Continuation of last post.

People immediately think advertising when hearing the word ‘marketing’; when in actuality, it is only one of the many elements of the promotion mix. Promotion, which is communication between companies and consumers, further includes sales promotion, personal selling, public relations, and direct marketing.

SM Entertainment’s success in building renowned, celebrated artists such as TVXQ, Girl’s Generation, and Super Junior can be attributed to their ability to create flesh and blood to what was previously only a product.

To start, SM Entertainment focuses on creating an emotional appeal and makes customers want to buy. It changes TVXQ from simply an artist to real people who have thoughts and feelings and want to be successful and loved.

When a customer starts seeing TVXQ as people, he/she becomes a fanboy/girl (much like myself) and starts being (willingly) manipulated by TVXQ’s perceived mood/thought – and a bond appears between the consumer and the brand TVXQ.

Crazy fangirling antics might include buying all versions of the same album with reasons not limited to helping TVXQ win year-end awards and for the pride of TVXQ’s fandom, Cassiopeia, becoming more powerful than other fandoms. These behaviours clearly demonstrate emotional desires rather than utilitarian needs.

In a way, when the customer buys, votes, or helps refer, she feels like she belongs to the Cassiopeia family and is thus satisfying both her belonging needs and her desire to fit in an aspirational reference group.

In order to create this appeal, SM Entertainment combines public relations and advertising together. For example, TVXQ maintains a highly prestigious image by only going on the most high-end magazines (such as W, Marie Claire, and Ceci), the most popular TV shows (such as Running Man and Strong Heart), and the most celebrated radios (such as Sukira and Kiss the Radio); even on variety shows, they maintain a calm and collected exterior to maintain or elevate their ‘cool’ status.

However, since SM Entertainment want TVXQ to feel like real people, interactive social medias (Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Kakao) are used to communicate with fans galore, both internationally or nationally.

More about promotion in the next post.