Desperate Products

Real Women on the Hunt for Ancillary Revenue

During my time on the Real Housewives Sponsorship Sweep, I errantly came-to-market with nothing but my art, my context, my drama & my status as a genuine wife & mother living in the Greater Atlanta region.

This obviously didn’t work.

The success of the Real Housewife franchise is entirely based on the struggle the successful contestant endures while performing as a living, breathing, pass-through-opportunity for third-party products & services.

We the viewers are watching human, female commercials fight each other to win precious broadcast space to peddle their wares.

Hence, my corollary to Warhol’s prescient observation…

“…and it will all be monetized.”

But not all 15 minutes are created (or story-arced) equally.

Nor do they provide equivalent value to Sponsors, who constitute a 5th wall for the program.

A common misconception the contestants suffer under is that they are ‘brands’. This may be true to some extent during the off-season. But when in-season, these character brands are created & thus owned by editors, producers & Anderson Cooper’s droll quips at Manhattan dinner parties.

Again, these women are not their ‘brand’.

These women are the products, themselves.

And the most successful players in the cast will be those who use their “off-season” to build out their product development to such strength and value, that whatever ‘brand’ is conjured on camera, their return on investment for potential Sponsors remains bullish.