제 24 호 Star Marketing
Kicker: ENTERTAINMENT
Star Marketing
By Ye-Dam Hwang, Reporter
Do you know about star marketing? Though you do not know this term, I’m sure that you have experienced it at least once in your life. Star marketing is a business management term that means a marketing strategy which raises brand image by recommending the brand’s advertisement model who is a popular and recognizable star in sports, movies, or the broadcast scene. Marketing using a popular person as a celebrity model of the brand has been and still is used as an important marketing method.
Recently, star marketing aiming at the fans of the brand model increases and gets popular. This kind of marketing especially uses an idol or actor who is hot and popular and makes the fans’ mind naturally lead to purchasing the brand’s product by some events such as holding a fan-signing event or giving a photo card if you buy the brand’s products. This type of star marketing can bring about good results both of the process and outcome, but that is not always the case.
For example, these days, the K-pop boy group BOYNEXTDOOR were controversial for boasting about their new iPhones right after the termination of their contract with Galaxy of Samsung which is the rival of Apple. Samsung held the launching party with BOYNEXTDOOR and their fans and sent the coffee truck to them while their contract was ongoing. Therefore, people said that they were careless and rude to the brand which the boy group had been in a contract relationship with recently. Like this, even though after the contract of advertisement, and more in other cases, we can find a brand’s sponsorship with celebrities and advertisement using stars can be good or harmful and the quality of the promotion result depends on if the brand uses its advertisement model well.
Marketing Method with Fans
These days brands not only use popular idols or actors just as advertisement models, as you can peek through BOYNEXTDOOR’s case, they use “fanshim”, the mind whose hardcore fan of someone or something, to their marketing. They promote them and their products with the models’ merchandises or some events like a fan signing event. This kind of marketing strategy exactly targets fanshim that includes fans’ mind such as wanting to be close to their favorite celebrity, and hoping to meet in their daily lives.
For example, to secure a new customer base, amusement parks use an idol who is catching popularity with the young generation through collaboration with them. Actually, in September of last year, Lotte World collaborated with the boy group ENHYPEN and realized the world of the boy group’s webtoon in the amusement park by selling limited merchandise, holding an event of trying on the school uniform of the webtoon, and arranging a photo zone where fans can take a photo with ENHYPEN. This case was successful going beyond 600,000 views of the first teaser post of Lotte World’s official Twitter account and exceeding 20,000,000 accumulated views of advertising video, and the number of foreign visitors in September increased more than three times comparing with the same period of last year. Similar to this case, Everland is collaborating with the k-pop boy group RIIZE from October to December of this year by running a merchandise store of their collaboration, decorating the rides with characters of RIIZE, giving a photo card of the boy group for customers, and preparing a photo zone.
Poster of ENHYPEN's event with Lotte World and a poster of RIIZE's event with Everland
https://blog.naver.com/bk2131/223242075135
https://blog.naver.com/hee__story-/223598115031
Another example of the marketing using a star who is loved by people is in the food service industry. The pizza brand “Domino Pizza” chose Son Heung-min, a global sports star, as an exclusive model for it and made use of his positive image for becoming familiar with customers by making and selling a pizza which represents Son’s signature pose and showing a new pizza box that includes his picture. Similarly. “Hatban”, a brand of instant rice, selected actor Lim Si-wan as a new brand ambassador by showing the commercial that includes telling some good features of the brand’s rice and selling its product with the package applying the image of Lim Si-wan. Like these examples, there are many cases of star marketing using celebrities in various kinds of brands by taking advantage of this advertisement model, especially using the fans’ mind.
Good and Bad Effects of Star Marketing
Star marketing with fans can result in good consequences or bad consequences. Marketing method using a popular star as a model of a brand uses the advertisement model’s image for promotion, and therefore the success or failure of the marketing is directly connected to it. For instance, KANU, a coffee brand, parlays actor Gong Yoo into an advertisement for a long period. From the beginning of KANU, they chose him for his image of the drama “Coffee Prince” and his positive image appropriately pervaded the brand using a pop-up store which drew customers’ participation. Thus this marketing using Gong Yoo made KANU become a representative brand of coffee.
A scene of KANU's commercial
https://blog.naver.com/musicflowers/223271894352
The other example is Woori Bank’s marketing with the singer and actress “IU”. Particularly on its characteristics, the banking industry considers trust and belief as important elements and selected IU for her popular appeal and favorable image. Not only commercial, the bank launched a new card named “NU” whose name made use of IU’s name so that people can participate actively, and gave some merchandise related to IU if a customer registered the card within a certain period. Like KANU’s and WooriBank’s cases, there are star marketing campaigns that make a good result, but they are not all successful.
A scene of Woori Bank's commercial starring IU
https://blog.naver.com/creazy4art/222759128088
Star marketing, a marketing technique that utilizes famous entertainers as commercial models of a brand, has been for a long time and is used until now in the brand marketing scene. As much as star marketing has been used a lot, it is a kind of risky method which usually depends on the model’s image. With star marketing, brands need to know that there is always the possibility of bringing about a good result or bad result. Especially, the star marketing which uses “fanshim” has many pros and cons because it is mainly influenced by the fans. Therefore, the result of this kind of marketing technique, which affects the brand’s image, depends on how well the brand utilizes the marketing with the model.
Sources:
https://n.news.naver.com/article/005/0001731940
https://ko.dict.naver.com/#/entry/koko/5fb5b90fbb304fe8813eb8d12b399182
https://blog.naver.com/businessinsight/223313253024
https://fashionbiz.co.kr/article/211736
https://www.inthenews.co.kr/news/article.html?no=63921
https://m.blog.naver.com/pio_company/222955540109
https://www.asiatime.co.kr/article/20230525500363
https://blog.naver.com/hee__story-/223598115031
https://blog.naver.com/bk2131/223242075135
https://blog.naver.com/musicflowers/223271894352
https://blog.naver.com/creazy4art/222759128088
