Development of the garment brand Gaia & Dubos: target audience and best environmental and ethical practice

This research essay examines the target audience’s profile and preferences for the development of the garment brand Gaia & Dubos, which creates and produces ecological and ethical high-end garments for women in the province of Quebec, and explores the best environmental and ethical practice to establish a sustainable fashion enterprise. The research methods for this project combine a literature review, an online survey and four individual interviews with the target audience in an attempt to answer the research questions: (1) Who is the target audience (demographics, values, lifestyle and habits)? (2) What are the target audience’s preferences when it comes to ecological and ethical clothing? (3) What is the best environmental and ethical practice for a clothing brand?

Development of the garment brand Gaia & Dubos: target audience and best environmental and ethical practice

This research essay examines the target audience’s profile and preferences for the development of the garment brand Gaia & Dubos, which creates and produces ecological and ethical high-end garments for women in the province of Quebec, and explores the best environmental and ethical practice to establish a sustainable fashion enterprise. The research methods for this project combine a literature review, an online survey and four individual interviews with the target audience in an attempt to answer the research questions: (1) Who is the target audience (demographics, values, lifestyle and habits)? (2) What are the target audience’s preferences when it comes to ecological and ethical clothing? (3) What is the best environmental and ethical practice for a clothing brand?

Developing a Millennial Sports Media Brand

Chapter one establishes the organizational context that facilitated the integration of diverse female athletes into the UFC brand. A “millennial sports media brand,” such as the UFC, deploys branding and marketing strategies characteristic of the millennial generation while simultaneously courting fans from this same demographic. In fact, the UFC might have faded into obscurity in the mid-2000s had the brand not begun experimenting with digital platforms and social media. The UFC enthusiastically embraced digital media, began actively seeking global audience demographics by representing fighters from around the world, and integrated a “we are all fighters” brand maxim, an ethos that understands diversity as something every fighter and fan possesses. Each of these approaches combine to create a millennial sports media brand ready to promote and exploit diverse female athletes.

The Producers and Hairspray

Marketability is the focus of this chapter on The Producers and Hairspray, movies that were based on stage musicals that were originally based on low-budget, largely nonmusical movies. The chapter compares the two movie adaptations, noting that Susan Stroman restaged her original work for film, and many of the original creative team (including costume designer William Ivey Long) reprised their Broadway visual contributions for film, while the producers of Hairspray selected Hollywood professionals instead of the original Broadway creative team to supervise the making of the film. In another contrast, the 2005 film of The Producers is 134 minutes long to Hairspray’s 116, and The Producers used its Broadway stars rather than using the latest Hollywood names; Hairspray chose movie stars. With these contrasting strategies, and their relationship to the audience demographics for cinema today, it is unsurprising that Hairspray was a hit on the screen and that The Producers was a flop.

Epilogue

The author’s epilogue examines two of her performances of May Irwin’s material–one in Clayton, New York to a group of older May Irwin fans, and one to a mixed group of African-Americans and white audience members attending a daylong panel on race who had viewed a video from the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia prior to a performance titled Reconstruction to Ragtime. The difference between audience responses and interpretive communities and the nature of the material presented in a readers’ theatre format is taken into account. Audience demographics are examined and the multiple reactions, including audience laughter, to racist material are analyzed.

British film production and the horror genre

Chapter 2 contemplates why British horror was revived at the dawning of the new millennium, and also considers some of the reasons why British horror films produced in the 2000s and 2010s can be viewed as constituting a distinctive aspect of contemporary British cinema. I discuss the establishment of the UK Film Council (UKFC) in 2000 and contextualise the contemporary British horror film in the international film marketplace, drawing parallels between British horror and British film production more broadly, British horror and international horror production, and the audience demographics targeted by distributers and film production companies. This involves examining British horror’s shift from a theatrical genre to one associated primarily with the home video and online market.