday that it will launch four new reality series over the coming months, including “American Artist” (working title), a sort of “Project Runway” for the art field, where contestants compete in sculpture, painting, photography and in other areas. “Magical Elves,” a producer on “Runway,” is working on the show.
Also on tap is “Kell on Earth” (working title) about the successful single mother behind a New York fashion PR firm — and how she balances those roles with being “one of New York’s most notable women about town.”
Bravo had previously announced that it would debut “The Fashion Show” about aspiring designers — a series some have tabbed as a “Runway” knockoff — starting next month. Isaac Mizrahi and Kelly Rowland will be hosts, but Bravo said viewers would have a chance to vote on winners.
Also, “Inside the Actors Studio” will be returning with host James Lipton for a 15th season.
At the Tuesday event, Bravo ad sales head Susan Malfa said the network had 97 new advertisers last year, and its upscale audience is “pretty recession-resistant.”
Bravo, headed by Lauren Zalaznick, president of NBCU’s women and lifestyle entertainment networks, is a key part of NBC Universal’s cable group, which also includes USA and MSNBC. CEO Jeff Zucker last month said NBCU was “first and foremost a cable network company” and the portfolio yields 60% of operating profits.
Advertisers and Audiences Are Intrigued by Mobile Web
Is Lynne a good mom? Is Gretchen just a gold-digger?
Those are the questions that fans of “The Real Housewives of Orange County” on Bravo are chatting about on the mobile Web site for the show, a new-media venue that has seen its usage grow by leaps and bounds.
While the television business is seriously challenged by the down economy, networks are encouraged by big jumps in use of emerging mediums like mobile. Advertising interest is on the rise as well. More than 50 million people actively use the mobile Internet in the U.S.
Bravo doubled the number of consumers accessing its mobile Web site via cell phone from 2007 to 2008. In addition, mobile Web use took off in October 2008 and now is doubling month-over-month, though the network declined to share specific figures.
Toyota and Maybelline are among the recent sponsors for Bravo’s mobile efforts.
“We are trying to create buzz before, during and after a show airs and create a deeper experience to maximize the water-cooler effect,” said Lisa Hsia, senior VP of Bravo Digital Media.
Because mobile and online are inherently more interactive than TV, advertisers are relying on those mediums to deliver on engagement.
Among its mobile tools, Bravo offers live chats for its shows on mobile sites, as well as text voting, mobile fan clubs and mobile games. Those features are all sponsored.
Advertisers are keen on the mobile opportunity even during the recession, said Niles Lichtenstein, director of mobile strategy and integration at Ansible, the mobile division of advertising holding company IPG. Marketers are using mobile to interact with consumers during TV programs or commercials, add a layer of engagement to a print ad or create in-store experiences that encourage consumers to purchase, he said.
“For this reason, many brands are experimenting with mobile campaigns, despite cutbacks in other areas, and content providers are also scaling up their mobile capabilities,” he said. “Bravo’s expanded mobile initiatives are another sign that media companies are using mobile to engage an audience.”
About 63% of viewer voting for Bravo’s shows comes from mobile phone users, Ms. Hsia said. During the recent season of “Top Chef” that ended in March, mobile participation grew 37% each week.
In addition, the network hit records for the number of posts during mobile chats for “The Real Housewives of Orange County” finale and “The Real Housewives of New York City” premiere, with about 1,000 posts each during those telecasts in February.
The network has created a mobile video series to pair with reality show “Make Me a Supermodel.” In the mobile-exclusive series, models from the show coach regular people on makeovers and modeling challenges for eight episodes. The network also is running a Maybelline-sponsored online fantasy game in tandem with the series.
The network’s efforts on the Internet are growing, too. So far this season, “The Real Housewives of New York City” is outperforming season one, up 64% in page views, 95% in unique visitors and 67% in video streams.
The Dow dipped below 7,000 and unemployment could soon hit 10%, but Bravo just had its best February ever, with a 16% year-to-year uptick in coveted young-adult viewers that was driven mainly by hoity-toity chefs, millionaire matchmakers and rich housewives.
Showcasing catty, shopaholic women like those seen in NBC Universal’s “Real Housewives” franchise would seem especially anachronistic on the face of things.
In fact, there’s been some consternation — and even disgust — directed at Bravo among critics and bloggers, who can’t understand why the pampered-class-catering channel would be showing this kind of programming, and viewers would be avidly consuming it, given the economic reality.
“Aren’t we over the rich by now?” pondered Time’s James Poniewozik
Apparently not.
“Real Housewives of Orange County” wrapped its fourth — and highest-rated — season last month with an episode titled “Bling Bling.” The show was up a whopping 34% from its third campaign among 18-49-year-olds and 39% in total viewers, with an average overall aud of roughly 2.1 million, according to Nielsen estimates.
And on the same night, the season premiere of “The Real Housewives of New York” — which featured a couple casually blowing through about $8,000 during a Hamptons shopping excursion — scored series-high ratings too, with upticks of 86% in adults 18-49 and 99% among total viewers (824,000).
Meanwhile, the elaborate meals prepared on Bravo’s “Top Chef,” which often cost more than an entire unemployment check, appear too, er, rich.
But the just-wrapped food show enjoyedits best season yet as well, up double digits in key demos.
Andy Cohen, senior VP of production and programming for Bravo, is happy to answer his critics.
“I don’t think all of television needs to put a black crate on itself and retreat until the market goes up,” he explains. “And the recession will be presented within the filter of the characters.”
Cohen notes that “Real Housewives of New York” started second-season production last summer, before the credit crises hit the fan.
“As the season goes on, you’ll see the characters talking about the recession more,” he explains.
While Bravo’s viewers — as well as those for riches-themed reality skeins on other channels, including NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice” — have largely been content to go along for the aspirational ride, some purveyors of lifestyle-themed reality shows have chosen to adapt with the changing economic conditions.
In fact, some have had no choice.
TLC, for example, has had to redevelop its real estate-themed shows, with skeins like “Flip That House” evolving into the more buyer-market-driven “Deals on the Bus” (which features home shoppers trolling for foreclosure bargains).
“I think we have to be sensitive to what’s going on in the world,” says TLC production and development topper Nancy Daniels.
There have even been tweaks at Bravo. For example, “Flipping Out’s” obsessive-compulsive star, Jeff Lewis, now focuses much more on interior design than he does on real estate speculation.
Meanwhile, on the channel’s upcoming series “The Fashion Show,” clothing-design challenges might well end up striking a more practical tone compared with the hit show being replaced, “Project Runway.”
“Any good story teller wants to tell good stories, and right now a good story is that people want to buy clothes for less,” notes series producer JD Roth.
If there is a new austerity in America, no one appears to have told Countess LuAnn de Lesseps. In Episode 2 of Season 2 of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New York City, she gathers family and friends at a parlor in the Hamptons for a champagne birthday party. For her dog.
The tagline De Lesseps speaks in the opening credits of RHNYC is, appropriately, “I never feel guilty about being privileged.” That could be the motto of Bravo, a cable powerhouse whose reality shows follow the pampered class and their various stylists, party planners and other modern-day valets.
You might think that this kind of entertainment would have died with Lehman Brothers. But as the U.S. economy sank this winter, Bravo’s series scored their highest ratings ever. As the parade of CEO hearings–slash–public shamings on Capitol Hill has shown, and Bravo underscores, the wealthy may not be universally loved, but they’re America’s favorite spectacle.
Aren’t we through with the rich by now? Not even close. When big news happens, pop culture tends to react in an opposite way to what media executives and pundits predict. After 9/11, people predicted the end of irony, trash TV and screen violence; we got Stephen Colbert, The Bachelor and 24. The opulent soap Dynasty became a hit amid the massive early-’80s recession; in the Great Depression, movies like Gold Diggers of 1933 packed theaters.
So even as networks are casting working-class sitcoms for fall, Bravo is cashing in on the rich. Bravo began life as a cable arts channel, but like artists of old, it discovered the utility of wealthy patrons. From Project Runway to the Real Housewives franchise (about well-off couples in New York City; Orange County, California; Atlanta; and soon New Jersey), it remade itself with reality TV about upscale consumerism.
There’s plenty of consumption porn on Bravo–Rolexes, cars, vacation homes. But at the heart of it is a specific 21st century definition of luxury: middle-class people buy stuff; rich people buy services. When talismans of indulgence become widespread–lattes, iPhones, etc.–what distinguishes the truly well-to-do is their ability to pay others to do things.
So Bravo chronicled the high maintenance and the people who highly maintain them. No area of pampering was too obscure: luxe hotels (Welcome to the Parker), fashion (The Rachel Zoe Project), hairdressing (Blow Out), real estate (Million Dollar Listing), upscale gyms (Work Out), home décor (Top Design), even exclusive-travel-booking (First Class All the Way). Whether you snark at the housewives or cheer for Top Chef’s hopeful restaurateurs, there’s always a window-shopping appeal: the aspirational lure of those spa treatments and seared foie gras.
You could, in retrospect, see the makings of the bust in all this. The shows depicted an economy that no longer made stuff but devised services. They also sold a credit-hooked country the idea of “masstige,” or mass luxury. If you couldn’t afford couture, you could at least splurge on trendy clothes at H&M.
But if you want a perfect metaphor for a society selling out to the dollar, look at The Millionaire Matchmaker. Patti Stanger sells wealthy men a dating service–for fees of up to $150,000 a year–mixing retro courtship rules with a mercenary take on romance. However, Stanger tells us (and herself), she has standards. She’ll take only classy rich guys as clients, like the one who shows off a painting he did of Britney Spears tongue-kissing Madonna. “We’re not an escort service!” she insists. Of course not. Those are much cheaper.
Bravo executive vice president Frances Berwick promises more schadenfreude to come. RHNYC taped from summer through fall 2008–meaning we’ll see its stars’ charmed lives against the backdrop of the autumn meltdown. But don’t expect them to start clipping coupons. “We’re certainly sensitive to the feeling that spending excesses are a little taboo,” Berwick says, “but people still want to see it so they can judge other people.”
Truth be told, the appeal of Bravo is not just about seeing the rich get theirs. It also helps us deal with the aftermath of getting ours. After all, its subjects’ shameless indulgence is just a pricier version of America’s credit binge. Maybe we overmortgaged, overbought and undersaved. But hey, at least we weren’t throwing dog parties at Hamptons Hound!
Some people weather bad times by thinking of people who have less. Bravo lets us vent at those who have more–while consuming vicariously through them. This is what makes this kind of escapism so sturdily recession-proof. Laughing at the housewives, we see a comforting moral rebuke to the last national spending spree. And admiring their beach houses and bling, we quietly nurture the seeds of the next one.
Bravo is cooking up a high-end special based on its “Top Chef” franchise. On June 10 the network will premiere “Top Chef Masters,” a 10-episode spinoff in which established chefs will compete for charity. The cream-of-the-crop approach has translated to the show’s sponsors as well.
Fans and cast members will both have the chance to get in on the hooplah during the finale of The Real Housewives of New York City on May 5. Bravo is launching a multiplatform viewing party that will allow viewers to voice their opinions on Twitter, Facebook Connect and live mobile chat.
For several years, Bravo’s reality series — “Top Chef,” the “Real Housewives” franchise or the now-departed “Project Runway” — have offered a run of compelling characters. And while real life may be stranger — and thus more intriguing — than fiction, the network is now developing two scripted series it hopes will provide the same magnetic draw for viewers.
