K-Pop and 2 Steps to a Dedicated Customer Base
Justin Bieber. Ariana Grande. Selena Gomez. Shaun Mendes. These well known artists were all nominated for the Billboard Music Awards category of best Social Artist. The last artist to be nominated is one I bet you’ve never heard of; a K-Pop band named BTS which has been breaking a ton of records and is the first K-Pop group ever to be nominated for a Billboard Music Award.
For them to be nominated along such huge players speaks to the fact that they have one of the most dedicated fanbases in the world.
Go to the comments section of any YouTube video of theirs and it’s almost scary to see the dedication their fans have; they have weekly and monthly goals for stream rates of certain videos and twitter hashtags to use to increase visibility for the band, voting dates for awards, and more.
Wouldn’t you like to have customers who care about your brand like that? BTS’s army of followers was not created by accident, and in fact follows a simple formula that even Shakespeare employed to garner love within his audience. Today, I will teach you this simple, two-step formula and show how BTS uses it to instill obsession within their followers.
Step 1: Create well-crafted works that appeal to a broad audience
Step 2: From those broader pieces of content, create subtext and side pieces that go deeper for a more dedicated audience
Example: Creating Really Good Content for Your Broader Audience
I first heard of BTS when they pulled me in with their video “Blood Sweat and Tears”, which is built to appeal to a wide audience with its extremely high production value, male group members who are more beautiful than your daughters, catchy dance routines, and whole bunch of wow what did I just watch let me watch it again, which might be part of why the video has a whopping 126 million views (note: I let this article sit for 4 days and now it’s up to 128 million views. And this is on a video that’s over six months old!)
Blood Sweat and Tears is a great example of #1: “what does your broader audience want to consume?” done extremely well. But you can’t just make stuff that everyone wants, and nothing more, to create a truly successful brand. Pretty much every K-Pop music video is beautiful and crazy and well-made, but they don’t have fans that would go to war for their band. It’s the equivalent being a stunning woman who doesn’t have anything going on in her brain- sure she’s a lot of fun but it’s hard to be truly seduced by a person who has no intrigue or mystery, no chase or game for you to win first.
It’s here where BTS shines. While all their main music videos have poppy hooks and boy-band dancing just like every other K-Pop band, they provide subtext that intrigues and hooks those who are willing to dig deeper.
Looking at that same “Blood Sweat and Tears” video, you have to wonder, “What the hell just happened there”? This confusion is in fact a qualifier for creating more a more dedicated fan. For those who are curious, they will google the meaning and they’ll be told they’ll have to read a classic Herman Hesse novel to truly understand it. Woah! If a fan wants to really grasp what’s going on behind a different hit video of theirs called “Spring Day” they’ll need to read an award winning short story from 1974 called The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas.
Why does BTS’s production company do this? People like solving puzzles and digging deeper. If a fan reads those novels, they’re now a character in your story instead of just a consumer of it. They’re in on a secret that others don’t know. And if they don’t read those novels, you’ve still piqued their interest. “There’s something more behind this!” you’ll think, and look up another video to see what’s going on in it.
This is another area in which BTS kills it. Many fans speak about “falling into a hole” that lasts for hours with this band when they first discover them. BTS not only has their easily digestible music videos made for everyone, but they have more specific and artistic material for those who want to dig deeper.
Their most recent album features a song for each individual member (written at least partially by that member), helping dedicated fans feel connected to the band as a series of individuals with depth, character, and a story versus one impersonal unit (hint: people love a good story, and you should always be telling one within your brand). A teaser for that album takes it another step deeper, delving into the realm of interpretive dance with only one member featured. Since this is not one of their main videos and one for only more dedicated fans, they are much more artistic and less mainstream, not being afraid to take risks to show vulnerability among their members.
Videos like this satisfy the next level of fan. But for the truly dedicated, there are even deeper levels. BTS came out with a series of teaser videos which are artsy and weird as fuck, each centering around a different member of the band. Seriously, here’s one below. If you can tell me what’s going on here, I’ll buy you a drink:
Thing going super niche with your audience doesn’t pay off? That drug trip of a video has over 5 million views. There are seven teaser videos (one for each member and their solo song on the album), and they’re all tied together with various visual pieces and quotes from that Herman Hesse novel I told you about earlier. For those dedicated fans who want a puzzle to solve, this provides a very deep rabbit hole within which to fall. When you create really specific material that will only resonate with hardcore users of your product or brand, you won’t alienate the casual customers (because they won’t be looking for this stuff in the first place), you’ll just delight the super dedicated ones which will fight harder for your success and spend the most money on you anyway.
Let your audience be the hero of your story. Let them be curious. Let them fall in love with your art.
Even their advertising partners use this two-step method. Recently, Puma sponsored BTS. Puma has one main “everyone included” promo with BTS which shows them doing a mainstream dance choreography in puma shoes and is the sort of ad which any kind of fan would like. But Puma also goes way deeper, with a series of videos where they go deep into group dynamics that only hardcore fans (the ones most likely to buy) would understand.
How did Puma do? Here are some of the comments on their commericals:
“Is there any award for the best commercial??? because Puma just nailed the whole BTS series”
“Puma is doing this right, everyone take notes”
“So beautiful, so talented. Thank you PUMA. Perfection indeed. This is so going to be one of my most treasured videos ever.”
“Okay bye. Im on my way to the store.”
“NOTHING HAS EVER MADE ME WANT TO BUY PUMAS MORE THAN THIS”
There you have it. Two easy steps that you should be incorporating into your content to help create more engaged, supportive, dedicated customers.
By the way, voting for the aforementioned Billboard Music Awards is now open. In the first day of voting, #BTSBBMAs was the #1 trending twitter hashtag worldwide, and they’re currently in first place for voting by over 20 million votes. It’s safe to say that BTS is doing content right!
