Day: October 6, 2014

Source: http://entertainment-business.blogspot.ca/2012/06/in-age-of-social-media-quality-prevails.html

This blog post comments on Roger Goff’s “The Business of Entertainment” blog which covers topics pertaining to the American movie, and music industry. I chose this blog because it provided an insider look at how a film industry insider has reacted to the new digital age of opinionated transparency.

I think Roger’s thoughts on how easy it is to market a film through word of mouth, or rather word of internet is both a blessing and a curse. In essence, this digital age forces film makers to satisfy the higher standards set by the consumers. If it does; said film’s commercial success is vastly improved. If it doesn’t; it will “die a swift commercial death.” Producers, writers, directors, publishers and all other stakeholders are now forced to play a higher stakes game of the film industry because of the transparency of everyone’s opinions. 

This new paradigm applies to almost all other forms of entertainment, including music, video games and even books. Ultimately it makes for a better business model, it incentivizes high quality production in exchange for a higher commercial payout. It doesn’t help that almost any Hollywood blockbuster is pirateable within a day of release. It’s up to the internal production stakeholders to either a) monetize piracy channels in some way (likely through litigation) or b) crack down on digital reproduction.

All in all, I am happy I stumbled onto this blog. It provided me with a genuine look into how the film industry is adapting to the new digital age from a credible entertainment official.

Source: https://blogs.ubc.ca/twinkledhawan/2014/10/05/cvs-bans-cigarettes/

This blog post is a response to Twinkle Dhawan’s post about CVS halting tobacco sales. I chose this post because the opinion presented is very similar to mine.

Whether or not CVS made the right decision by discontinuing tobacco sales is entirely subjective. This story shows the ethical dilemma that a massive corporation like CVS can face when selling demerit goods with high profit margins.

Ethically speaking, CVS can get nothing but praise for this decision; even it costs them billions of dollars. However, acting ethically doesn’t exactly raise investor confidence in the long run. This is a perfect example of exchanging implicit brand value for explicit profits. Twinkle’s idea of this decisions being both right and wrong couldn’t be more correct. Whether or not this is a success or a failure entirely depends on who’s looking at it.

I am curious to see how CVS does financially in the future because of this change.