I was thinking randomly about Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, one of several movies I saw in the Summer of 2023 when I was down in Yulee, FL, just checking the town out. I would go down to that area whenever my dad worked on that bathroom construction project. One reason I went down there was to see him at work in Kingsland, GA.
I also watched Elemental and several others I enjoyed. As for Ruby Gillman, eh, the movie was alright. 7/10 material. I liked many of its characters, and the story showed promise but got predictable near the end. It didn’t help that much of the movie was spoiled due to Dreamworks’ incompetence and marketing. The less said, the better!
If you want an even better Dreamworks film to watch, I recommend Megamind. It’s a pretty fantastic film with Will Ferrell and Tina Fey I finally got to watch it over the summer too when I was at this hotel in Brunswick, GA.
But that’s not the point of this post today.
There’s a very telling quote from Chelsea, the mermaid disguised as a human in the movie. Annie Murphy of Schitt’s Creek voices her and now Praise Petey fame. Again, I’m very clueless about TV sometimes, but I’ve seen several episodes of Praise Petey, and she did a great job with the voicework on that show! Give it a watch if you haven’t. Think of Chelsea as Ariel’s long-lost weirdo sister who decided to become a Valley Girl stereotype and “help” Ruby, the film’s protagonist. Watch it, and you’ll know why I used quotations there.
When she made her stunning entrance, she had this to say:
“Also, big risk, big reward. Always go big!”
As the movie trailers implied, Chelsea may be a vain narcissist with mediocre hair.
But, but this is legitimately great advice she had.
More on What This Quote Means for Digital Marketers
I like to think of this quote as a commentary on the concept of “calculated risk.” Calculated risk means any risk you’re willing to take if the potential reward offsets the potential downfalls. This can include anything from deciding what college you want to go to and how much debt you’re willing to incur for long-term gains.
RiskOptics defines calculated risk as:
“Every business decision involves an element of risk. Management’s job is to assess that risk as best as possible, and to weigh that risk correctly against the potential rewards.
That risk-versus-reward equation is the basis for taking calculated risks, often referred to as your “risk-adjusted return on investment.”
It implies that the decisions you make in life and business are going to have some risks involved. If you go swimming, there’s always the chance you might accidentally drown.
Even driving a car, in my book, is a calculated risk. You can’t control all the variables that can happen. This is why car accidents are such an issue. One wrong move and you can have chronic severe injuries.
But why is it that we choose to drive cars to go to work, knowing the risks involved?
It’s like Chelsea is saying. There’s a BIG reward behind performing these actions. Like monetary gains, social gathering gains, or just feeling like you have a valid purpose in the world. Work can make your life feel more meaningful, and it puts food on the table. Pretty easy to see why humans work so much when the gains are significant enough.
There are big rewards in taking a riskier digital marketing strategy sometimes and being able to try something a bit bolder than usual. It may not work out, but your company can have serious returns if it does!
How Else Does Calculated Risk Apply to Digital Marketing, Business, and Your Life?
If you love being an entrepreneur, you know how much labor is involved in starting your own business from scratch. That’s why many entrepreneurs ensure they have enough savings to minimize the risks of the business failing.
Restaurant owners go through this all the time too. Many restaurants will fail in 3 years or less, but that doesn’t stop people from doing it. Gordon Ramsay helped these people all the time in Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and then the US version of the show aptly named Kitchen Nightmares. Both shows have the same premise with some editing changes to target different niche audiences.
I was not too fond of the reality TV-style music they used in the US version of the show. Still, adapting that series for American audiences was the best thing to happen to Gordon Ramsay’s career while he was on a meteoric rise as a result of his other show Hell’s Kitchen becoming popular.
More Examples of Calculated Risk in Business
Who hasn’t seen the TV show Shark Tank? I was binging clips from that show for a while this year. I always liked to hear what Lori Griner had to say to the “would-be sharks and tycoons” pitching product ideas on the show. Kevin O’Leary would come in and be a stubborn ol’ Canadian mule. You wonder why he’s even on the show in the first place besides being a key player on Dragon’s Den, the precursor to Shark Tank, from what I know.
Barbara Corcoran always seemed to be more into the philanthropic side of investing in people, so I liked her even though you can find meme after meme about her being the more indecisive of the sharks.
And you got Mark Cuban, easily one of the savviest of the sharks. Seeing what he thinks about these would-be entrepreneurs and startup owners is always a riot. And you can’t forget Daymond John, the FUBU guru of the bunch, or Robert Herjavec, another well-beloved shark fans can’t get enough of.
When these big boys and girls evaluate these potential projects, they must consider how much risk it would pose for their portfolio. They CAN fund the projects, but they’re constantly hammering the point that they must get their ROI somehow.
That’s why you see the sharks often so firm in their deals. It takes a skilled negotiator to get through to them and convince them to change their terms.
This is one of my favorite clips from the show where Cuban lays the smackdown on people trying to pull a fast one over him. Say what you want about Cuban, but he demonstrates his intuition and ability to spot trouble and risk with people. That’s a valuable skill in my book. Know when something’s rotten in Denmark, and then avoid that situation at all costs!
It’s simply incredible stuff. Be like Mark Cuban if you want to succeed in business. Be outspoken, but always ground what you say with facts, hard data, logic, and hands-on experience.
Conclusion
This is why I keep discussing TV shows, movies, and media here on the blog. I really think you can learn many marketing insights by analyzing quotes from media and songs. I believe this post is the last one I will make on the blog for a while. I’m delighted with how the content has been going, and I’ve added over 20 new articles to this site. Many of them were hand-written, but I did experiment with some AI-generated content, too, and I heavily edited it to see what happens.
Keyword growth on this site has been slow, but to be fair, SEO and digital marketing take time to work. I just wanted to give companies a better idea of who I am and how I think! I’m still very proud and happy with how the content turned out, and I hope you’ve learned much more about me. Thanks for reading. Maybe I will keep blogging for fun from here on out!
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