What is phenomenon marketing?

It was a sizzling hot and humid summer day in Taipei. The closest friends and families from both groom and bride’s sides got together for the first time. In every first conversation I had with people in the room, everything revolved around K-phenomenon. The Italian mother of the groom from the Midwest asked, “Do you know where I can buy Korean cosmetics here?”. The Taiwanese Canadian mother of the bride commented, “I saw Queen of Tears, and it’s amazing!!”. “KBBQ is my favorite!”, said a Caucasian male guest from Miami. I checked my phone during break only to see a post of my high school teacher from the Philippines taking a K tour in Myung-dong, a popular shopping district in Seoul. All this was happening while BTS’ Dynamite was playing in the background. What just happened with K? A global phenomenon. To be more precise, a phenomenon marketing.

Phenomenon marketing is a social occurrence where an enduring zeitgeist flywheel is created so that more than 90% of the marketing comes through earned (media and WOM), and less than 10% through paid and owned. It doesn’t end with consumption. Instead, it creates a generative response from the audience. More than 100 million users are enthusiastically creating and sharing content regarding this theme. A theme becomes so entrenched in people’s lives that it is elevated to private and public sectors’ fundamental shifts in consciousness. Unlike brand marketing, it is not about a single brand. It is not a trend. It is not a winner takes all. It is about multiple brands across diverse categories that embrace a certain theme that uplifts these brands all together. It has a more permanent impact on the way people think or behave. It is about everyone working together to win.

To evolve from a single one-time event to phenomenon marketing, these set of products or brands need to have three things:

1. Compelling user benefit: K-content provides exceptional benefits on wanting to belong and to destress. Parasite and Squid Game, for instance, have deeply connected with the people around the globe who feel stuck at the bottom in today’s capitalistic society. Although fiction, they felt heard and understood of their everyday struggles. This compelling benefit is what makes people want to keep coming back for more.
2. New and hip brand stories: Remember when you first saw PSY’s “horse dance” in Gangnam Style music video? Its ridiculously original dance move coupled with the relatable story that pokes fun at the materialistic and ostentatious culture of Korean youths in Gangnam district was what led it to becoming the first YouTube video to hit 1 billion views. Talk about being completely out of this world new and hip.
3. Synergy across horizontal categories: When My Love from the Star was aired, its global audience came to embrace chimaek (chicken and beer) for the first time as a legitimate nighttime snack. Gentle Monster sunglasses became the ‘it’ fashion item following Lee Min Ho in The Heirs. Suddenly, H-mart is the new hot place to buy grocery. The cool effect of K-pop and K-dramas have helped flourish K-beauty, K-food, and K-fashion in transformative ways. To be a phenomenon, this great synergistic, halo effect needs to happen across multiple industries and stakeholders. Now, with the global interconnectedness and audience, expect the synergistic impact to be more prominent and rapid than ever before.

If traditional marketing is like building the most efficient car where you tightly control every aspect of marketing, phenomenon marketing is like building a rocket ship that once taken off, is on its own in achieving things that seem impossible. Compelling user benefit, new and hip brand stories, and synergy across horizontal categories are the must haves, but not enough for this rocket ship to take off. Below are the essential enablers that are crucial for a successful launch.

1. Latest marketing channels with new drivers for earned media: Every phenomenon marketing actualized the maximum potential of the latest channels. This helps the brand or product to transform from being a paid and owned media driven, to earned. How did BTS emerge from a small-time agency’s boy group to become the biggest K-pop global star? Effective social media strategy. Big Hit Entertainment, BTS’ agency and now part of the HYBE Corporation, was a newbie on the K-pop scene in 2013 when BTS debuted. Lacking financial resources to create polished marketing materials, BTS took a freestyle approach. The members did their own promotions by directly blogging and constantly uploading new content on all social platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. This gave immensely exciting raw materials to its fans, ARMY, to recreate and repost. The authentic content also helped BTS form stronger bonds with its fans. BTS’ social strategy was born out of necessity, and it proved so effective that BTS won the Billboard Music Award for Top Social Artist in 2017. Energizing the core fans to passionately recreate content through the latest channels is the top enabler for phenomenon marketing.
2. Ecosystem effort with long run customer centric approach and key breakthrough moments: Phenomenon marketing evolves conscientiously and organically. To develop and promote K arts, the Korean government established the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism in 2008. Then, came some breakthrough moments such as Gangnam Style in 2012, Baby Shark and BTS receiving Billboard Music Award in 2017, Parasite’s Oscar winning in 2020, and Squid Game in 2021. All the players in the ecosystem must be committed to continually innovate and enhance their craft until some breakthrough moments, for the phenomenon marketing rocket ships to properly take-off.
3. An incubation center to create and refine the benefits and ecosystem: Just as NASA uses south Mississippi as the agency’s primary and largest rocket propulsion test site, phenomenon marketing must have an incubation center to create and refine new ideas. South Korea has been long known as an ideal market for test marketing. Equipped with the world’s fastest Internet, highly educated middle-income class who cares about quality, South Korea has often been the testing ground for many new products by multinational companies. K-phenomenon took full advantage of this incredible home market opportunity to incubate, refine, and further refine. This is the third must have for phenomenon marketing to succeed.

As I’m sitting at a cafe in Seoul, I see Gen Z lining up around the block for Japanese online video game events, and Chinese collectible ‘designer’ toys. The world has gotten so small and the audience so big. What could be the next phenomenon marketing might even be happening right now in your own neighborhood. Now that you know what it is, what impact do you think this has on your works?