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To say that the 20th and final season of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, which airs Thursday, signals the end of an era is not just a cliché, it’s just inaccurate. Keeping up with the Kardashians has created a whole world anchored on social media – and in many ways, that era is just beginning.

The show premiered in 2007, just months after the iPhone debuted. Low-rent reality shows were already a must-see on cable channels, but even the most successful – The Osbournes, The Simple Life, Laguna Beach, and The Hills – hardly caused a wave beyond a small pop culture bubble.

Some reality stars have obtained commercial license agreements, while others have magazine covers. And while network reality shows could become demographic demos – The Apprentice starring Donald Trump regularly had more than 10 million viewers per episode – reality shows on cable TV were relatively inexpensive to produce and easy to market in real time. No audience? No problem – cancel it.

TV personality Kris Jenner visits the WSJ. Magazine’s 2019 Innovator Awards at the Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday, November 6, 2019 in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini / Invision / AP)

Because of this, many reality shows designed for cable television have become blink-and-you-miss-it victims (example: House of Carters about former Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter and his family, who total eight Follow on E!).

What made the Kardashians stand out while other families fell out?

Some say the answer lies in the marketing genius of “momager” Kris Jenner, whose net worth is estimated at an estimated $ 190 million, according to Forbes, and who saves 10 percent of her children’s model, licensing and beauty deals – plus 100,000 US dollars per episode for their show.

“There are a lot of people who have great ideas and dreams and so on, but if you’re not ready to work really, really hard and work for what you want, it will never happen,” Jenner told the New York City Times 2015. “And that’s what’s so great about girls. It’s all about their work ethic. “

And here, say experts, the Kardashians stood out from the other reality show colleagues.

The Kardashians knew what they wanted – fame – and developed their own roadmap to get it.

“Social First Approach”

While other reality show stars may have had their “real” lives turning off the cameras, the Kardashians realized early on that a reality star’s performance is only as bright as his or her visibility.

While editors and corporations have been the goalkeepers of previous reality stars, the Kardashians jumped on emerging social trends to become ubiquitous.

From left, Khloe Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Kris Jenner, Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian and Kendall Jenner kiss the camera at an event promoting one of their many brands in 2011 [File: Matt Sayles, AP Photo]“Before the Kardashians, celebrities saw social media as something they had to tick in order to finish. They’d hire a social team to do that, ”Eric Dahan, CEO of Open Influence, an influencer marketing agency, told Al Jazeera. “The Kardashians saw the value in speaking organically to their fans.”

And unlike celebrities who only showed picture-perfect appearances on the red carpet, the Kardashians kept it real. Take, for example, a 2009 tweet in which Kim Kardashian proclaimed, “I have a really weird talent. I can smell when someone has cavities ”(sic).

This tweet generated almost 20,000 retweets and 27,000 likes and is still published as news even after more than 10 years, as a story in People magazine from December 2020 shows.

“The Kardashians took a social-first approach where they became their product,” said Dahan.

Social media life in the early age of smartphones gave Kim Kardashian a lot more satiety than she would have if she had just lived in paparazzi photos or reruns, while at the same time being able to tightly control her own image. And this shift – the image becomes the product – ushered in our first social era, said Dahan.

A “denominational” culture

What started out as a frothy show about a rich and famous family took on a much deeper meaning in the 2010s.

Divorce, addiction, and gender identity were topics the Kardashians addressed directly – with cameras rolling. They had moved from reality TV stars to driving news – Caitlyn Jenner’s seated interview with Diane Sawyer on CBS’s 60 Minutes discussing her gender change in 2015 produced an audience larger than any non-award -Show or non-sporting event year.

Caitlyn Jenner shared her transition with the world, becoming one of the first openly trans celebrities and receiving the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at the 2015 ESPY Awards [File: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP]”What we saw was the blurring of the lines between reality and news,” Juda Engelmayer, HeraldPR president and crisis communications expert, told Al Jazeera.

On the one hand, this introduced taboo topics into the conversation. On the other hand, the expectation of privacy from non-reality stars has been dashed.

“What the Kardashians did was turn our culture into a very denominational one where we expect people to live loudly in all aspects of their lives,” Engelmayer said. The downside of the “No Filter” approach has also perpetuated the so-called “Cancel Culture”.

“Suppose you are someone who enjoys sharing recipes online. You have a blog or an Instagram account. Now suddenly you’re a content creator, ”he explained. “And there’s this expectation that because you put a part of you out there, people can get into your private life and share whatever they find.”

While the Kardashians ‘fame and fortune could help them rise above this struggle, Engelmayer wonders if the dark side of the Kardashians’ legacy is wiping out privacy for those who didn’t want to live their lives in the spotlight.

Nevertheless, Engelmayer admits that this spotlight effect has also become a great compensation.

“Social media made it possible for everyone to become famous. There used to be gatekeepers, ”he explained. “Now you can produce content and get eyeballs, and you don’t need gatekeepers. But the question is: will it be fame or notoriety? “

“Buying a Social Experience”

The Kardashians are more than just stars – they are a brand, Dahan notes. And the way they started marketing themselves led to a huge shift in the way brands communicated with their fans.

Forbes magazine once declared Kylie Jenner a billionaire on its cover, but later said her worth was inflated [File: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP]Brands no longer existed only in advertising agency-approved spots, but interacted with fans in real time. And social presence has become an integral part of every strategy – inside and outside the Kardashian universe.

For example, the youngest Cardashian sister Kylie launched her beauty brand with a lip kit (liquid lipstick and pencil) in 2015 that sold out immediately. Kylie Cosmetics eventually grew into a nearly billion dollar brand – with some controversy over the exact value of the deal.

After Forbes was named “Youngest Homemade Billionaire Ever” at the age of 21 in 2019 at the age of 21, she says she no longer deserves the title – but Kylie’s net worth is still estimated at $ 700 million.

People buy the products in part because they can then share photos of themselves with them on social media, creating a self-sustaining marketing loop that experts say has become a standard for various goods.

“Look at Peloton,” said Dahan. “People don’t buy exercise bikes. You are buying a social experience. This is what sets them apart from the competition. And I think the Kardashians normalized that: the idea that real life happens through social media. “

“Approval and Attention of Admirers”

Kim Kardashian – who started the series as a single woman in her mid twenties, famous for a leaked illegal tape, her infamous attorney father, and closeness to Hollywood’s “reality” elites like Paris Hilton – is now a 40-year-old mother of four and a law student, who advocates reform of the criminal justice system.

It is valued at $ 780 million, according to Forbes. This puts her at number 24 on the list of self-made women in America and at number 48 on the Celebrity 100.

Former White House advisors Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump sit down with Kim Kardashian West (center), who is one of the celebrities who campaigned for criminal justice reform during the Trump administration [File: Evan Vucci/AP Photo]People posit whether she will run for public office. Of course, 13 years change a person’s life. The difference is that we feel like we saw Kim Kardashian’s transformation alongside her.

Unlike previous reality stars who followed more of a storyline, the Kardashians let the chaotic, real life play out – and there is no question that they have changed our experiences and expectations of the world and the people around us.

“Evidence of its ubiquity is the fact that this Cardashian culture made its way to the British royal family,” Daniel Levine, director of the Avant Guide Institute, a trend-setting management consultancy, told Al Jazeera.

“Like the Kardashians, the royal family is well aware that their existence depends on the approval and attention of admirers,” he said. “This codependency is directly responsible for the very public exposure of the family’s current troubles.”

In other words, thanks to the Kardashians, the camera is always on.