Risk Management Strategies

          Today in class, I had to analyse the risk management strategies of Sidra supermarket in the Student Centre. I was extremely interested in this project and examining the way the store was set up and thus decided to do the same when I went to shop for make up today at 51 East. While I was walking around trying to find all of my favourite items, I was paying close attention to the conventions used by the store and how they appealed to their customers.
          I tried to answer the first question from the worksheet with this new scenario I was in. The standard items I would find in this section was obviously makeup, perfumes, body soap and face creams. I also expected to see organized stands that divide all of the different products, and a colourful displays for every different brand available.

          The second question on the worksheet involved pointing out different risk management techniques used by the business. The first was having well known brands and companies that are known internationally and locally. Their brands included both successful high-end companies and regular ones. Some high end brands also used celebrities as the face of their products. For example, Charlize Theron models for Dior make up and her photo was blown up on the wall of that section. This is considered to be a risk management strategy as Dior hired a prominent figure to be a part of their campaign.

Each brand also sold every make up product they have available. For example, the Chanel stand included eye shadow, blush, lipstick, mascara, perfumes, creams, soaps, nail polish and much more. This is called overproduction where you create more cultural products than the market can sustain in hopes that a few big hits will cover the numerous losses. This concept applied with every brand in the make up section.

Another technique was the use of product placement. At the entrance of the store, the first thing you would see in this section was a massive perfume display for Guerlain. It was a small-elevated stage by the escalator and was designed beautifully. One could not help and stare at the stand if they pass by it. This was intentionally done by the brand in order to promote their latest collection. If one likes it, they’re most likely to look at the other products by the same brand.

Lastly, they included a small coffee shop in the middle of the make up department. This was clever and appealing, especially towards men, as they now get to enjoy a cup of coffee while their wife shops for new make up.
          The last question on the worksheet asked if we saw any examples of glocalization. This is when a product imported from another country has been customized to appeal to the local audience. I personally did not see any examples of glocalization as you cannot modify a lipstick number or blush shade. As this may be inconvenient for the locals who do not speak English, many of the saleswomen spoke Arabic and therefore were taught to deal with this dilemma.

What on earth is a Harlem Shake?

This is a question that has appeared on my Twitter and Facebook timeline more than 10 times by different people throughout the past two weeks. “It’s the new Gangam Style!” said one of my friends.

These days, it’s hard to predict what will be a “hit” and what will be a “miss.” According to David Grazian in his book Mix It Up (2010), “The convergence of media content across platforms promises the development of exciting and dynamic new forms of cultural production.” Since achieving success in today’s mass media market is unpredictable, media industries base their decision making on strategies to minimize risk and financial loss. However, famous artists and prominent production labels are now faced with the problem that consumers themselves participate in the coproduction of their own media experience.

Although the strategies used by media firms to minimize risk were shown to be successful in many cases, today’s generation of consumers form a threat to those strategies considering that today’s consumers are also co-producers of pop-culture. According to Grazina (2010), “It is exceedingly uncommon for the media industries to promote cultural products that do not cleave to common types of genre conventions or stylistic boundaries.” However, if we observe the popularity of the Harlem Shake from a sociological perspective, it’s noticeable that it stimulates from the fact that it’s easily reproduced among ordinary consumers. Therefore, the success of a cultural product these days doesn’t necessary depend on the distribution or strategies held by prominent media corporations, instead, it’s now determined by the active participation of the audience in co-producing their own pop-culture and the widespread of popular fades among regular consumers.

The Internet meme culture has gained attention over the past couple of years and the Harlem Shake is considered a subset of this Internet meme culture. Although unexpected, the popularity achieved by the Harlem Shake has caused it to become one of the most popular trends of the year. However, Internet memes could also be considered a strategy for risk reduction since it has been used as a marketing technique and it has proven to be effective in achieving marketable success. Following this popular trend, on February 21^st Northwestern University in Qatar participated in the Harlem Shake trend.

Risk Management in Television Shows

Its seems to me that television networks realized what people want and they give them that in order to mange the risk of having a failure television.  There are 13 risk management ways that the studios use to minimize the chances of having a flop for both television and cinema. I will provide the examples from television that producing studio used to manage the risk of having a flop and it worked! They had/having a successful television show.

 

1-    Fringe: 

The first risk management that was used here is using J.J. Abrams who is a winner of two Emmys. Also, he is a famous producer and director of

Star Trek and Lost. Attaching the name of J.J. Abrams to the show gave it the credibility of being good. So people starting to tune it making it a hit TV show. The second risk management technique that was used in the show was the product placement of Sprint mobile devices.

2-    Dark Angel:

The producer of that show was the mega famous James Cameron. The show was a big hit making the actress Jessica Alba very famous during and after the show stopped airing. So when the name of Cameron was attached to the show, people were excited to watch it. Making it a hit television show in the early 2000’s.

 

3-    The Walking Dead:

 The walking dead was produced and developed by Frank Darabont. Frank wrote the screenplay for both The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. This is one of the reasons that the show is one biggest hits that are currently running on television. The second risk management technique for this show was showing the product placement of the car Dodge Changer.

4-   The Vampire Diaries:

The Vampire Diaries revolves around a girl who is confused about her feeling between two guys and doesn’t know who to pick. Sounds familiar? Yes it sounds just like twilight.  The vampire diaries came out after girls were going crazy for the mythical creatures of vampires after the first movie of Twilight came out.  So it had a big built in audience for that genre, which is one of the risk management techniques.

Another one that was used for this television show was the product placement of Apple devices, such as phones and laptops.

I Fell in Their Trap, Did You?

Last week, we learned about the culture industry from the critical theorists’, Adorno and Horkheimer’s, perspectives. As professor Geoff Harkness explained to us in class, “popular culture is propaganda for corporations, designed to increase their economic power and social dominance.” Basically, we as consumers are soft targets for the big corporations since they produce shows, TV programs, films or design products to entertain us, and to keep us distracted from the fact that we are overworked and exploited customers. For example, fast food tastes great but it doesn’t mean that it’s healthy, and in reality it’s destroying our bodies in the long run as we keep having more cheeseburger meals. Therefore, the popular culture is a problem because it happens to be a form of social control that turns people into mindless consumers. While learning about risk management last week, the Pretty Little Liars show popped into my head as I’m currently watching it. The show is based on a series of books that were written by the American author Sara Shepard. So what ended up happening was that the book got to be made into a TV series. The story got to be developed by a prominent writer with a record of success, Marlene King who also wrote the story for the movie Just My Luck. The producers didn’t pretty much go with the plot of the story and did change A, who happens to be the anonymous person that the four friends kept getting texts from throughout the show. This was done due to the reason below that was explained by the producer of the show, Lisa Cochran-Neilan: "If you go just by the books, your fans are gone. We've used them as source material, we've used them for backbone, but obviously, if you only went by the books, your audience knew before you started shooting what the story was.” This is exactly how they hooked their audiences up with the TV show by simply not following the story of the book as they want to attract their audience and to keep them so attached to the show as they continue to anticipate what’s going to happen next. Another point is that ABC Family is the main channel that hosts Pretty Little Liars. They are also playing other TV shows like The Secret of the American Teenager, Gilmore Girls, 10 Things I Hate About You, and other shows won’t has a good number of fans. So, they are not really afraid of losing because they know they already have big hits. In addition, Pretty Little Liars is on iTunes and Apple TV for people to either buy the whole season or purchase by episode. Another opportunity to make money was by using the name of the show for merchandising through using the name of the characters in the show and putting them on hoodies, T-shirts, iPhone covers, bags, … etc. I fell in their trap because I keep buying more episodes so I can identify who A is. But, the producers are expanding the show and keep adding other additional seasons. Not sure if I'll ever know who A is!

Nicholas Sparks - Why so famous?

How do film directors and producers ensure that their films don’t flunk, and end up being best sellers? I recently learned about certain risk management techniques that all these billion dollar production companies use to make sure that all the time and effort put into producing their movies don’t go to waste. They contain tactics like: - sticking to traditional genres and other conventions. - Hiring prominent writers, producers, or directors with a record of success. - Producing cultural products with built-in audiences, for example like: sequels, prequels, remakes, and spinoffs. Etc. There are many other risk management techniques that ensure the success of a film.

That got me thinking about books, and how most of these risk management techniques can be applied to books as well as films, and the first thing that popped into my mind was: Nicholas Sparks.

Why is Nicholas Sparks so famous? Why are his books all best sellers? Don’t people get sick of the same story over and over again? How is he not afraid of once writing a book that’s never going to be read? And the answer to all these questions lied in the risk management techniques.

Nicholas Sparks’ books contain many risk management techniques, and the most prominent ones are: sticking to the traditional genres and conventions. Who doesn’t love a heart-warming romance novel? Famous writer. Everyone knows who Nicholas Sparks is, and what he represents. Built-in audience. Even though his books aren’t sequels of one another, they all have the same basic story line.

All these tactics work because they give the people what they want. Sometimes all the people need is a typical boy meets girl story, with conflicts and ups and downs, and finally it all works out at the end. This is what the audience is looking for, and that is proven by the fact that all of his books are known and loved all over the world. The notebook, A walk to remember, Dear John, The last song, Safe Haven; all of these books are best sellers.







Most of them have been turned into films; highly successful films for that matter. Why? Because they contain what the consumer market wants. They have the same typical story line, a genre that is loved by millions of people, famous directors like Lasse Hallstorm, Adam Shankman and Nick cassavetes, and even the same cover picture; a recipe for great success.

Sadly, all these tactics really work, because at this moment, I really want to watch the newest movie, Safe Haven, based on Nicholas Sparks’ novel. It gives the viewer what they want, a safe, stable, enjoyable love story. At some point (even though none of us care to admit it) we want to watch a corny, mushy, love story where everything works out at the end, and the world is a big bowl of rainbow ice cream, with unicorns flying around. We want the typical cover picture of *hands on each other’s face - falling madly in love - everything is going to work out - living happily ever after*. We might criticize it being such a typical unrealistic love story, while rolling our eyes and leaving the movie theatre, but really, we knew that going in, why did we buy the tickets in the first place? It's our guilty pleasure.

A walk to remember trailer

Dear John trailer

The notebook trailer

Safe haven trailer

The last song trailer

Dance+Romance+Fight=Success?

With over a 1000 films being churned out in 10 or more languages every year, the Indian film industry is more than capable of satisfying the needs of the billion-strong movie aficionados in the country. Yet if I was to count the number of those movies released even in the last 5 years that had a different content, I would be left with a considerably small number. Why is this the case? The answer very much lies in the risk management topic of sociology which highlights the strategies adopted by movie producers in ensuring profits with their movies.but with much less at stake.

The case of the Indian film fraternity is no different. Its first and most significant strategy has been to conform to certain conventions related to the content of the movie: which I describe as the dance+romance+fight formula. Almost all Indian movies, be it in "Bollywood" or the many smaller regional industries always seem to contain these three elements in some form of the other; almost as if it were a requirement. It shouldn't be surprising then  for an audience to find the hero and his lady crooning to tunes in the posh locales of Switzerland, only seconds after he saves her from the evil schemes of the villain. The hyperbolic,exuberant  impression of life that these movies generate is all but a distraction from the rigors of reality and perhaps this is why this tried- and-tested mantra has continued to work wonders on audiences.

The other noticeable issue that could possibly cause a continuum of traditional genres is the imbalance in power between different production houses. With successful businessmen entering the field of movie production and  their influence on casting bankable stars and promoting their movies through aggressive campaigning; the chances for the others to release a successful movie reduce significantly, regardless of the quality of their content. There have been several instances where movies with great stories have been sidelined by their much more popular, more extravagant counterparts. As a consequence, audiences are left with watching movies these bigger production houses present, which are often formulaic and hackneyed.

Overproduction is at present, an obvious factor that the Indian film industry depends on heavily. It is founded on a belief that by creating far more movies than the industry needs, the few big hits would compensate for the losses incurred by the many flops. It is this belief that I consider to be at the heart of the issue of similar content in films. Why need 1000 films to establish a successful industry, when out of those 1000, most of them are gone without a trace? Producing fewer movies would give room for experimentation both on the producing aspect and the film-making aspect; thereby giving room for unique plots and ultimately satisfying audiences.

While, this alternative idea is yet to be fully explored by the Indian film industry, in recent years there have been quite a few movies that have challenged not just the famous dance and romance formula but also the stereotype that lower budget films can never reach the kind of success that those with a famous cast can.
Here are some of those exceptional movies that are still revered by audiences :

Here are some articles describing the Indian film industry :

Indian film industry

stereotypes in indian movies

http://www.inbollywood-movies-from-the-soul-that-will-rule-the-world-842327.html