Whether it’s the Real Housewives franchise, Below Deck, Married to Medicine, or Southern Charm, Bravo’s suite of reality series has garnered passionate fan bases over the years. Bravo has celebrated these fandoms through experiential marketing—a strategy that the NBCUniversal-owned company has continued to expand since launching BravoCon in 2019. 

After the network put BravoCon on pause in 2024 (the three-day fan convention is set to return to Las Vegas in 2025), Bravo used the hiatus to create new in-person experiences designed to immerse fans into the world of its shows. These have included the Diamonds and Rosé Experience in New York and Los Angeles and, most recently, the first Bravo Fan Fest in Miami. 

The company partnered with experiential marketing agency HudsonGray to produce Bravo Fan Fest, which took over Miami’s Ice Palace Studios on Nov. 23. The ticketed event leveraged BravoCon’s core elements—meet and greets with "Bravolebrities," live panels, and interactive sponsor activations—to offer superfans a daylong, social-friendly experience. Jamie Cutburth, executive vice president of creative partnerships for NBCUniversal Advertising and Partnerships, shared that the festival’s goal wasn’t to replace BravoCon but to build on how the brand connects with people in real life.

“We’ve been building experiential events for years now, and they allow us to hear more from fans about what excites them. We want to deliver on that time and time again,” said Cutburth. “Bravo Fan Fest is another opportunity for us to serve our fans and bring everything they love about Bravo into a live space.”

The draw for many attendees was the massive lineup of Bravolebrities, which included cast members from The Real Housewives of Miami, Below Deck Mediterranean, and Summer House. Attendees could attend panels and tapings of talk show Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen to get the inside scoop on current and upcoming seasons of their favorite shows. Simultaneously, Bravo partnered with multiple sponsors to allow fans to interact with Bravolebrities in branded environments. 

The network tapped Lexus, State Farm, Verizon, ViiV Healthcare, Wendy’s, and Wayfair to create activations designed for social sharing, which cleverly incorporated its reality stars and nodded to show moments. For example, Wendy’s invited attendees to step into a photo booth to answer Bravo-themed questions, inspired by the BFF Test game frequently featured on Watch What Happens Live. The brand also had an on-site food truck where The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Lisa Barlow, known for her love of fast food, handed out Frostys and chicken sandwiches while discussing key event moments on TikTok. 

Cutburth shared that the key to producing successful sponsor activations required working with brands whose presence could naturally feed into fans’ passion for Bravo shows while providing opportunities to create social-first content to reach people not in attendance. 

“We wanted to make sure that we showcased our advertisers' messages, and that everything we created was authentic and entertaining for our audiences,” said Cutburth. “We also prioritized a content strategy to connect with fans not on the ground with us—the brands we worked with didn’t have to choose between experiential and content, because we were able to accomplish both at the same time.” 

To measure the success of these activations, and Bravo’s events overall, Cutburth explained that his team works with brand partners to define their objectives and KPIs, typically tracking metrics such as brand lift, likability, engagement, and fan sentiment. Cutburth shared that his team uses these quantitative and qualitative findings to inform how they can improve upon future iterations of fan events. 

“Brand activations are our most visited sites at BravoCon, and we’ve found that we have a 99% brand recall across all of our site partners,” said Cutburth. “That’s because we’re creating memorable experiences with these surprise-and-delight aha moments, with so many nods to different shows. We have a passionate audience, and they’ll know if we don’t get a small detail right.”

Lead image: State Farm’s Closet by Bravo offered a space for attendees to peruse memorable outfits and artifacts from Bravo series, along with looks worn by Jake from State Farm. Below Deck’s Captain Sandy and Southern Charm’s Madison LeCroy interacted with fans in the space. Photo: Charles Sykes

This article originally ran in our sister publication, BizBash.

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