K-Pop Marketing Lessons

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Story by

Maura Johnston

Lessons from Korea’s Synchronized Sensations

Design by

Jeffrey Kurtz

K-pop has become the genre’s dominant force. This new surge of high-energy South Korean music has led the Korean Wave, a period in which the country’s pop culture has grown in global prominence. Groups like BTS and BLACKPINK captivate audiences around the world, inspiring a feverish adoration that outpaces what the Beliebers, the Beyhive, and Beatlemaniacs ever did. K-pop is a constant flow of multi-platform digital content, coupled with lightning-fast global communication from those who love the genre. And if marketing is all about building fans, what lessons can marketers learn from the millions of K-pop’s impassioned, connected fanbase? We spoke to Reiko Scott, who co-authored Fanocracy: Turning Fans Into Customers and Customers Into Fans with David Meerman Scott, about what there was to learn.

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the massive boy band Super Junior has been one of SM Entertainment's biggest acts, dubbed the "King of Hallyu Wave." At its peak, the group had 13 members, but various singers had to take breaks for various reasons, including mandatory military service. (Imagine if Harry Styles took a few years away from 1D to serve in the Royal Air Force.) Over time, Super Junior has spawned a number of subgroups, giving members a chance to blow off creative steam in new genres. Others allowed the Super Junior brand to expand to new markets. Super Junior-T, for example, specialized in an updated version of the Korean pop style known as trot music, while Super Junior-M (the M is for “Mandarin”) helped the group break into China.

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TWICE has become one of K-pop's biggest acts since its formation in 2019, and each of its nine members—Nayeon, Jeongyeon, Momo, Sana, Jihyo, Mina, Dahyun, Chaeyoung, and Tzuyu—have carved out their own lanes within the group. Two years ago, when Mina took a break from performing because of mental health issues, the statement from the band’s label was surprisingly honest about her anxiety disorder. The statement gave emotional charge to her lyrics in the song "Feel Special,” in which she sang that she "...didn't wanna face the world." In response, when the eight other members performed in concert, fans got together to turn their lollipop glow sticks mint green, Mina’s "representative color," at crucial points in the show. Similarly, other K-pop acts have forged a bond with their fans by digging deep into their emotions. Blockbuster boy band BTS' multi-part Map of the Soul, which came out across 2019 and 2020, takes its overarching concept from Jungian theories. The group's fanbase, known as ARMY, gets to know its members through posts on social networks like Twitter and Weibo, behind-the-scenes videos, and even the liner notes and artwork of its albums.

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TWICE, "Feel Special" music video

Kpop fans flood racially-charged hashtags

K-pop fans made headlines on social media by overtaking trending hashtags about hot-button issues and filling the trends with K-pop content. "If there was a hashtag that [K-pop fans viewed as] problematic in its popularity, like #AllLivesMatter… [K-pop fans] encouraged each other to flood them," says Reiko Scott. That flooding had multiple effects: It brought fancams (fan-assembled video compilations of their favorite artists) onto new feeds; it neutralized what the fans saw as bad politics; and it let outsiders know that K-pop fans were a fast-moving force to be reckoned with beyond music. These movements were fueled in part by the ways K-pop idols openly expressed their forward-thinking views of the world, and they were given extra power by the shared feeling of accomplishment that ensued. K-pop fans were given props for their activism by onlookers like Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and The Guardian.

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isn't the only act to branch into new markets by releasing albums in different languages. Many K-pop artists record their biggest hits in Japanese to capitalize on the proximity of the world's second-biggest music market, while acts like Red Velvet, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, and BLACKPINK have released songs in English. That said, once you gain a critical mass of fans, your appeal will be universal and conquer even the biggest markets. At the end of 2020, BTS became the first act to have a Korean-language chart-topper in America—its single "Life Goes On" hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

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BTS, "Life Goes On" music video

Kpop idols at practice, at play and traveling

themselves into not just K-pop idols' music, but their whole lives, strengthens connections. "With K-pop," says Scott, "you can listen to [recorded] music, you can watch a streaming performance, you can see an act live, you can learn idols' dance moves, you can watch them play video games." On top of that, fans can celebrate their idols and their own admiration for them in increasingly creative ways—whether it's making, watching, and posting fancams of Rosé from BLACKPINK, establishing online outposts to admire idols and connect with other fans, express their devotion at live performances, or designing their own merchandise. "You kind of have to trust that the people who have access to your content aren't going to remix it in a way that necessarily makes fun of you," notes Scott. Companies that market K-pop trust their fans and embrace remix culture, transforming the artist-to-fan feedback loop into an unbreakable bond.

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If you’re interested in a deeper look into how to transform customers into fans, tap into the marketing wisdom of David Meerman Scott and Reiko Scott—the father/daughter duo literally wrote the book about it. It’s called Fanocracy: Turning Fans Into Customers and Customers Into Fans, and it was just translated into Korean (left), but it’s also available in English (far left).

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