Damn Idol Episode 197
* * *
“What?”
At the words of Team Leader Park, his right-hand man, Choe Daeho wore a baffled expression.
It was because of the news Team Leader Park had brought.
“Why is Sedalbaegil latching onto us?”
“It seems to be one of two things. Either the terrestrial networks pressured them, so they brought up Ryan Entertainment’s name to save face, or they’re truly in the middle of taking revenge.”
“This kind of thing counts as revenge?”
“That depends on the nature of the revenge. They might consider even getting on your nerves to be revenge, CEO.”
At Team Leader Park’s words, Choe Daeho’s expression crumpled slightly.
Team Leader Park was competent, and he chose his words with matching precision, but sometimes that was irritating.
Still, Choe Daeho couldn’t deny that Han Sion got on his nerves.
It wasn’t just this incident.
The more Sedalbaegil succeeded, the more irritating they became.
Ryan Entertainment had clashed with Sedalbaegil through Take Scene, but in truth, Take Scene’s share of Ryan Entertainment’s total revenue was modest.
Originally, it shouldn’t have been modest, but it had become so.
However, Ryan Entertainment had countless singers more important than Take Scene, and there had been some who had collided head-on with Sedalbaegil at the beginning of the year.
Of course, the result had no longer qualified as a collision.
You couldn’t call a passing truck running over grass a collision.
But Mix Way, who would begin promotions next week, was a little different.
Industry insiders were calling Mix Way “Sedalbaegil’s rival.”
Even though Ryan Entertainment hadn’t done any media play to that effect.
However, strictly speaking, it was more like the mountain was so high that attention naturally gathered on the climber as well.
When the mountain called Sedalbaegil was impossibly high, wouldn’t people be curious who would conquer it?
On top of that, the strength of Mix Way’s fandom, which had finished preparing to support their promotions, was also gathering.
So Ryan Entertainment’s marketing direction was in line with that.
Sedalbaegil would certainly achieve better results than Mix Way in terms of records.
Their digital chart rankings would be higher, and their physical album sales would be higher as well.
But they couldn’t hold the advantage in every single area.
There would definitely be certain areas where Mix Way came out ahead, and Ryan Entertainment’s PR team would focus on those. They would use modifiers like “the group that beat Sedalbaegil in OOO.”
The best-case scenario here was for Mix Way to take first place on a music show.
Music shows didn’t score based only on physical album sales.
The possibility would change depending on how many albums Mix Way sold and how their digital tracks performed, but it wasn’t impossible.
Especially in cases like Sedalbaegil, where their broadcast activity score was low.
But…
‘If this happens, will competing through music shows be impossible?’
Han Sion had made a reckless move.
Telling them to choose between Sedalbaegil and Ryan Entertainment.
Of course it would be Ryan Entertainment.
That would remain the case no matter what great musical achievements Sedalbaegil made.
But what mattered now wasn’t the phenomenon.
It was the reason.
Why was Sedalbaegil clinging to Ryan Entertainment?
“Using a business you luckily built with your paltry talent and tricks to interfere with my goal.”
“How many albums do you think I lost because of you? And what about my patience, which might run out at any moment?”
“So wait quietly. When the time comes, I’ll bring you down myself.”
Could it be that what he’d said back then had been sincere?
At the time, Choe Daeho had been flustered, pressed down by Han Sion’s razor-sharp momentum.
Han Sion’s gaze had truly looked down on Choe Daeho, and there had been an oppressive weight in his attitude.
But looking back on it, it was laughable.
No matter how successful Sedalbaegil became, no matter how many albums they sold, what did that have to do with Ryan Entertainment’s business?
No matter how much money they earned, they couldn’t bring down a major agency.
Unless they truly earned several trillion won and invested all of it into Ryan Entertainment’s downfall.
“Team Leader Park.”
“Yes.”
“What do you think? How should we respond?”
“I think we should respond strongly. In addition, we should lodge a forceful protest with M Show as well. It seems this was why Mix Way’s M Show schedule wasn’t coming out.”
“As for M Show, well, they went all in on Sedalbaegil. Though that’s ridiculous too.”
“There are significant political reasons. The line currently holding the mainstream position at M Show is on shaky ground.”
“It’s history that revolutionary forces make reckless moves.”
After hearing Team Leader Park’s opinion, CEO Choe Daeho sank into thought.
Sedalbaegil had grabbed onto Ryan Entertainment’s trouser leg and refused to let go.
The reason was either saving face or revenge.
Or perhaps it was a combination of the two.
Then what was it that Sedalbaegil hated most right now?
The situation they least wanted to happen.
“Hmm…”
CEO Choe Daeho thought deeply.
Then a good idea came to him.
“Team Leader Park. When you think about it, Sedalbaegil grew by feeding off Take Scene’s buzz, didn’t they?”
“Yes. That’s true. The Color Show teaser and the music video teaser were both aimed at Take Scene.”
Team Leader Park answered that way with his mouth, but his inner thoughts were different.
Sedalbaegil would have achieved the same success even if they hadn’t latched onto Take Scene.
Their latching onto Take Scene had been less an act of efficiency and closer to an act of revenge.
However, whenever it came to Sedalbaegil—no, Han Sion—CEO Choe Daeho’s vision grew clouded.
The reason revolutionary forces made reckless moves was because they were anxious.
And in Team Leader Park’s eyes, Choe Daeho was anxious.
But there were times when a salaried employee simply had to nod without saying much.
“Then how about we do the opposite this time?”
“You mean we should make Mix Way share buzz with Sedalbaegil?”
“That’s right.”
“The process of steering public opinion will be somewhat messy. Mix Way’s fandom may dislike it. Especially since Mix Way’s new album turned out well, didn’t it?”
In Team Leader Park’s view, Sedalbaegil was not an opponent they could take on with marketing.
Sedalbaegil’s market did not overlap with Mix Way’s.
More precisely, Sedalbaegil’s market was so enormous that it was fair to call it “the general public.”
So the best method for Mix Way was to promote head-on.
But Choe Daeho seemed to have already become fixated on his idea.
Of course, that didn’t mean CEO Choe Daeho’s idea was completely baseless or bad.
He was a businessman who had succeeded in the K-pop market, and he was a clever man.
“There are plenty of K-pop fans who hate Sedalbaegil. You know why, don’t you?”
“Yes. Because they’re changing the color of idol culture. There are many cases where the public uses Sedalbaegil as the comparison and pours out mockery.”
“Exactly. Who were those kids who recently came out with a band concept?”
“Bluesome.”
“Right. They got cursed at for no reason. Their fandom ended up hating Sedalbaegil. The enemy of my enemy is an ally.”
Choe Daeho continued excitedly.
“If we put Mix Way and Sedalbaegil in the same ring, neutral fans—or the fandoms of rival groups—will attach themselves to Mix Way.”
“Since Mix Way’s recognition has risen recently thanks to their individual activities, I do think that’s sufficiently possible.”
“Exactly. Their dramas were huge hits. Two of them, at that. Their baseline favorability should be fairly high.”
The picture Choe Daeho was drawing was simple.
As Mix Way began promotions, they would latch onto Sedalbaegil and make people look at the two groups as a pair.
Make people wonder who would achieve greater results in which areas.
Of course, they wouldn’t fight fair and square, and Mix Way would receive the protection of Ryan Entertainment’s PR team.
Here, Mix Way only needed to win in one or two categories.
Then Ryan Entertainment would mobilize every media outlet it could and discuss Mix Way’s success.
Those who liked orthodox K-pop would take Mix Way’s side.
Then Mix Way’s weight class would rise by one level.
Mix Way’s strength was that the members’ individual activities had been successful, and their weakness was that the proportion of individual activities was too large.
It was also a perfect opportunity to bind the team and the fandom together as one.
“What do you think?”
“It’s good. But what worries me is that the risk is too great.”
“Risk?”
“If something goes wrong, we may end up forfeiting everything we could have gained by promoting through the straightforward method.”
In Team Leader Park’s view, no group that had gotten entangled with Sedalbaegil had come out looking good.
But Choe Daeho openly scowled.
He was a man who possessed the stubbornness and obstinacy unique to a middle-aged man who had succeeded by his own methods.
“Let’s proceed.”
“…
Understood.”
Team Leader Park could only nod.
In any case, Choe Daeho was the man who paid his salary.
“Today is the last day of Sedalbaegil’s first-week tally, right?”
“Yes. That’s correct.”
“Since they sold unit albums and their second album together, the first-week figure itself isn’t at a level we can’t touch, is it?”
Team Leader Park immediately understood what Choe Daeho meant.
“I’ll schedule as many fan sign events as possible and try to surpass their first-week figure by as much as we can.”
Of course, they couldn’t surpass the combined first-week sales of Sedalbaegil’s three unit albums and their second album.
They only needed to surpass one thing.
The second album.
A short while later, the first-week sales figure Team Leader Park found for Sedalbaegil’s second full-length album was 680,000 copies.
If combined with the unit album sales, it surpassed 1.2 million.
‘They’re insane.’
Team Leader Park, who was not a regressor, had no way of knowing this, but the first-week sales of K-pop groups naturally increased year by year.
And the year that singularity arrived was 2018.
Because 2018 was the year that first-week sales surpassed one million copies for the first time.
In truth, strictly speaking, Sedalbaegil’s first-week sales were indeed 680,000 copies.
First-week sales weren’t a Billboard remix chart, and they couldn’t bundle the unit album sales into the record.
No matter how much those unit albums had been derived from the second album.
But the astonishing part was that Sedalbaegil’s 680,000 first-week sales had nothing to do with fan sign events.
There were no people buying 100, 150, or even 200 copies to meet a fan sign cutoff.
Even TT’s second and third generations did not buy large quantities of albums this time.
They had realized it clearly at the previous fan sign.
Sedalbaegil were people who did what they said they would do.
So those 680,000 copies were truly purchases made because people “wanted to listen.”
It wasn’t that no one bought multiple copies, but even those had been bought willingly.
For example, buying five copies, opening one, keeping one for collection, and gifting three.
And the devil who had thrown someone’s life into a closed timeline counted all those records.
Though that had nothing to do with Team Leader Park.
“Ah, Reporter Kim. Are you free this evening?”
The only thing he had to do was tie Mix Way to Sedalbaegil.
* * *
“Sion. Did you see this article?”
I checked the article on the smartphone Sae Miro had brought over.
It was about whether Mix Way’s first-week sales would surpass Sedalbaegil’s first-week sales.
Of course, the comments were mostly jeering ones asking if that could possibly happen, but it wasn’t impossible.
It seemed Mix Way’s fan sign cutoff this time was around 150 copies, and they had scheduled an enormous number of fan sign events.
On top of that, because Mix Way was being mocked after getting linked to us, it was visibly obvious that Mix Way’s fandom was uniting tightly.
But…
“What an idiot.”
I had anticipated several possible moves Choe Daeho could make, but I hadn’t expected him to choose the worst move like this.
I almost wanted to send him a text asking how he was doing out of gratitude.