Keeping Up with Digital Marketing

As someone who's known to dabble in some pretty questionable TV shows, I take it as a point of personal pride that I've never watched an epsiode of Keeping up with the Kardashians in its mindblowing 20-season run. My wife's not ashamed. She is the first to argue that the Kardashians are brilliant, so when I saw on my podcast feed that Kim Kardashian was a featured guest on one of the podcasts that I listen to regularly (Honestly by Bari Weiss), I decided to listen. It's impossible to be a Millennial and have not seen Kardashians in a wide variety of setting and contexts, but I had never listened to Kim speak, completely unscripted, for almost an hour straight. Here's a link to the episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb2AUKOqQUE After listening, I came back with my tail between my legs. I found Kim to be extremely impressive, thoughtful, funny, and brilliant. It really shouldn't be a surprise. With 240M Instagram followers (https://www.statista.com/statistics/421169/most-followers-instagram/), Kim makes it in the top six of all accounts followed worldwide. She's behind her half-sister Kylie Jenner; her sisters Khloe and Kourtney, and other half sister Kendall, all make it in the top 20 (Statistica). That type of attention and interest is made, not given. Aside from her life aspiration and her politics (and those of her ex-husband Kanye West), what I found very interesting about the interview was the transformation of how she leveraged digital marketing during the lifespan of the show, represented by the comparison between her and her youngest sibling Kylie. Born in 1980, Kim is technically Gen X, while Kylie was born in 1997, making her Gen Z. During the interview with Bari, Kim makes the point that in a recent conversation with Kylie, she realized that Kylie had never heard of Jay Leno. It was shocking to Kim, but it was representative of how much had changed in the world of television and what is popular with Gen Z and Millennials too. Television's impact on our culture had shifted dramatically, and it was something that the Kardashians were able to capitalize on. When Keeping Up with the Kardashians launched in 2007, Kim saw an opportunity. She recognized that this budding world of social media could be leveraged as a way to get attention promote her show. That's what her initial foray into digital marketing was about. Yet over time, everything flipped, and she recognized that the digital marketing itself could be so much greater than even the show. Kylie on the other hand came on the scene later. She never had to make the switch. Instead, the show was always a conduit for her to promote herself and her own brands, and it has paid off tremendously. According to Forbes, both Kylie and Kim have a net worth exceeding $1 billion (https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2021/04/06/kim-kardashian-west-is-officially-a-billionaire/?sh=6345929321bb). What got Kim over the billion-dollar threshold was the success of her beauty company KKW Beauty, which she founded in 2017. Similar to Kylie's Kylie Cosmetics, KKW Beauty used a direct-to-consumer model that relied heavily on social media marketing. KKW Beauty's first launch of 300,000 contour kits sold out within two hours. Kim cashed out 2020 when she sold 20% of her company to cosmetics conglomerate Coty for $200 million, a deal that valued the company at $1 billion.