| Episode 60. How to Resolve Friction with Your Boss (1)
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[SYSTEM] A “new task” has been assigned.
▷ Separate Spark and Yu Hansu
▷ Reward: EXP (???)
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My fists clenched on their own.
Because the system had all but confirmed that a smooth debut was possible even without driving Yu Hansu out, as long as we kept him at a distance.
Forcibly separating one person from the group was not as easy as it sounded.
Since he already belonged to UA, the chances of Yu Hansu being fired just because he was getting in the way were exceedingly low. Legally speaking, companies couldn’t just dismiss workers as they pleased, either.
Besides, Yu Hansu had yet to cause a fatal incident.
He simply gave off bad vibes, spouted far too much nonsense, and did not look like he would do his job well in the future.
But that wasn’t enough of a legitimate reason to kick Yu Hansu out.
It also played a part that, aside from the planning team, no other department had a particularly negative impression of him.
‘If he talks like that, there must have been trouble somewhere.’
Even the manager, when conveying the dispute between Yu Hansu and the planning team, had seemed to understand well enough which side the problem lay with.
And yet there still wasn’t much talk inside the company?
In a place where, if someone had a resignation interview in the morning, the rumor would spread before lunch?
Then there was only one thing to suspect.
‘Yu Hansu has connections inside UA.’
That happened fairly often at Hanpyeong Industries, too.
Department Head Nam’s nephew whom he brought in, or a director’s younger sibling, and so on.
It wasn’t easy to gossip freely about someone with connections or someone tied to a person in power.
There was nothing to gain from causing a major problem with someone they couldn’t get rid of, so even if it felt dirty, they must have had to go along with the atmosphere to some extent.
‘I don’t know whether the power of his network was at work before he joined or after.’
Either way, it was a headache.
Kim Iwol, what a legendary career. After working in a company long enough, I even ended up having to ferret out parachute hires and cut them off.
Until now, since I couldn’t simply ignore a superior’s orders, my limit had been doing petty little things to get on his nerves.
The fact that I was a small citizen incapable of insubordination played a part, too.
But now the situation had changed.
If someone was clearly about to cause trouble, and there was a faction within the company defending that person, then I had gained justification to carve Yu Hansu out.
Should I make Yu Hansu leave of his own accord? But I can’t exactly engage in office politics… All the worries that had filled my days were rendered meaningless in an instant.
If that was the case, the solution actually became simple.
“Producer, Team Leader. I’m truly sorry to interrupt while you’re discussing work.”
“Kim Iwol, didn’t I tell you not to butt in when adults are talking?”
“Producer Yu, why are you being so aggressive today? Iwol, what is it? Go ahead.”
All I had to do was show results and get them adopted?
Then there was only one answer.
“It’s lacking, but I’ve also thought of an idea related to the album.”
“Hm?”
“If the company is still in the middle of discussing it… I’d like to organize it and make a proposal as well.”
Let’s take off the rank badges and settle this with skill.
* * *
Idol albums come in as many forms as there are distinct characteristics between groups.
After all, dozens of idol groups debut in Korea every year.
Still, if one were to broadly divide them by album type, they would probably fall into two categories: photobook-type and concept-type.
First, photobook-type. A photobook-type album includes a photo spread containing multiple pictures of the artist.
Next, concept-type. It still includes photos, but reduces their proportion somewhat and instead includes a small amount of merchandise or event-like elements.
Each fan may prefer a different style, but Spark’s fans especially hated the former. The reason was simple.
≫ Since the otakus keep saying a million copies of the same photo are all pretty, they really put in a million copies of the same photo
≫ What’s the point of including 100 unreleased photos when the background is all the same?
└ I haven’t gotten my album yet, so I’m asking, are they really all the same……?
└ Yes, they were all taken in the same studio
└ Gasp…… I guess I can’t get a refund nowㅠㅠㅠ
Because UA, lacking money, did budget shoots, causing the quality to scrape rock bottom.
At a time when new-generation agencies were sharing photos in USB kits, UA was out there alone doing things that made you mutter, “Sorry, Earth.”
Who would want to buy multiple copies of an album that cost a lot of money but gave no sense of reward? Especially a rookie album where the fan-sign cut wouldn’t even be high.
Then, one way or another, we had to compete through quality.
High-quality content comes from capital.
But there was no way UA, which had even saved money on outfits and studio rental fees, had that kind of capital.
A sigh escaped me on its own. It seemed I had no choice but to begin the hellish research all over again.
* * *
“Assistant Manager Kim, gather some references for things like welcome kits.”
CEOs of shitty small—no, small and medium-sized companies periodically enter periods of innovation.
When this innovation period arrives, CEOs suddenly want to do something impressive as though they’ve been possessed.
Like renewing the website, or reorganizing the company structure.
Or, if not that, they want to do something they’ve never done before so they can feel that their company is keeping up with the times.
Around this time two years ago, the president of Hanpyeong Industries went through a similar phase.
Whether he disliked the old-fashioned impression the company name gave off, or disliked the fact that young employees kept resigning one after another and sharply raising the average age, the president wanted to create a young and stylish corporate culture.
The words the president blurted out without much thought were passed on to the executives, who had no thoughts at all.
And after passing through empty-headed Department Head Nam, they finally arrived at me, whose brain had rusted over.
Thus, the mission given to me was to create a welcome kit as part of “The Great Operation to Recruit Young Employees.”
My client had about twenty mouths, including Department Head Nam’s snout, so naturally there were an extraordinary number of demands.
“The cost can’t be too high, but it mustn’t look cheap.”
“Put in something young kids like. Don’t kids like that kind of thing? Characters?”
“Assistant Manager Kim, the director is asking whether VR is something we can do if we just rent the equipment?”
Every single thing they said was damn awful. Even now, thinking back on that time makes me dizzy.
As they requested, I worked hard to find something reasonably inexpensive, yet not something that screamed cost-effective, and also stylish with a retro touch.
What was it again? I’m sure it was…
“Hrk!”
I woke from the dream, gasping roughly.
In front of me were a laptop with its screen off and a crumpled notebook.
I remembered searching album components. I must have fallen asleep face-down just like that, because my back was stiff.
It was a blessing that none of the other members came out to the living room in the middle of the night.
If those guys had witnessed the unidentified shadow of a man slumped over the dining table, there would have been shouting in the dead of night.
When I moved the mouse, the laptop lit up again. The file I had been working on before falling asleep was still open.
‘A welcome kit, huh.’
I couldn’t remember what item I had chosen back then.
By the time I organized my ideas and reported them, the CEO had already become obsessed with internal management.
I didn’t know how closely related it was to internal management, but I clearly remembered getting chewed out to death because I hadn’t printed the welcome kit report on the back of used paper.
But this time was different.
In order to send Yu Hansu away completely, I had to bring an item UA would have no choice but to adopt and take it all the way to commercialization.
I had butted in despite having no prepared opinion whatsoever, so shouldn’t I bring something worthy of that?
I blinked my dry eyes several times and checked the time on the laptop.
There was still about an hour left before the student group woke up.
I pressed down on my elbows, stretched once, and fixed my gaze back on the laptop.
* * *
Not long after, the day of the presentation that no one had likely been looking forward to dawned.
As if there were no rule saying I had to sit still and take it, the planning work was wrapped up well after a bout of simple labor.
At the same time, the area under my eyes, which had briefly cleared up during the music video shoot, turned pitch-black again.
My appearance must have been rather ghastly, because Kang Giyeon even spoke to me last night.
“Are you going to stay up all night again today?”
“Stay up all night? I’m sleeping a full two hours every night.”
“You said you had something in mind. Even so, does it take that long?”
The reason it’s taking so long is because the part about having something in mind was all a lie.
With Yu Hansu and the planning team on the verge of grabbing each other by the hair, if I had said, “I’ll start preparing from now!” it obviously wouldn’t have flown, so I lied. This is why people shouldn’t lie.
Still, thanks to all that suffering, I managed to put together a fairly decent plan.
If the junior who taught me the Three Great Don’ts had seen it, I might have been able to receive an objective evaluation. What a shame.
The atmosphere in the conference room I entered with my USB was completely different from when I had first joined UA.
Though of course no one could have a good expression when one villain was doing nothing but spout nonsense.
The furrow between the planning team leader’s brows, which had deepened over the past few months as though carved with a chisel, looked pitiful. It was on a level where you could use it as photo material for the case study titled “Why Companies Must Hire People Carefully.”
I looked in turn at the CEO, who was slightly displeased because there had been no progress despite hiring more manpower; the planning team, who wanted to get something, anything, finalized in the near future; and Yu Hansu, who was glaring at me with his arms crossed.
Normally, I would have begun by saying I was grateful for the opportunity despite my shortcomings, but there was no time for that now.
I cut straight to the point.
Along with a PowerPoint depicting an old, dusty box that would be discovered by Sparklers in a corner of a school storeroom.
* * *
What approach would capture both “the desire to purchase” and “fan sentiment”?
The answer for the former was fairly clear.
Either make it broadly appealing or extremely rare. One or the other.
In other words, either sell delicious bungeoppang that everyone likes, or make a giant carp-shaped candy that no one really goes out of their way to eat, but that makes people want to own it at least once.
On the other hand, the realm of fan sentiment was different.
Fan sentiment, to me, seemed clear in one sense, but the deeper I dug, the less I understood it.
Just look at Department Head Nam’s daughter.
She said she liked anything Choi Jeho did, but when she attached a photo of Choi Jeho wearing a fluorescent orange vest as casual clothes, she never failed to add, “Please erase that beggar-like vest!”
It wasn’t just his daughter. At least every Spark fan I had seen was contradictory.
There were many fans who were contradictory in a positive sense, saying they wanted to see the boys sobbing after taking first place, only to cry even harder than them while saying, “Don’t cry, boys!” the moment the guys’ eyes got even a little teary.
But there were also plenty of fans who said they had saved up money, so all they wanted was a comeback, only to say once the comeback actually happened, “Ah… honestly, this one’s kind of not it.”
The fans’ feelings, as I had interpreted them in my own way while proxy-stanning all this time, were this:
“If you just hit the bare minimum, we’ll embrace everything, so please, just think before you come out with something!”
And so, I prepared it.
An album blending the school days everyone had experienced at least once with a concept no one had ever seen before…
Namely, “The Small and Precious Secret Box of a Certain Club That Sparkler Found One Day in the Corner of a Storeroom.”