Retail Therapy

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I can contribute to this group project that would be beneficial to our final piece. I am not particularly gifted with media or aesthetic design but where the science behind our ideas is involved I can do a lot. As such it has fallen to me to find some scientific reasoning to back up our products.

We came up with a long list of potential products our company could produce, anti-aging skin cream, changing eye colour, memory enhancement chips, patches that would remove scar tissue, among other products. We decided that due to time and financial constraints we would only market 2 or 3 products. The first would be an anti-aging skin cream called “Reverse”. The aim is to reduce the signs of aging for an efficiently longer period of time than regular skin creams using: Hydroxyl and Hyaluronic acids to exfoliate the skin and absorb moisture (allowing the skin to plump up to avoid wrinkles), Pentapeptides and Retinol to encourage the body to produce more collagens which protect against signs of aging ( retinol is one of the best ingredients for reducing fine lines, plumping your skin, and decreasing pore size” (Beautylish, 2012). With added Vitamin C which acts as a protective layer and guards against harmful bacteria and UV rays. We agreed that moisturising ingredients such as Aloe Vera could also be added for a fresh and smooth finish.

Reverse is a product we will be telling potential buyers is “under development” and will ask our audience questions regarding their interest in the product accordingly. We will have samples of the product on display to add to the aesthetics and reliability of our company.

The second product we will advertise is something we have called “Bliss”. Essentially it is a bottled adrenaline rush. One of our very first ideas was to sell bottled emotions; this is an extension of that initial idea. An adrenaline rush is caused by the release of endorphins in the body as a result of excitement, sexual intercourse, food consumption and other similar activities “with high endorphin levels, we feel less pain and fewer negative effects of stress” (MedicineNet, 2007). The theory behind Bliss is to create an endorphin rush using a chemical reaction as opposed to forcing one through outside stimulus. It contains N-Acetyl Cysteine and magnesium sulphate which act as receptor switches (they tell your brain to go from feeling sad to feeling happy) and Guarana which contains natural caffeine to boost the heart rate. The special ingredient is something called Forskolin which actually forces the body to rapidly produce endorphins into your system, “forskolin (“Endorphin Enhancers”) that increase endorphin levels” (Pondera 2014). With this the chemical balance is complete and an endorphin rush is triggered which can last up to 4 hours depending on the individuals size and mass.

During our instalment we will offer small bottles of Bliss to each audience member as a free give away and a thank you for complying with our questionnaire. In reality the bottle will only contain water so it will be perfectly safe to drink or to store for decorative purposes. The main point of Bliss is to have some form of give away for our audience so that they will remember us and to reinforce our reliability as a company.

With this bank of knowledge as a base for our script I feel confident that we can come across as a professional company.

Medicine net (2007) Endorphins: Natural Pain and stress fighters [online] Available from http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=55001 [Accessed 3 May 2014]

Pondera Pharmaceuticals (2014) Why Endorphinate? [online] Available from http://ponderapharma.com/why-endorphinate/ [Accessed 3 May 2014]

Beautylish (2012) What is Retinol? [online] Available from http://www.beautylish.com/a/vciwa/what-is-retinol [Accessed 3 May 2014]

Forgetting the uniforms and our personal appearance for the time being, we focussed on the shop and the products themselves. To begin with we bought bottles of skin cream (green to match our colour theme) as example products. So that’s one thing we can actually put in the shop. I think it helped to get items for display; it’s something to focus on. Making posters was a pain. Jack was able to create some lovely cheesy posters for our company, but printing them the right size, getting the right quality for such huge posters, well it was a pain. Despite some of the larger posters turning out pixelated, I think we might still be able to use them behind the counter (from a distance they still look fine). As a precaution we also printed some on a smaller format so that the images were of a better quality.

I was still concerned about not having anything on display in the shops (the number of creams we’d bought was limited because the product was still being tested). I think one of my biggest concerns was having something to give away to our audience. It had been strongly recommended that we come up with something to give away to our audience so that they would remember our company. Well we looked into it and be it pencils, business cards or wrist bands it was far too expensive to buy in bulk (roughly 100) and have them personalised with our logo. With no budget this seemed like yet another impossible task. Once again, our solution seemed to be ‘we got lucky’. Through an acquaintance we were able to get 200 small plastic bottles which we would fill with water and give away as a sample product, a liquid endorphin rush. We decided to call the product Bliss.

Conan reminds us regularly that for this piece to be successful we have to convince our audience that we are an authentic pharmaceutical company. Uniforms, adverts, convincing products, the proper knowledge and language, websites, logo and slogans… the list seems impossibly endless. Our first few attempts at slogans and uniforms was met with criticism and to be honest, I was doubtful that we could pull it off the way it was expected of us, particularly with no budget. How are we supposed to buy uniforms and make products and give-aways without a budget?

Regardless of the challenges, we persevered and jumped through hoops and loopholes all along the way. Since we could no longer have a whole shop, we had to rethink our ways of interacting with the audience. Conan suggested we use market research in the form of a questionnaire. We could ask our customers about another potential product thereby making it seem more convincing (naturally it’s harder to sell the idea that such futuristic products currently exist, it’s easier to convince people that it’s still in development). With that in mind we created a questionnaire which would test the participants’ interest in our potential product (long lasting anti-aging skin cream). By doing so we have a better reason for interacting with them and will be able to “sell” our products and company to them with ease. I hope that by convincing our audience with market research we can come across as a professional company

Sometimes the hardest part of creating a performance is adapting it to the space, which is of course what Site Specific is all about. We’ve worked hard over the last few months to create a piece for our site in Grantham and I thought we had a really good understanding of this module requirement. Unfortunately, we are no longer in our “site”. It’s Site Specific; without the site. Instead we have been moved to the LPAC wherein studios 1, 2 and X have been booked out for our use. Given that there are 4 groups this posed yet another problem. Seeing as my own group had our sights set on a shop theme, we went about contacting the Zing café staff and were fortunate enough to have them allow us a part of their café for several hours of the day. Very lucky indeed.

So after looking around and spending some time in our new location, we realised that this may actually have been a stroke of luck for us. While we had always wanted to portray the idea of a professional and very real company, our original site was lacking in some fundamentals commonly associated with shops; tables, shelves, chairs, any form of television or display screens to name a few. However, the LPAC not only has these at our disposal, it also comes at no extra cost to us. Whilst we only have the café for a limited time due to a previous booking in the evening, we are very grateful to have any space at all and I feel that with the proper aesthetic preparations, we can make the most of this new site.

“The importance of science in our daily lives may not be obvious, yet we make science-based choices every day” (Let’s talk science, 2014)

I have found this module to be quiet difficult with regards to the site and the performance requirements. I do not boast a particularly broad scientific knowledge and neither does the rest of my group, so when we were told that our piece had to be heavily related to science and Isaac Newton I became very concerned. With that in mind I was most grateful that we were able to get a tour of the Science labs and speak to Alan and Nicola about our projects. Never did I think that the science would become my favourite part of this course, oh the irony.

Although Alan could not answer our queries regarding alchemy (we knew this would be a bit of a stretch) we considered the inner workings of biology and chemical reactions within the body to help aid our research. Alan assured us that a good way to demonstrate DNA and cellular structure would be to get posters of microscopic images of things such as fingerprints and hair follicles. With the assurance that this would be a simple matter I got Alan’s contact information for later use. Posters of DNA could be hugely beneficial for our aesthetics. While the rest of the class would disagree with me (given that they were as far away from it as possible), I thought the most interesting part of the labs was their actual human skeleton. I was fascinated by the structure of the bones and the ways in which Alan and Nicola could identify features of both male and female simply through observation. The whole visit was incredibly interesting to me.

We made arrangements to meet with Alan again and discuss the types of posters we could create. The plan was to use different examples for each poster so that we could showcase the subtle differences in DNA with regards to hair colour, eye colour and skin tone. With a good camera, close up photographs of skin and eyes could easily be done ourselves. With regards to hair, Nicola was an expert in this field and had several posters that we could borrow for the performance. I was quite eager to create some of the posters ourselves and so we actually arranged to have our group meet with Alan for some fingerprinting. Apparently not only is everyone’s fingerprint different, each finger has a unique print from the rest of the hand. With this knowledge we made prints of four peoples fingers for later use. Even with only four people we had 40 unique prints that we could use for our posters.

Let’s Talk Science (2014) Why is science literacy so important? [online] Available from http://www.letstalkscience.ca/about-us/why-science [Accessed 3 May 2014].