How Kelly Cutrone’s Reality TV Show Can Change Public Relations
She’s ruthless, she works in the underbelly of the fashion world, and she has her own show on Bravo. Debuting last night, Cutrone was introduced to us as the powerful force behind the PR firm she founded, People’s Revolution. Organizing and running fashion shows across the globe, Cutrone has a high-stress job with lots of minions quaking in her shadow. Teaching her employees and the rest of us about the business side of making fashion fashionable isn’t a job for the faint of heart. Cutrone and Bravo bring PR into the new era with her new show, “Kell on Earth.”
How PR flack Kelly Cutrone can Change the face of Public Relations…
Yes, it’s supposed to sound like Hell on Earth. As the woman that helped bring The Hills and The City stars Lauren Conrad and Whitney Port into the fashion industry, Cutrone is becoming the face of just that–the industry. Most shows, even those on Bravo, have focused on the glamorous side of the fashion industry. Even Project Runway, which got its start on Bravo, offered a relatively tame peek at the business aspects of the fashion space.
Other shows that have tried to demonstrate the flip side of fashion haven’t done tool well as far as their ratings go, but then again, most television shows meet a similar fate. Having only shown the pilot episode, we still don’t know how well Cutrone’s own show will do on Bravo. But we do know that Cutrone is hoping to tell her story, and bring some enlightenment to what she does in order to support the side of the fashion industry that we’re familiar with.
In the show’s preview clip, Cutrone points out that the public-facing side of the fashion world is completely different from what’s going on behind the scene. This is true for all industries, particularly those with a certain image to uphold. It’s the image that needs careful and constant maintenance, and firms like People’s Revolution are the ones that do all the maintenance work.
The story of supporting the glamor and glitz of the fashion industry is one of Cutrone’s primary goals with her show, which is considered a new way of doing her job. The dual benefit of having her own show and creating her own image represents the changes that are taking place in our current economy. With print media still sinking, the fashion industry itself is going to have to reconsider a few things in order to retain the level of cultural permanence to which it has grown accustomed.
In other words, Cutrone’s show is the new way in which the world interfaces with the fashion industry. As a PR firm, People’s Revolution is facing its own challenges in distributing the fashion world’s message to the globe’s population. While television is also a diminishing method for doing so, it has a more effective series of options for giving Cutrone a voice.
There is, of course, the danger of having a PR disaster play out in front of cameras, adversely effecting everything Cutrone has set out to do. Pleasing clients while also showing the process behind closed doors is a very tight line to walk, especially when an ulterior motive is the opportunity to promote oneself. Yet given the pinching budgets for media and advertising, Cutrone has to preserve her own image as well as the images of her clients.
The changing face of media and the distribution methods surrounding it have brought about an interesting mix of content and motives for production. What’s evident, though, is the continued incorporation of brand engagement with the actual content being produced and shared though different vistas. We’ll see if Cutrone has what it takes to balance this unique position in today’s media and marketing world–Kell herself may help induce an entirely new perspective on the public relations industry.
