Girl’s generation’s secret of success in Japan

Posted by: duryjun | November 10, 2011 | Leave a Comment

<Girl’s generation>

Girl’s generation (소녀시대), a girl group consisting of nine hot girls in Korea, is really BIG particularly in Asia and Europe.

We call this phenomena the Korean waves.

For those of you who haven’t heard of the Korean waves, here’s the definition from Wikipedia:

The Korean Wave, also known as the Hallyu, refers to spread of South Korean culture around the world.

As Japan has led a music industry until recently across Asia,

the entertainment management company which has made Girl’s generation successful

considered Japan the hardest target market to conquer.

In the past,

the entertainment agency couldn’t achieve big success with other singers before Girl’s generation

when its branding strategy was “localization,”

following Japanese fans’ preference, for example, the image of girls’ “cuteness.”

Needless to say,

the past Korean singers weren’t differentiated in the Japanese market in terms of fashion and music style.

So, this time, the agency decided to change their strategy to keep Girl’s generation exotic in Japan

by sticking to Korean style in everything.

This strategy succeeded at catching attention from Japanese music fans.

Another secret of success was Girl’s generation’s fluency in either Japanese or English

so there’s less language barrier to Japanese fans, their customers so to speak.

Not only that, Girl’s generation debuted after getting trained in singing and dancing for about five years,

whereas Japanese girl groups normally debut not being perfect in singing and dancing

but show how they improve as time goes by because Japanese fans like that way.

Japanese fans support their idol, thinking the idol and themselves grow together.

For instance, that’s how Morning Musume (モーニング娘), a Japanese girl group, became really big.

Here’s a clip of Girl’s generation’s one of Japanese songs.

To sum up,

Girl’s generation’s branding strategy

in terms of keeping their style, speaking local language and performing perfectly since first debut

enabled them to differentiate themselves from other Korean singers who failed in Japan and other Japanese girl groups.

Smart branding strategy is everything in surviving in any market.

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