Mix and Match

Sistar - The summer representative in K-Pop

As the core content of this blog, K-Pop shows a variety of marketing strategies and tactics. Entertainment companies from South Korea are expert on consumer psychology, and they seize every chance to spread out to the world. For the past few years, K-Pop has put entertainment marketing into a new realm. Here are some general marketing practices from K-Pop to release songs and shows:

Viral Songs Covering

Undoubtedly, American music is still the mainstream on the world. However, K-Pop knows exactly how to combine their strengths with it. With their fancy stage effects and remarkable dance choreography, they bring those English pop songs into a brand new show and strike a chord with people from all around the world. Let’s enjoy DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love covered by TTS and EXO in SM Town Live WorldTour III.

Special Seasonal Songs

Besides entertainers’ regular comeback, management companies sometimes will release special songs tailored to specific season or holiday. For example, when it comes to summer, lots of groups will release songs with music videos containing all kinds of summer elements. As in winter time, Christmas is always the best highlight of the season, and you will hear many songs regarding Christmas during this holiday. Not only entertainment companies will create songs for the special time, but also music programs, which will plan lots of special stage performance to boost ratings. Let’s take Starship Entertainment as an example, which has released Christmas song with all its entertainers for several years.

Collaboration

Collaboration is very common in music industry throughout the world, including K-Pop. You can always see entertainers from different companies or groups collaborate on a special song or a special performance. This helps create buzz and enhance popularity of all participants. The most successful K-Pop collaboration in recent years might be Trouble Maker, a duo composed of Hyuna from 4Minute and Jang Hyun-seung from Beast. 

Human Wave Tactics - Large Groups (II)

Like mentioned in Human Wave Tactics (I), large group is a special feature of K-Pop. You can always find a group with more than 5 members, and some even over 10. Besides the main effect of abundant visual and auditory entertainment, there are lots of other functions and benefits.

Reduce Risk

K-Pop is very “show-oriented”, and dancing is particularly important for a stage show. However, group members may sometimes absent from shows due to inevitable reasons (e.g. being injured, filming dramas or movies). For groups with fewer than 4 members, merely the lack of one person will make the show hollow and insubstantial. Therefore, as long as one member is absent, small groups are often forced to abandon performance opportunities. In contrast, large groups have enough people to sustain the show and maintain the integrity of dance choreography even if one or two members are unable to attend. This helps reduce the risk of show cancel and improve the convenience of performing.

AOA performed the same song with full group and one person less

Subunit

Large groups are able to create subgroups, which may be a great opportunity to absorb new fans, increase popularity, and expand the market. The scenario of subunits can be divided into three:

1. Group's popularity drive its subunit

Some groups are just too successful that their management companies will take advantage of the high popularity to make subunits. The best example is TTS from Girls' Generation. Both the group and subunit achieved great success.

TTS from Girls' Generation

2. Subunit’s popularity drive its group

Some groups are still mediocre few years after debuting, so management companies will take a chance to release a subunit. There’re some cases that subunits success and raise awareness of groups, such as Orange Caramel from After School.

Orange Caramel from After School

3. Created with subunits

Some groups are originally created with assigned subunits. Cosmic Girls, which debuted with 12 members in 2016, are divided equally into 4 subunits – Wonder Unit, Joy Unit, Sweet Unit, and Natural Unit. 

Cosmic Girls / WJSN

Music Programs - Backstage Driving Force

M Countdown - Feb. 26, 2015 - 4Minute performed Crazy

Like all brands around the world are dying for exposure, K-Pop relies on numerous exposures to gain awareness and fans. In the world of entertainment, the more performance opportunities you get, the more possibilities you’ll be seen, be known, and be loved.

Inkigayo - Mar. 1, 2015 - First Place Announcement

Music programs are unique tradition of K-Pop, and also an integral to the K-pop culture. There are three main broadcasting corporations in South Korea: Korean Broadcasting System (KBS), SeoulBroadcasting System (SBS), and Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), plus a music television: Music Network (Mnet). These four companies have their own music programs broadcast on different channels weekly, and they will announce number1 artist/song for the week. These music programs dominate the aired promotion of K-Pop from Korea to the world.

       1. Inkigayo

           - by SBS

       2. Music Bank

           - by KBS

       3. M Countdown

           - by Mnet

       4. Show! Music Core

           - by MBC

       5. Show Champion

           -  by MBC Music

       6. The Show

           -  by SBS MTV

Once a group or idol release a new song, they’ll be performing in these music programs every week for one to two months. Plus other public performances and variety shows, imagine how many stage shows they can create during a promotional period, and how much exposure they can get at home and abroad through video-sharing website such as YouTube and Dailymotion.

Music Bank - September 2013 - Istanbul, Turkey

According to a coverage from YAHOO!, music programs create a tripartite reciprocal relationship among producers, artistes and fans. For artistes, they get plenty of performance opportunities to increase exposure and attract fans. For fans, they get lots of sources to enjoy shows. Moreover, these shows allow them to meet their idols up close and cheer for them. For producers, they get a reach beyond Korea. These music programs are frequently exported overseas, and even conduct worldwide tour as live concert, which in turn means more markets for both producers and K-Pop entertainers to tap into.

Market Maximization – International Members

Alexandra Reid - K-Pop's first Africa American group member from RaNia

In the era of globalization, every industry is emphasizing internationalization, including K-Pop. When management companies choose their trainees to group and debut, they not only assess the entertainment abilities, but also consider their foreign language skills, or even find foreign members to join the group directly.

Nowadays, international group with non-Korean members is very common in K-Pop, and the nationalities of members determine a group’s regional targeting. By arousing national consciousness, they give you a reason to follow and support their groups, and also create an opportunity to expand their market.

Just like most international enterprises take China as the largest market in the world, China is a great temptation to K-Pop as well. As a result, Chinese is the most common international members in K-Pop idol groups, and more and more groups are releasing their title songs in Chinese version in order to own a place in this market. 

Miss A

With two Chinese out of four members, MissA is an obvious example that clearly targets China besides South Korea. They were active in China before their official debut in South Korea, and have been keeping a close relationship with China until now. From the beginning of their debut, all of their singles and title songs were released in two versions, Korean and Chinese. 

EXO-K

With four members born in China, EXO originally debuted with 12 members separated into two subgroups, EXO-K (Korean) and EXO-M (Mandarin). Also targets China apparently, they released all of their albums in two versions, Korean and Chinese. 

EXO-M

Title Song - One is stronger than Ten

If you’re a listener of Western pop music, you might be used to the “whole album” with at least 10 songs. However, the rule is totally different in K-Pop. In this market, creating one brilliant title song is much more vital than releasing a regular album. Therefore, “mini album” with around 3 to 6 songs and digital single are more common in the world of K-Pop.

A successful title song can catapult a group into fame, and many successful title songs can push a group onto A-list. As a result, management companies tend to devoted themselves to one song with full force. To create craze with these title songs, there are two key points most commonly used in K-Pop:

Brainwashing Melody

Just like PR practitioners creating the “hook” for pitching media, there’s a “hook” in the song as highlights, which keeps repeating and haunting your mind. Let’s take “Gee”, the first K-Pop MV reached 100 million views on YouTube, from Girls' Generation as an example:

Now, what's left in your mind?

“Gee Gee Gee Gee Baby Baby Baby”  “Gee Gee Gee Gee Gee~”

What on earth is the meaning of the lyrics? Why so many "Gee"?

It doesn’t matter. You’ll remember this song anyway!

English Lyrics

An important part to enjoy a song is to sing with the song, and people will love a song more if they are able to sing even just a little part of it. Since English is the universal language, you can always find some English words or sentences in K-Pop songs, and this is a big help for them to promote outside South Korea. Now, try “Fantastic Baby” from BIGBANG, which ranked on Billboard's WorldDigital Songs chart for 112 weeks and peaked as high as No. 3:

So, what did you focus on?

“Dance~ woo~~ I wanna dan dan dan dan dance” “WOW! FANTASTIC BABY!”

And also those catchy repeating words “Boom Shakalaka!”

What’s the meaning?

It doesn’t matter. You can sing some parts and enjoy anyway!

Human Wave Tactics - Large Groups (I)

Apeace - Debuted in 2011 with 21 members, was the largest K-Pop male group

“Why there’s always a bunch of people in one group?” – This is my first impression toward K-Pop, and I bet that many of you will hands up with the same feeling as me.

Girls' Generation - Debuted in 2007 with 9 members

Large group is a feature of K-Pop, and is also one of their keys to success. For those who are unfamiliar with K-Pop, they might wonder: how come this strategy works so well while I couldn’t even tell one member from another? Well, there are lots of reasons for sure, but I believe here’s the main one: Abundant visual and auditory entertainment.

Super Junior - Debuted in 2005 with 12 members

"As fans' taste and preferences are diverse, the   more a group has members, the better it can serve the fans' tastes," said Dr. Shin Dong Kim, a professor at Hallym University in South Korea, according to an interview from KPopStarz.

Since everyone has their own preference for appearance, personality and characteristic, K-Pop groups just combine everything for everybody. Each person is unique, therefore every member has his/her own position in the group, which is clearly indicated and strongly promoted by the management company. 

Twice - Debuted in 2015 with 9 members

Here are positions that most commonly seen in K-Pop groups:

• Captain → Lead the whole team, usually as spokesperson for press conferences or public events
• Facade → The most handsome or beautiful one in the group, usually the first one to grab attention from public
• Lead singer → Vocalist, sing the largest part in one song and do all high pitch to enrich the songs
• Rapper → Most K-Pop songs comprise rap parts, a show time for rappers
• Lead dancer → The one with the most powerful dancing in the group

EXO - Debuted in 2012 with 12 members

A group with many members means that you can always find a person you like no matter what your type is, thus probably like the whole group and become a fan.