Everywhere you look consumers are capitalizing on the Hunger Games, the book series created by author Suzanne Collins. So why shouldn’t businesses? Well that’s the idea that many large and small companies share. It has always been a predictable action for business to capitalize on pop culture trends, hell, even pop culture itself capitalizes on its own trends. So watching small t-shirt kiosks across the nations malls spring up with shirts with Google images prints of Hunger Games characters and lines should be no surprise.
The financial impact of the Hunger games movies recent success is astounding. The intellectual property has stretched far beyond its initial demographics of young teens. A testament to this fact is the Scholastic and Lionsgate stock have both reached 52-week highs within the past week just due to pre-sale ticket records. With popularity like this I urge all to be prepared for the media blitz and North American famous over indulgence of something cool, until it becomes undesirable to share any positive views on the subject. However, that did not stop the popularity of comparable fiction like Twilight or Harry Potter.Where seeing Bella or Potter’s face was not limited to a visit to your local book or T-shirt retailer. Nevertheless the recent business trend is “whether or not you don’t have a direct connection with an intellectual property, it does not mean you can’t profit from it, if acted out correctly.”
Small businesses have traditionally ridden the waves with merchandise inspired by famous aspects of pop culture. Traditionally they would get these specific merchandise on the store shelves quickly and heavily promote their arrival by using all available channels. However recently companies have been name jacking for the sake of increasing business in other words they began naming unrelated products with names associated wither certain pop culture trends or properties. Several companies have begun adopting this “create products with names inspired by the film or create unofficial products approach to advertisement.” For example a nail polish company China Glaze recently released a series of nail polishes with colors inspired by the film Hunger Games. There is even an Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook burning through the booksellers list. These days less companies can risk the failure of even one of many product launches or business ventures. So we as consumers are going to continue to endure periods of excessive marketing, rehashed ideas, and repetitive themes. However you can’t deny the allure as these methods allow a business to gain profit and publicity by capitalizing on popular trends. Like this blog post JUST DID 0_0
More food for thought on The Hunger Games:
http://charleneoldham.com/2012/03/22/the-hunger-games-supersized/
I’ve seen the nail polishes! When they first came out before I knew what The Hunger Games was, I was so confused. Advertising and media has definitely expanded onto a whole new level now a days.
I work at Forever 21 and on more than one occasion, some girls came in and asked if we had clothing featuring The Hunger Games. The best part is… we do. Not at my store, but the Forever 21 corporation has indeed signed a contract to create a line of Hunger Games clothing, just like they did with Hello Kitty not long ago.
The Hunger Games seem to have gathered fans from both Harry Potter and Twilight, hooked in children of both genders and adults because while it was written about children and in a simple tone, the topic of the book is certainly not a childish theme. Just the sheer population of people it attracts really made the books blow up, not to mention grabbing another audience from Taylor Swift’s tribute song to movie “Safe and Sound”, and yet another from people who can’t be bothered to read the books but are up to see the movies. The Hunger Games are the New Big Thing, and every company is taking as much advantage as they can.