I am a fitness guy and fan of the show The Biggest Loser. I know lots of people hate this show now since it has almost run it’s course.

There are lots of reality shows and why are they popular? Shows like Biggest Loser, Survivor, Big Brother, and even the Bachelor all do the same kinds of things to hook us and these simple ideas can be brought to our own marketing for our products or affiliate programs to our customers.

So let’s just look at my show, the Biggest Loser, and why it is really popular even after 8 or so seasons. Here are the things that make it great.

Biggest Loser puts everything together. Fat couch potatoes  that have to workout, eat better. trainers to help them. Hosts that draw the trainers and contestants together and story lines

Contestents – The contestants are only a bit of an exaggeration of how the viewers themselves look. The people are all struggling and sad, fighting doubts and fear and have families like all the rest of us do.

Compelling storyline – The people on the Biggest Loser are always working like crazy to make a giant change to their life, the life around them and we see from week to week that someone normal although extra large grows in confidence and strength while losing weight turns into a bit of a superhero to their followers watching TV. Not only this but we see these heros have to fight through struggles and failures while still pushing through to succeed.

Interesting and knowledgeable trainers – The trainers obviously know what they are doing. Why are the important? Well the trainers are telling the heroes, the contestants hows to lose the weight but are also showing and driving the contestants how to fight their demons. Also the trainers are likable and become helpers to us on the other side of the screen.

A thrilling finale – The end of any of these shows including the Biggest Loser gives us a really nice end game. The finale of any of these shows is a celebration of the whole season with the backstory from the first day and then a weight in that gives people a nice big fat check.

I am sure that there are a few more things that attract us to these reality shows but one of the best things that you can do to learn as a marketer is to see what makes a successful reality show compared to what makes other reality shows fail. I am sure that you can see by watching the failures that one of the points above, story, contestants, the way that we relate to the shows characters, or auxiliary characters is weak.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!