A series finale…

As it has come down to, Introduction to Marketing has reached it’s end.

I have to admit, it was one of the most interesting courses I’ve had the pleasure to learn as compared to other courses which did not suit me very well such as Math 184. I do plan on majoring in Marketing as I’ve always been stimulated by creative advertisements and how marketers are able to manipulate others into buying a product they might not want (not that I want to be manipulative of course!). It’s a very underrated yet misunderstood subject. Many consider that Marketing would be fun and exciting as compared to Finance or Accounting. But I believe that Marketing can be just as rigorous as the others due to the intensive Market research and analysis one may have to do. I’ve always learned that it’s not all about promotions and advertisements but rather a mix of all the key elements of the Marketing Mix combined. It really is a great topic and there is no businessman in the world that will be able to succeed without the utilization of marketing tactics. You can’t grow if you can’t sell your product.

Aside from my little blurb about my thoughts on Marketing, I would like to also finish what I had started since my first post. The overall theme of my blog was to discuss about the marketing strategies in South Korea for entertainment groups and music. It differs greatly from what North Americans are generally used to and I attempted to explain how it works according to my primary information.

So to end off, I would like to say the following:

I believe that the Korean wave is simply a fad that will come and go, much similar to the Japanese Wave not too long ago. Avid KPOP fans a couple years ago who have now reached the age of 19-21 have started to walk away from the stages of obsession as those are left for the tweens and teenagers. It seems that the success of the KPOP industry internationally has been based on image and catchy tunes. The wave effects young girls and boys with the same impact as Justin Bieber would on his fan girls. It’s no different. Yet when we consider what age range usually are obsessed with people like Justin Bieber, they are not much older or younger than the age range that like Korean celebrities.

My point being, despite the differences in how idol groups are marketed in various regions, at the end of the day, we are all human. We like who we like for pretty much the same reason. And in this case, for aesthetic appeal. And it seems that anyone who wants to succeed in the entertainment industry needs a strong image. Whether it be sexy, cute or charming, it’s an attribute that is almost a must.

I, personally, used to be obsessed about Girls’ Generation, the group mentioned multiple times in my blog posts. But these days, my interests have drastically died down as I felt that I have ‘moved on’ from the Korean pop scene. Although I have grown to expand my horizons and appreciate the universal world of music around me, at the end of the day, the KPOP phase has reached its ‘declining’ stage in the product life cycle for those who are within my age range.

-Bnguyen

If only Canada had banners these big for Girls' Generation.

McStarbucks

I’ll be able to steer off away from my typical Korean market analysis for this blog post today. But in related news, I was involved in the Crack the Case competition hosted by KPMG yesterday. It was my first case along side my 3 team members who also have not done a case competition before. Considering we were in an accounting firm, we were faced with a problem that dug deep inside the roots of Starbucks marketing strategy.

I stumbled upon Sarah Gin’s blog post on the marketing strategy of Starbucks and how it differs between JJ Bean Coffee. She mentions how the common it is to find a Starbucks chain regardless of where you are in the world while JJ manages to preserve its brand image by keeping its product in exclusivity.

I found this quite interesting because the case study I performed today was based on determining what solutions I can implement in order to ‘mend’ Starbucks’ image. It’s net revenue has been slowly declining due to the rise in their goals in expansion. Because of the growth in expansion, it seems that consumers are now slowly considering Starbucks to be less of a luxurious item and are able to easily substitute to other competitor products of the same quality such as McCafe or Blendz. Starbucks Coffee has been so common that the original brand that held the image high in the sky has now begun to slowly sink. The original Starbucks goal was to create a coffee experience that could not be replicated by no other. Now, due to brand dilution which had resulted in the loss of exclusivity, that Starbucks experience is uncommon to many.

Why is Starbucks expanding so rapidly? They are sacrificing the image of their brand by making it more convenient for consumers to quickly grab a coffee or latte and go. Starbucks originally used to be a place where one can sit down amongst friends or family and chat. It has now become into ‘fast-coffee’ center. So wait. If it has because another speedy coffee service center, what’s the point of paying high premium prices for quality that is similar to places such as McCafe?

That’s the reason for their recent downfall. Using the perceptual map, we can visualize that Starbucks in in the position of high quality and high price. McCafe and Blendz are able to reposition themselves in the market where their quality is on par (if not, similar) with Starbucks while offering a cheaper price.

The video embedded above is a recent commercial produced by McCafe. McDonalds coffee originally was never able to present itself in that sort of luxurious, relaxing environment. But now it seems, they are trying to steal market share from Starbucks consumers who are unhappy with the long lineups and inexperienced baristas.

Canada? You get no love.

About a week ago, world record shattering Asian pop stars dubbed ‘JYJ’ broke into the American music industry presenting their US tour. They performed at metropolitan cities: New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas each with a population of 20 million, 15 million and 2 million.

What? Las Vegas?

Before I further detail my post, let me present my common knowledge of this boy band.

Yahoo Music claimed these boys as “the biggest boy band in the world you’ve never heard of” and it’s true. JYJ (an acronym for their names, Jaejoong, Yoochun and Junsu) was originally a part of a 5-member group called DBSK (Dong Bang Shin Ki), a ridiculously popular and famous boy band all over the lands of Asia. It didn’t matter if you traveled to Korea, China, Vietnam, Singapore or Thailand, these boys would be the trending hot topic. The group DBSK was originally an SM Entertainment production but was later split due to lawsuit action from the 5 members. Only 3 were released from the SM contract and headed off into C-jes entertainment and then was created into ‘JYJ’.

But let’s move onto the topic of marketing. What exactly was the problem with Las Vegas and the marketing strategies executed by C-jes (if there were any)? Because there is no denying from fans alike that JYJ’s recent breakthrough into the American target market was an utter failure.

The problem originated with the poor research of the demographics of America. It does not take much to know that the general ethnicity of fans that would be willing to shell out $$$ would be Asian females ranging in between the age range of 14-24. C-jes entertainment clearly failed to do any proper demographic segmentation of their market and simply chose ‘famous’ places to set up their performance venues. Hence why their original venue list consisted of places such as Seattle and Hawaii. However, closer to the event C-jes canceled the Seattle performance, disappointing thousands of Seattle and Vancouver fans, to replace it with Las Vegas.

But Las Vegas? Las Vegas is only a feasible car drive away from the state of California, yet C-jes chose to target the famous Nevada venue.

Their 1st US performance in New York had a full house venue of 3500 fans with thousands of heartbroken fans left outside after bearing the cold for hours.

Their 2nd US performance in Las Vegas had a decent turnout of 5000 fans with a venue able to fit 7000 people.

While the attendance for the Las Vegas performance was adequate, there was a lot of unhappy fans (consumers) due to the lack of care and concern for customers. They had promised to appear in Seattle, an area with many Asian fans In addition, the channel of distribution here was inefficient as C-jes entertainment had the potential to attract more costumers by spreading out their exposure across America.

But it’s not like it mattered to C-jes anyway. JYJ did not have an appropriate visa to perform and earn money in America. As unethical as it is, the JYJ boys had to PAY for any expenses incurred in North America (backup dancers, hotel fees, venue fees, etc.)  Therefore, tickets to the event cost a whopping:

$0.00 + $0.75 in Ticketmaster fees.

So those numbers of 3500-5000 people per venue was nothing close to impressive.

So why is it that I mention this issue in my marketing blog? I believe it’s essential to appropriately understand the rules and regulations of a selected region prior to expansion into a brand new market. Otherwise, complications such as JYJ having to shell out cash to pay for their expenses is simply unethical on C-jes’ part.

Secondly, it is also vital to analyze the demographics of the selected target market. Had C-jes grounded themselves into places such as Seattle, where a dominance of Asian fans from the metropolitan Seattle area and Vancouver greater area can easily access, it would have kept fans loyal to the company.

JYJ - The Beginning

 

 

 

Jack of all Trades

I stumbled upon a blog post of Rena Zhou’s, a friend of mine, which talked about celebrities influencing a customer’s buying behavior because they may idolize the said celebrity.

To relate it with the overall theme of my blog, South Korea’s average advertisements involve some sort of celebrity which may prove to be quite influential towards consumers. Although the tactic of placing celebrities or stars in advertisements as part of the branding strategy is not something uncommon to the world of marketing, you’ll rarely find Tiger Woods indulging himself with a slice of Pizza to playing games on a Nintendo DS. For the most part, Tiger would be seen wearing Nike clothing and using Golf equipment.

It seems that in Korea, it’s more common to find short term contracts for celebrities for advertisements. An entertainment group can be seen creating a video commercial at a Water Park to modeling with new and trendy cellphones. And with Girls’ Generation as my example again, I’ll portray how they go about with their advertisements and endorsements. It seems that the Girls’ Generation brand has grown to be extremely strong that SM Entertainment considers to use them in almost product category out there.

Instant Noodles

So as we see here, Girls’ Generation is advertising for a brand of noodles called Samyang Ramyun. I found this pretty ironic because these girls are under strict diets that are forced under 1500 calories at most times; and yet they are seen here eating unhealthy noodles!

Nintendo DS

The girls are seen here advertising for Korea’s Nintendo. This time they play around with the new Nintendo DSi.

Pizza!

Similar to the instant noodles advertisement, selected members of Girls’ Generation are also involved with advertisements for Pizza.

Very rarely will you ever notice someone such as Justin Bieber on the west side of the world participating in a conglomerate variety of advertisements. However, it has nothing to do with poor strategy but rather the culture and society of the respective region. What may not work in North America may be effective in Asia. And its quite interesting to see how a popular girl group with a strong brand is able to rise the sales margin on whatever product they are endorsed for.

It has much to do with ‘brand associations’. By offering a slim, healthy and fashionable group of girls that seem like they enjoy their pizza and instant noodles, it may give way for girls who wish to achieve that standard to have the assurance that they can eat those types of food as well.

Premium Package

Album sales are one of the most important things to any entertainment company. It’s one of the main factors that drive the company financially next to concerts and sponsors. Albums in North America are sold in a fashion where they are presented in an alphabetical stand located at an album store such as HMV. However, the presentation of these albums are nothing special. The packaging is simple as the cases are homogeneous with each other. Still, sales are still steady and react the way they are supposed to in accordance to the current music market.

In Korea, things are slightly different. Albums are not only bought as a way to listen to the artists’ music, but also to be influenced and persuaded by the well designed packages. When I first arrived in Korea myself, I was honestly surprised at how much effort is placed into the design into the packaging of the albums. Although the stereotypical CD case still exists, there are a considerable amount of ‘boxes’ that hold these CDs. As discussed in class, packaging is a great way to help consumers presume what the quality of the product will be like, and by emphasizing on the image of the album, Korean music entertainment productions believe that this is the way to get album sales.

Let’s compare Eminem’s Recovery album to Taeyang’s Solar album.

As you can see, there’s nothing wrong with the way Eminem presented his album. It fits the theme of his new album tracklist and does what it was intended to: Let the world know that he’s been walking down a long road.

 

This is Taeyang’s Solar album. A very neatly designed box with layers and layers of various art enclosed. These sort of boxes are very common in the Korean music industry. Usually this sort of packaging is reserved for limited editions in North America. While as for the Korean market, it’s just ‘another’ album. It’s safe to say there is a lot of emphasis placed in the overall image of CD albums. Because fans are so obsessed with the image of their artists, it would only make sense to have them obsess over the image of their albums as well.

International Marketing at one of its finest.

One of the US stops from the largest Korean music concert hosted by SM Entertainment

I stumbled across a widely popular international Korean pop blog called “Allkpop”. This site started a few years ago back in 2007. It only started small since at the time, the international Korean pop fan community was still growing. Anyone who knew about Korean entertainment at this point was most likely either just getting into it, or had Korean friends themselves that introduced them to the industry.

During this time, Korean music producers had absolutely no intention of even marketing towards the international community. Kmusic artists dropped by California in 2006 and 2007 to perform with the target market of Korean-Americans who are still connected to their own culture. However, with the epic Korean music boom, the international fan base grew faster than anything. It’s not difficult to find an Asian person and ask them if they’ve heard of one or two Korean artists. This phenomenon has crossed the oceans of the Earth to Southeast Asia to North America to the lands of Europe.

It took about 2-3 years for the International Marketing sector of the three big entertainment companies in Korea to take note. From this blog from ALLKPOP, http://www.allkpop.com/2010/10/sm-entertainment-yg-jype-on-the-impact-of-youtube-and-international-promotions, this writer talks about the ventures of the Big 3 and their penetration into the international community through the use of Youtube. By creating a new method of distribution and promotions, the Big 3 are able to find an effective way to expose their videos as one of the most viewed videos, SNSD – Gee, has nearly 25 million views on Youtube. That’s a number that even surpasses American mainstream music.

Each of these companies are able to find out statistics for each of the videos they upload and that will help them with the demographics of the regions that are watching their videos. It may be extremely useful for them to determine where to do their next performances and concerts. For instance, Canada has forever been neglected by Korean music artists but Canadians are slowly trying to expose their fanbase towards the Korean entertainment companies which may in turn, help them bring some artists to Canada to perform.Eventually, the end goal is to bring out this trend to everywhere possible and target the appropriate segments to reap as much consumer surplus before the trend may die down. Korean pop music is just like American pop music and it will have its ups and downs and eventually fade out.

A perfect change.

The world of the entertainment industry revolves around image. I believe we’ve already established that and anyone can definitely tell when Lady Gaga is trying to set a new shocking trend with her tacky wardrobe. Although, there aren’t many that are similar to Gaga. More western mainstream artists are generally focused on presenting themselves nicely such as Justin Timberlake or Jay Sean. However, on the other side of the world, mainstream artists flip the tables around and show what it means to set an image for their group.

If I may add, this sort of comparison is like comparing apples to oranges since the American music industry has moved away from pop groups while Asia is still in the boy/girl band era. Whatever sells.

I’ll be using Girls Generation as my example of how they managed to establish a label every time they release a new album. They are a 9 girl member entertainment/idol group with an original target market of young females but have now evolved into attracting male fans instead. Because each new album is associated with a new fashion concept, I find it extremely interesting how it affects its fans and how regular enthusiasts view this 9 girl group.

When Girls Generation (GG) first debuted in 2007, the clothes they wore tried to represent the ‘Girls’ Generation’ of Korea. Whether it is a misrepresentation or not, that’s how the name was formed and that’s how SM wanted to present it. This involved the girls to wear ‘schoolgirl’ clothing and coincidentally enough, they performed at local high schools. The schoolgirl clothing was to portray their innocence and that was how they started off..

Fast forward later into the years and we have the ‘Gee’ era. GG stepped over their first plateau and reached a higher level of popularity in Korea after releasing their hit single, ‘Gee’. They wanted to show the nation a new bubbly, happy and cheery song while also synchronizing the members of the group to also match the song. This time their outfits were more colorful, realistic and hip. My thoughts are that they were attempting to match the current fashion trends in Korea. The song was very cute and Girls Generation rallied up a stronger fan base of males and females who really appreciated their aesthetics and cuteness.

Gee

The third popularity spike Girls Generation was able to reach was during their Genie era. It really surprised everyone. And that’s one of the best things about marketing. To be able to change the perception of someone. With the new single ‘Genie’, they were able to do that.

Tell me your wish

This time, Girls’ Generation evolved and adapted themselves into the ‘Sexy’ concept as Korean idol groups had been occupied with more ‘Innocent’ concepts in the past. And of course, sexually suggestive themes bring in a brand new flock of male fans. Hardcore fans found it at first, difficult to adapt from the original innocent concept to a more provocative, and sexy concept. Either way, it’s safe to conclude that sex sells. But the song was really addictive. =)

Girls’ Generation rode on more sexy concepts and SM Entertainment exploited this, and continued to deliver more of what the majority of the fans wanted.

To top things off, the icing on the cake, they geared up in all black, representing themselves as sexy, badass, mean girls from the more or less innocent-sexy image they put on from the Genie era. Run Devil Run is their newest concept.

You better run

And ever since, GG’s popularity has skyrocketed and they have managed to take the majority of the market share for female groups within the Korean entertainment industry. SM entertainment was able to approach a different segment of the market (young males) during the launch of the Gee era and was able to ride on that fan base. While Girls’ Generation appeals to all segments of the Korean market, it seems to do well with the youth. Otherwise, there should be no reason why so many posters, albums and memorabilia would be able to sell so fast.