K-pop, cell phone ads and the future of music-tech branding

There are many perfect pairings in the world: Cheese and wine. Black and white. Gremlins and food after midnight. K-pop bands and cell phone advertising.

This last one may be unfamiliar to some readers — but when it comes to marketing, there are few industries that have as far of a reach as South Korea’s pop and tech industries. Over the past few decades of K-pop’s international rise, local Korean companies including LG and Samsung have tapped into the virality of these artists to perpetuate their brands among newer and oftentimes younger audiences, going beyond the mere product placement or endorsement appearances typical of traditional ad campaigns.

The connection is an obvious one, as both fields put forth cultural products that resonate with audiences across the globe. Though one is a high-tech tool and the other is a mode of entertainment, both cell phones and K-pop acts tend to flaunt glossy marketing campaigns, relatively short shelf-lives and high turnover rates (with a few exceptions, of course).

In fact, many of K-pop’s most popular music videos of all time are actually cell phone ads.

From Lee Hyori to BTS: How cell phones and K-pop drive mutual stardom

K-pop started to dabble with creating original content as cell phone ads in the mid-2000s. In 2006, Samsung released a series of cinematic music video-ad hybrids for their Anycall line of mobile phones, featuring the likes of top-tier soloist Lee Hyori in the “AnyClub” storyline that saw her running away from stardom for love, with her Anycall phone facilitating the Roman Holiday-type tale. In 2007, several Korean icons including BoA, Xia Junsu (then of TVXQ!) and Epik High’s Tablo formed the promotional group “AnyBand,” which existed solely for the purpose of advertising Anycall phones. Their music videos consisted of the band helping to save the world from fascism, with the help of fans using their mobile phones to share the band’s songs.

Since those early years, many more K-pop groups have created and released music videos specifically as phone ads. 2009 in particular marked a major year for smartphones in Korea, as iPhones were made available in the country for the first time, and smartphones rapidly replaced more basic cell phone designs for both local and international manufacturers.

This new technological breakthrough grew hand-in-hand with K-pop advertising. The first-ever public appearance for the wildly popular female quartet 2NE1 was in the 2009 video “Lollipop,” a hybrid of a music video and an advertisement for LG Cyon. The colorful, eccentric video, which also featured label mates BIGBANG, was a major hit in South Korea and currently has over 90 million views on YouTube. Though “Lollipop” is a theme song for the phone, the Cyon doesn’t actually appear in the music video, but the connection was made clear to audiences through a series of tie-in ads featuring the BIGBANG and 2NE1 members.

That same year, two other prominent singles from K-pop artists and groups featured cell phones in their music videos, and sometimes even in their lyrics. The video for “TTL (Time To Love),” from T-ara and Supernova, not only features a romance plot facilitated by a Motorola Razr phone, but also includes lyrics about phone numbers to make the connection both stronger and more subtle.

Another popular phone tie-in that was more direct was LG’s incorporation into the “Chocolate Love” series from Girls’ Generation and f(x), via two different variants of the same song — both of which showcased the LG Chocolate mobile device. Like with “Lollipop,” this served as a way for a senior group, Girls’ Generation, to create a connection and cross-pollinate audiences with the newer group f(x), while also advertising the phone brand. These two singles not only found success on South Korean music charts, but also helped raise awareness of South Korean brands to international audiences.

Fast-forward to 2020, and this partnership trend has not slowed down. This past June, BTS teamed up with Samsung for a branded cell phone and earbud line, and featured their hit song “Dynamite” in several Samsung ads that play on broadcast networks across the world (the phone line is now sold out). Lia Kim, the founder of hugely popular viral performance team 1Million Dance Studio that is known in part for its K-pop-inspired performances, also recently teamed up with South Korean network SK Telecom for an ad campaign powered by virtual and augmented reality.

Major K-pop conglomerate SM Entertainment also teased its newest act — aespa, a mix of avatars and human members — through a brief clip of LG’s new Wing phone that appeared at the end of the music video for SuperM’s “One” (pictured below). SM Entertainment’s emphasis on K-pop as a form of “culture technology” — they even have a group NCT, founded in 2016, that stands for “Neo Culture Technology” — further homes in on this connection between digital and musical advancements.

Benefits for telcos: Flashier and more cost-effective marketing

John Yang, a former production executive at SM Entertainment and now the CEO of his own company AMA (Artist Movement Accompany), says that the connection between K-pop and cell phone branding started out when cell phone companies in South Korea recognized that digital media was changing, and that music videos rather than traditional advertising could bring them to younger audiences who were more likely to swap out their cell phones more frequently.

“It was so much more cost-efficient to go with the music video or some celebrity product placement,” reflects Yang. “Nowadays, the audience for a television show is lower than that for a K-pop music video. BTS, BLACKPINK, SuperM, they’re making history on YouTube breaking records with every album they release. And once one music video gets embedded [among K-pop fans], it gets spread out throughout the whole world. Having that product within the music video, with artists holding onto it, it’s perfect for the company to have that platform to market their product.”

Of course, base-level product placement in music videos is a widely-adopted practice outside of Korea as well. Beats by Dre products, including headphones and speakers, have appeared prominently in at least 40 music videos since the brand’s first product launch in 2008. Lady Gaga’s 2010 video for “Telephone” featured nine different product placements, ranging from Virgin Mobile to Polaroid and Miracle Whip. Dozens of other artists like Ella Mai, Migos and Miley Cyrus have embraced placements in their videos from products like rideshare apps, designer bags and makeup lines in addition to cell phones.

2020 in particular has seen a notable uptick in product placement and brand sponsorship deals for artists’ video livestreams on Instagram, YouTube and more — perhaps a digital stand-in for the traditional tour sponsorship model. The rapper Tierra Whack is one of the few major artists to tie her single rollout strategy directly with tech advertising, featuring her latest songs “feel good” and “Peppers and Onions” prominently in the new ad for Apple’s HomePod mini.

But even this accelerated landscape of brand partnership deals pales far behind the way K-pop and telcos have collaborated in Korea for years. Not only is product placement (known commonly by the English acronym PPL in the Korean market) of cell phones commonplace in music videos today, but phone brands and networks will also sometimes pay for the entire music video itself, turning the single into a full-blown, commercialized tie-in for a specific product.

The expansive quality of K-pop music videos is also a big boost to cell phone advertisers: Rather than a typical, 30-second ad, K-pop music videos usually run upwards of three minutes long, and devices can be interwoven into different storytelling elements to showcase various aspects of the product.

Benefits for the music industry: Deeper, more integrated fan experiences

Given that there are multiple different music platforms and charts in South Korea, the cultural-technological promotional cycle isn’t just about lending celebrity marketing and millions of fans’ eyes to a given tech product, but also about ensuring success for the music industry itself. In this vein, from the artist’s perspective, another major benefit of these kinds of partnerships is that most telecom companies own their own digital music streaming platforms.

For example, the aforementioned SK Telecom used to own Korea’s biggest DSP, Melon, before selling it to LOEN Entertainment in 2009; Kakao, the major South Korean internet conglomerate behind the country’s biggest messaging app KakaoTalk, then bought a majority stake in LOEN in 2016. SK Telecom has since reentered the market with Flo, which launched in 2018 and is now the third-largest DSP in Korea. KT Corporation, another major telco, owns the country’s second-largest DSP, Genie Music.

If artists offer product placement from these telcos in their music videos, not only do the artists get paid to endorse the product, but they also get priority placement on the partner company’s associated DSPs. The real kicker is that when individual fans and consumers buy phones from these various telcos, they often get tied into their specific streaming platforms as well. Hence getting a particular artist’s fan base tied into a given phone line often brings direct numbers to the corresponding streaming platforms as well. The telco can often provide additional exclusive content and perks to these fans through their service offerings, boosting those artists’ streams and phone sales in tandem.

“What are people going to use cell phones for? Listen to music and watch content,” says Yang. “Obviously, fans are going to buy these cell phones. Now they see that this cell phone that they purchased is actually in the music video, and now they can watch this video on [the telco’s platform] for free without paying monthly subscriptions. It’s like Verizon owning Spotify, and whoever comes to Verizon [gets] a free Spotify subscription.”

Ideally, the end result of this approach is a more integrated marketing campaign and customer experience for both the artist and the brand. Multiple studies over the decades have suggested that product placements in music videos and lyrics lead to stronger brand recall, more positive associations and higher purchase intent for the products being featured.

That said, from the fan’s perspective, there is a thin line between these partnerships being acceptable and going too-over-the-top. In fact, many of the most successful songs and music videos mentioned in this piece, like “Lollipop” and “T.T.L,” were only remotely related to cell phones, whereas the direct ad “Chocolate Love” was not as beloved by fans. Though that’s likely because of the musicality itself, the overt, in-your-face aspect of the video being a brand tie-in may have also been a contributing factor.

Nowadays, audiences are a lot more familiar with digital advertising campaigns and aware that most objects appearing in K-pop music videos, from electronic devices to clothes, are sponsored. Instead of critiquing too much “PPL,” fans instead oftentimes see these placements as a positive signal of their favorite artists’ worth and value in the market. Even still, since fans also see music videos as an art form, companies try to minimize the overtness of their placements while still drawing attention to their devices in a way that is hard to miss.

For example, with SuperM’s “One” music video, the phone was a focal point of the video, but wasn’t a core part of its main plot. Rather, it appeared at the end in a wholly separate setting. The video didn’t peddle the device, so much as showcased it. Today, K-pop fans and consumers are so aware of the commercialization of K-pop that it’s an engaging portrayal like this — integrations or adjacencies with a core plot point, rather than randomly dancing with a phone — that are more successful.

K-pop has been one of the most dedicated industries innovating in the music-video genre in recent decades, growing in complexity just as cell phone advancements have skyrocketed as well. As smartphones have become less of an object associated with wealth and more an everyday necessity, investing in international advertising that can reach as many people as possible around the world is going to remain a major focus for telco brands.