Influencer... Choices

The world of social media is definitely not one to just be joining in without much forethought.

First of all, I would like to ask you all- if you were in the world of social media marketing and wanted to have a K-Pop group to work with an influencer or influencer team, what would be the most important factor with regards to your decision making?

Is it who the influencer is and what they are known for?

Is it the number of followers they have?

Or is it if the artist is a fan of the influencer?

Or is it how the audience skews in terms of their geography and audience?

The reason I ask this was due to the questions that I was having after seeing the influencers that Stray Kids were linking up with during their US/EU leg of their world tour.

Now, Stray Kids are by no means a small time group. They are currently one of JYPE’s biggest successes, taking on sold out stadiums in locations such as the U.S., the U.K., France and so on. Their albums consistently chart on the Billboard charts globally and both their digital streams and physical album sales numbers are not to be sniffed at. So, suffice to say, they are popular. One could even give them the caveat of being the (current) most popular 4th gen group.

So why is it when given the freedom to work with social media influencers whilst they could have had their choice of big names it seemed like they spun a side-mounted roulette wheel and threw a few darts at it to see what names it could land on and then bing, bang, bosh: those were the influencers that were chosen?

For example, One of the videos that I saw had Ex on the Beach star Chet Johnson (no word of a lie, I had to look this dude up as I had never heard of him before and Ex on the Beach is not a show I would choose to watch without a lot of coercion) who came to watch the group with his young daughter and the video is of said daughter “interviewing” the group backstage after the concert. Yep. That’s the content.

Another headscratcher was the influencer Louise Aubrey, who actually filmed three different videos with the group. Louise, I discovered, is a French influencer who interviewed them in London. However the content that she filmed with them came across as uncomfortable at best. The one that was most damning to me was when she asked the members for a Korean name. They gave her one, which she rejected, then they gave her a Koreanized pronunciation of a western name which she accepted. Quite a few Stay (Stray Kids fans) were utterly perplexed at her videos on both her own Instagram page and on other social media sites.

However there was one interviewer/influencer that was innovative and made sense and I was thankful to be introduced to them. Devon Rodrigez is an artist whose claim to fame is drawing amazing lifelike pictures of people in public. He then transitioned to conducting interviews with stars whilst also sketching them, for which he did for Stray Kids’ youngest member, I.N. The reason why his content worked was because it was a settled and structured interview whilst doing something different that makes his content stand out.

Whilst trawling through the influencer videos throughout the tour, I found one universal truth: there was seemingly no rhyme or reason for why any of these influencers were picked. For the most part they were random choices with no real ties to the group or strong connections to K-Pop as a whole. I couldn’t even say that the number of followers or post interactions were a key factor (as I initially thought as I first started thinking about this) as whilst Devon’s YouTube currently has over 12 million subscribers and other influencer, Dude With a Sign, has 7.5 million followers on TikTok, both Chet Johnson and Louise Aubrey have significantly less followers on their social media pages (just under 700k and just over 600k followers on Instagram, respectively).

So what’s the deal? Was it a personal choice made by the members themselves? Was this an outreach plan by JYPE’s team that deals with Stray Kids and those were the influencers that responded back? Or was it like a first come first serve in terms of people contacting JYPE and with very little research or discussion they were like… yep, sure let’s do this. There was no proper cohesion with the videos as everything seemed so out of place. Plus, what was the end goal? When working with influencers (or any sort of media channel really) you want to tap into their audience for potential new consumers to use or be fans of whatever product that you are selling. What helps is if that media has some sort of tangential relationship with that product in the first place. A guy who was famous for being on a reality dating show but now becoming a family man since being on that show might not necessarily be on the venn diagram of fan crossover with a K-pop group. Or if there is crossover, it’s very little.

Surprisingly, and this was a thought that literally just popped into my head as I was writing these musings down, Stray Kids did very little media play this time around on their tour too with regards to appearances on TV or radio. I wonder if this was on purpose and if it ties into the influencer choices too.

It’s funny since as they have returned back to Korea, there have been a lot of variety content on their own YouTube channel (like SKZ CODE and 2 KIDS ROOM) and during Paris and Milan Fashion Weeks both Felix (for Louis Vuitton) and Bangchan (Fendi) respectively have done major numbers. The notion that simply having an idol or a group feature on an influencer’s channel or page will simply bring in views doesn’t hold true particularly in these recent times where fans are more discerning with what kind of content they are willing to consume. 

What are your thoughts on the matter? Did it make sense to you? I would love to hear your thoughts!

In the meantime, I am going to battle and see if I can get a ticket to their encore concert…