The bigwigs at Warner decided to pull The Beautiful Life, Ashton Kutcher’s show about supermodels, after airing only two episodes. Luckily for viewers who like to watch pretty people play out their angsty drama, AK did not give up that easily. TBL has now found its home on the internet, the place where Kutcher is King.
“What we feel like we’re doing is creating, in some ways, an industry first. A show that couldn’t find its legs on television, we believe can find its legs on the Web.” – the actor-turned-social media impresario said.
AK and Hewlett-Packard have teamed up to give this show a second chance, airing the five episodes (three of which never made it to network TV) commercial free on YouTube. Unless I am much mistaken, this is the first time that original, TV-quality programming will be aired exclusively online. This could be the next step in entertainment evolution, if it is successful. And, AK may be the only person in the world who could pull this off. With more than 4.3 million followers on Twitter and 3.2 million Facebook Friends, AK may just be the most popular man in the world (wide web). He is more connected on the internet that anyone else I can think of, and he is charming in real life too, which can’t hurt his ratings. And I would venture that he could market almost anything (be it digital cameras, or squeezy cheese, or even a show about models) just by taking a picture of it and putting it up on his Facebook page, or writing 140 well thought out letters, spaces, and commas. He is a one-man brand.
HP was smart to get in on the action. Not only does HP have the monopoly on viewers, they are also using their online sponsorship to promote their charitable efforts. This is essentially a triple marketing scheme. First: HP has all of the ad space on the site to promote their products. Second: They are focusing a lot of their ad space on the company’s “Create Change” program, a campaign where the consumer gets to choose an organization that will receive 4% of the purchase price. Third: By promoting the company in this way, it creates an image of a socially conscious business, which could drive more business to HP and away from their competitors.
Marketing side note: I can’t help but wonder if the people who watch this kind of “guilty please” programming (such as TBL) are the type to care about such humanitarian matters. To quote the show “Does anyone else find a group of models partying for global hunger ironic? Does anyone know the definition of irony?”
So, is the show going to reach its audience over the internet? For one thing, there does seem to be a lot of buzz about the show circulating. People are a-twitter about TBL on Twitter virally reposting: "You watch the beautiful life and make it or break it." And, I have to say, there are a lot of imbedded hyperlinks (that lead straight to TBL on YouTube) on a lot of widely read entertainment blogs. A response to one such blog said: “So glad that they've brought this back somehow. It'll do so much better online than it did on television, especially if word gets out!”
Well, with Kutcher at the keyboard, it seems that word just might get out.
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Ashton is king, isn't he? I'm glad there's somebody out there pushing the envelope. Might as well be him. That's the whole point of the internet, isn't it sort of, to be the great equalizer? You or I could do the same thing, and become the next latest, greatest whatever.
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