K-Pop Sells: Why Korean Pop Stars Are The World’s Best Advertisers

K-Pop is all about selling.

Selling out? That’s the way some fans Western fans look at it when suddenly their favorite anti-establishment indie band’s song is blaring from a McDonald’s commercial.

When you’re a K-Pop star, though, selling is right at the top of the job description. Whether it’s supplanting the latest Galaxy model into the hottest K-drama, negotiating contracts with an energy drink, or embedding ads within music videos, advertisers have certainly figured out how to use Korean pop culture to drive sales.

One popular example of a music video hawking a product is 2NE1’s “Kiss” video for Cass beer. The video plays out like a steamy love story that would appear in a K-drama, with two troublemakers playing hard to get amidst a backdrop of pool parties, bikinis, young love, killer dance moves, and – of course – seemingly endless supplies of Cass beer.

“I think the Korean celebrity strategy can only work if the following conditions are met – one, the targeted country has to be interested in Korean cultural content. Second, the celebrity is relatively well-known, and third, he or she is the right person for the product. The New York Times ad drew mixed responses because most of those conditions were not satisfied. In contrast, if an electronics firm wanted to use 2NE1 to a hip and trendy smartphone in Southeast Asia, the chances for success would be much higher.”

Until U.S.-based K-Pop fans can turn on their TVs and see Rain or 2NE1 selling them a tablet, they’ll have to rely on videos like this one from Girls Generation and 2PM that encourages Koreans to head to the Caribbean Bay water park. It will definitely get U.S. K-Pop fans dancing and in the summer spirit, but only time will tell if it’s enough to inspire them to open up their wallets and see Caribbean Bay in real life.

(A/N: Omitted non-2NE1 related parts. Read full article here.)

Credits:

Source: Kpopstarz
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