K-Pop's unsurprising rise in the influence economy

This edition is the first in a series we plan to publish to explore what matters most in the evolving influencer economy – specifically, what really creates PR results: influence or obsession?

“Influencer”...“celebrity”...”semi-popular, ambitious person who might have bought several thousand followers on the social media black market”...these labels have never been more synonymous. What they may have in common more than anything else is the rampant desire among a growing number of companies (and now governments) to give these individuals attention and money to sway the way you think about: what to buy, where to travel, what you consider worth your time and even how you vote.

From the Olympic gold medalist that graced the box of Wheaties in the 90’s, to the music artist whose tickets you might’ve spent your rent on to twerk in a stadium, to the swimsuit-clad travel blogger you can’t get enough of watching as they explore exotic islands (and shamelessly highlight their loyalty to a particular hotel chain): endorsing / plugging / stamping / and the practice of being paid to vocally support a product or idea is nothing new.

But the game of exercising one’s influence in exchange for compensation is changing fast. It’s no longer just the wildly popular singer or the celebrated athlete that’s being approached by the biggest brands in the world for endorsement deals. In fact, many of the “chosen ones” today are massive homegrown brands unto themselves, with tons of micro-influence that keeps their every move on the mind’s of the considerable followings they’ve built. Dare we call it a slight “obsession” that these new-age idols evoke within those who follow them? And this — the obsession, or intense dominance in the battle for the finite attention span most consumers have nowadays — is exactly what brands are hoping they can tap into when they work with these individuals.

K-pop case study

No group of idols has become as rapidly prominent in U.S. pop culture in recent years as K-pop artists. By the numbers, the popularity growth is staggering:

• According to Luminate, a music market research operation, audio and video streams of K-pop music by U.S. consumers grew to 9.2 billion as of October 2023, surpassed only by Japan. 
• Luminate’s 2023 Mid-Year Report on U.S. music consumption trends further revealed that among U.S. “Super Fans” (defined as those engaging with an artist’s content in at least 5 different ways), nearly 60% say they want to connect with the performers they follow on a more personal level. 
• Their research also found that U.S. K-pop fans tend to spend 75% more money on music-related purchases than the average music listener every month.

So what’s driving all this obsession in the United States for performers of a music genre developed on the other side of the world? How are these musicians — and the companies behind them — exerting growing influence in western culture? And why haven’t more U.S. organizations tried to align with this clear growth trend? We recently sat down with former political animal, current media operations maven and entrenched K-pop aficionado Alex Smith to dig into what’s fueling the surge in K-pop’s prominence.

As Alex noted in our discussion, of course there’s a community-like factor that energizes fans to bond, but K-pop artists’ baseline popularity is far from accidental. Myriad pieces have been written about the decades-long rise of K-pop in the U.S., but the intense efforts of companies like HYBE Entertainment and JYP to promote these artists represent the common thread that can't be discounted. “I laugh when I see a brand new K-pop group that just debuted and their first song is the top track on one of Spotify’s main K-pop playlists. None of that is organic, right? Those companies worked with Spotify to make sure that their debut song would be number one. The playlist that Spotify curates and promotes and publicizes and the advertisements: it’s a big business in that way.”

You’d probably invest in promotion of your artists too if you’d focused on developing their talent, careers and fanbases for multiple years. The founder of HYBE, for instance, has talked of his belief that elite artists need similar development to that of elite athletes. So, the K-pop engine is commonly fueled by troves of young aspiring performers training in academies for years, with few being chosen to form the groups that HYBE and other labels will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to promote increasingly in the U.S. and Europe.

The formula for cultivating the obsessed fanbase in these markets shifts a bit year by year, but the key ingredient is exposure — to the masses and, now more and more, personalized.

As Alex put it to us, “The level of contact and connection is a really important part of K-pop.” It starts with building a community. “Every K-pop group that debuts has what’s called a ‘concept.’ And the concepts can be all over the place.” From clean cut pretty boys to dark fairies to vampires, the concept is a theme unique to each group that their fans can rally around. And it comes to infuse every creative expression the band takes on — the concerts, the press runs, the merch and more. “Those concepts evolve and change as the artists adjust and grow. It’s a little bit of authenticity.”

That authenticity’s clearly got U.S. fans hooked. It’s born an insatiable craving for downloads, merchandise, concert tickets and, nowadays, the direct attention of the artists themselves. Enter: Weverse, an app developed by HYBE that puts fans in (sometimes) seamless contact with the artists they follow.

Weverse remade the old model and did it better

MySpace….IYKYK. But 20 years, tons of new technology and a flock of artists trained to have “dynamic” personalities can take an old idea and hyperchrage its effectiveness. Weverse is MySpace but done 1,000x better. Users easily follow their favorite performers to unlock what can seem like semi-unfettered access to them. You mention it's your birthday in the app and maybe one morning you wake up to a personal bday shout out from Jisoo of BLACKPINK. A band ready to start pushing a new project may welcome 30 of their followers to a private virtual listening party via the app. And, of course, the access to tickets, merch and more is readily available in Weverse.

The app looks to be a seemingly perfect portal to not only develop fandoms, but also create robust mini-economies that connect millions of fans (with extensive disposable income) to artists who rely on the attention and funds to keep their careers humming along. 

So between a tech platform that seems set to scale magnificently to support commerce and extremely hungry fanbases that want more exposure to artists who’ve basically been trained to devote their life entertaining, what’s taking brands so long to jump on the bandwagon???

The short answer

Unknown. The dynamic here seems like a gold mine: 

1. Highly marketable celebrities that entertainment companies are spending considerable capital to develop and offer up for endorsements;
2. Fanatical followings that openly crave storytelling from their celebrity idols;
3. Technology that can facilitate PR and sales.

Seems like the infrastructure’s all there. And, no doubt, several brands are already wading into the waters of K-pop influence. Just this past week, Celine announced yet another of K-pop’s most promising young stars, Danielle of NewJeans, among its stable of global ambassadors. She joins artists from BTS and BLACKPINK to participate in these fashion crossovers for the brand. 

But outside of the luxury category, these types of tie-ups appear to be scant, and short-lived where they have popped up.

The “Why?” remains a mystery. At this juncture though, it seems like more of a missed opportunity than anything else. Where brands nowadays need to identify more ways to overlap with the healthy obsession that consumers have with influencers, K-pop artists appear to be a logical fit with only upside.