Bangtan Boys Prove Advertisers' Dream
31 July, 2021
McDonald's has profited massively from a tie-up with Korean super boy band Bangtan Boys, also known as BTS.
The global fast-food franchise's second-quarter sales surged 6.9 percent compared to the second quarter of 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic started, thanks to its BTS meal combo that was snapped up by teenage fans around the world.
BTS is proving a boon to other multinationals as well.
Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor, Louis Vuitton, Lotte Duty Free, Coway, Fila and Yakult all employ the seven floppy-fringed heartthrobs, paying them W3-5 billion to pitch their products, but all say the money has been well spent (US$1=W1,147).
Kyungnam Pharm, which was on the brink of being delisted in 2018, managed to shift to a surplus during the first quarter of 2020 after hiring BTS to pitch its Lemona powdered vitamin C. Lemona sales surged five times in just two months and the product ran out on Alibaba and Amazon.
Even smaller businesses are cashing in on the phenomenon. Royche, a small manufacturer of computer peripherals, saw sales go through the roof when it launched the animated BTS characters called "TinyTAN" in its design in January. Its sales have since quadrupled from last year to W2.2 billion in Korea and US$2.2 million overseas.
Products that BTS members were spotted using also sell like hot cakes. BTS member Jung-kook said on a live broadcast last March that he enjoys drinking kombucha, the fermented tea that is supposed to benefit the gut flora, and orders surged at one manufacturer so a month's worth of inventory dried up in just four days.
And author Kim Soo-hyun's book, "I Decided to Live as Me," sold 150,000 copies in Japan in just three months when word spread that Jung-kook read it. It was also translated into English.
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