Companies, TV stations cashing in on Wanna One’s soaring popularity
SEOUL: Wanna One is wielding great marketing power with their soaring popularity with companies and broadcasters making the most out of it to market their products and promote their shows respectively.
Anything tied to the 11member project K-pop boy band, formed from the second season of Mnet survival talent show “Produce 101”, enjoys high sales as soon as it hits the market.
Some companies market their products by luring customers with opportunities to attend the band's fan meetings, or by providing fansonly merchandises or exclusive video clips.
Lotte Department Store set up a pop-up store last month and gave selected customers of certain products tickets for that band's fan meetings. Lotte Confectionary also runs a promotion on its website. If people watch its Yo Hi biscuit online commercial, in which Wanna One appears, and share the clip on social media, they can participate in an event to get autographed CDs, camping mats and tumblers. If the clip's number of clicks increases by 10,000, behind-the-scenes clips of a member will be disclosed. The biscuit's sales rose over 2.5 times after Wanna One appeared in its commercial.
TV stations have also upped the ante by using the Wanna One advantage in promoting their shows. MBC's “Weekly Idol” ran an event last month, where the show provided various goods printed with band members' pictures to selected viewers who posted comments along with their photos on the programme's online board while watching the show in real time whenever the band appears.
Industry insiders say compared with the earlier project K-pop girl group I.O.I, created in the show's first season, the male version wields greater marketing power, since their fans are mostly women in their 30s and 40s with high purchasing power. Fans in that age bracket amount to 34 per cent, surpassing teens with 24 per cent and twentysomethings with 13 per cent.
“The industry is quick to make the most out of the project group in various ways, since this hype is expected to disappear by next year when the group is disbanded and each member returns to their respective agencies,” said an official of a local talent agency.