Junie Chow's Blog

Many companies choose to rely on celebrity influence to aid in marketing their products or services. It is especially useful when that celebrity is a major trendsetter and has a large fanbase.

This leads to a CNN video about the Korean market for cell phones that I saw a while back while surfing on the kpop blogging site, Allkpop.com (http://www.allkpop.com/2009/10/big_bang_and_2ne1_on_cnn). It features mainly two big cell phone giants, LG and Samsung, which were dominating the Korean market at the time the video was posted. The video stated that two most popular phone models in Korea from these two companies were the “Samsung Haptic” and the “LG Lollipop”, due to heavy marketing efforts with very famous celebrities in Korea.

For example, LG promoted its “Lollipop” model with a very colourful music video featuring Korean boy group “Big Bang” and the yet-to-debut Korean girl group “2NE1”. At the time “Big Bang” had become a national idol group with thousands of loyal Korean fans as well as thousands of international fans. On the other hand, “2NE1” was relatively unknown which roused a natural interest regarding the group. This growing interest for the new “2NE1” group, along with the catchy tune of the music video and the influential trend-setting powers of “Big Bang”, no doubt contributed to the success and popularity of “Lollipop” phone. Also, the cell phone market in Korea is predominately led by teenagers and young adults, and the decision to use “Big Bang” and “2NE1” in the phone promotions is because of the singers’ appeal to these target groups. In general, people just want to be like their beloved idols.

Due to the overwhelming success of the “LG Lollipop” phone and the “Lollipop” music video, Big Bang returned again to promote the “Lollipop 2” phone.

CNN Video

“Lollipop” Music Video