Bravo's Web Series Companion To "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist"

Cable has basically become the world's largest talent show for a variety of skill sets.  We've seen aspiring fashion designers, singers, chefs, and filmmakers all competing to win the opportunity to become top-paid professionals.  Last year, Bravo introduced a show looking for hopeful artists called Work of Art: The Next Great Artist that became a decent hit and came back for Season 2 earlier this month.  This season, Bravo is teaming up with Cars.com for a branded supplemental web series where the artists try to create Cars.com's "Car of the Year" trophy.

$10,000 Up For Grabs to Create An "Iconic" Trophy

Cars.com is a well-regarded online service for buying and selling vehicles.  So why are they getting involved in a web series?  As Mitch Golub, president of the company says in the PR Newswire release:

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"'Work of Art: The Next Great Artist' is a spectacular way to introduce Cars.com to a sizeable and engaged audience...by working with the show to solve a real-life business challenge for us – creating an iconic, recognizable trophy to award to our car of the year – we're part of an exciting program that's one of the best of the genre."

I think it's funny that these artists are in a "competition within a competition," where the winner of this "meta" web series is creating a trophy, a trophy that will be given to another winner for "Car of the Year."  In effect, the winner of "Car of the Year" is winning a winner's creation.  I think I said some form of "winning" enough to summon the ghost of Charlie Sheen.

We've talked about branded web series a lot of this site, and this is yet another case where a company is funding the show, they get advertised without making a direct advertisement, and in the end, they get to pick and choose a trophy from motivated artists looking to impress, solving a problem and getting exposure all at once.  Plus, the Bravo show, while not a mega-hit, has a good following and Cars.com can attract a decent audience piggybacking on The Next Great Artist's success.

Click on this link to check it out.

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