Some “Bachelor” contestants are there to find their soulmate, while others are there to turn their 15 minutes of fame into social media success. In recent years, many of the last contestants standing and those who didn't find Ms. or Mr. Right have turned to Instagram, racking up followers and sponsorships, thanks in part to their Bachelor Nation follower bump.
In the most recent season, “Bachelor” finalists Madison Prewett and Hannah Ann Sluss each grew their Instagram followings by hundreds of thousands from the time they were announced as contestants to the show’s finale Tuesday.
This wasn’t always the case. The first season of “The Bachelor” debuted in 2002, pre-dating Facebook and running eight years before Instagram hit the scene. Before social media became part of the equation, contestants either faded from the spotlight back to their pre-show lives, or, in the case of some fan favorites like Ali Fedotowsky-Manno and Jillian Harris, pivoted to a career in television.
Kristin Breakell, a content strategist for Trendalytics, a company that aggregates and explains predictive data for retailers, said that beginning around 2012, contestants started using increasingly popular social media tools to interact with fans during the run of the show. Their growing followings coincided with the launch of brand-to-consumer companies that were ready to use influencer marketing.
Breakell said the biggest change when it comes to influencers and “The Bachelor” franchise is that recent seasons have seen a rise in “transparency” regarding social media and self-promotion. Hannah Godwin, a contestant on Colton Underwood’s season of “The Bachelor,” listed her occupation as a content creator during her time with the franchise, while in the most recent season, Mykenna Dorn listed her career as a fashion blogger. And Jed Wyatt, who was briefly engaged to “Bachelorette” star Hannah Brown, was upfront during their courtship about joining the show to further his music career.
Contestants for Peter Weber’s season were announced in September 2019. At that time, Prewett, a foster parent recruiter, and Sluss, a model, had a respective 7,182 and 34,200 followers on Instagram. Over the course of the season, Prewett would see her follower count climb to 1.6 million, while Sluss’ followers reached 1 million the morning after the March 10 finale.
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