What Can Businesses Learn From the Success of Fifty Shades of Grey

Published in

Broadsight Magazine

3 min readFeb 14, 2015

By Vicky Ge Huang

This Valentine’s Day, the biggest winner is not the chocolatier, the flower industry or even Victoria’s Secret. It is author E.L. James, whose book Fifty Shades of Grey has caught on a global fever as the adapted movie of the same title hits the cinemas. Despite its lack of originality (as a fan fiction modeled on Twilight), not-so-well-written prose and questionable values (exhibited through the hero’s incessant stalking and controlling of the heroine), this book and its adapted movie have emerged from countless other erotica literature and became a major sensation of the publishing industry this year. So what have helped to cause this globe-wide Fifty Shades mania? The book may never rise to the high esteem of the literary world, but it is, at least, a commercial success from which businesses can learn.

Harry Potter fans grieved to learn last year that Fifty Shades of Grey triumphed the sales of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series to become the most popular book in the United Kingdom. What bewildered everyone was that the plotline of Fifty Shades resembles almost every single other erotic novel — handsome billionaire and innocent, pretty girl have mutual attraction at first sight, they consummate the attractions, misunderstandings arise and then get resolved in the end — so what sets this one apart?

Cooperation with other institutions is integral to establishing a successful company — that’s common knowledge in the business field. However, there are thousands of failed start-ups on the scene every day, which goes to show that not all cooperation works. In the end, it’s the widest and biggest net that catches the largest number of fish. For a hit novel like Fifty Shades of Grey, its adaption into a movie is natural and to be expected the moment it reaches the bestseller list.

However, the collaboration efforts didn’t end there. Long before the movie came out, O.P.I — a major nail care company — released its Fifty Shades of Grey nail polish collection. The sex toy industry enjoyed its fair share of booming sales due to the alluring promotions in the book. Perhaps the most surprising collaborations are Fifty Shades of Grey Gourmet Gift Basket, which ranges from food to beauty products, and Fifty Shades wine endorsed by the author and separately named red satin and white silk. This Fifty Shades mania is crazy on one hand, but enlightening on the other in demonstrating how cross-industry collaborations can spark economic successes.

Published on 14th February, 2015

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What Can Businesses Learn From the Success of Fifty Shades of Grey

Written by Broadsight