Following Wonder Girls, Miss A, Twice, JYP Entertainment (JYP) continues to create another success with the fourth generation girl group, Itzy.

According to the result of Hanteo Chart on August 5, Itzy has set an amazing record when the first-phase album sales reached more than 32,000 copies with their first album "IT'z ICY" released on July 29. Even Twice - the group holding the record of leading the first-phase album sales when surpassing 150,000 copies with the album "FANCY YOU" released in April - never exceeded the number of 8,200 copies sold in the first phase with their first album published in 2016. However, Itzy broke the senior's record right after they debuted. Except for "Produce" series' project groups, only a handful of girl groups reaching the record of 30,000 album copies sold in the first phase such as Twice, Blackpink, Red Velvet, GFriend, and Mamamoo. The first-phase album sales (the album consumption figure in the first week of release) is an important measure because it clearly reflects idol groups' formidable fandom.

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The group's MV views on the worldwide popular YouTube platform are completely overwhelming. From 570,000 views initially, the debut song "DALLA DALLA" which was released in February, surpassed 100 million views. Although Itzy has just debuted for a year, the group has proven their strength in a short period. The title song of their debut album, "ICY", has achieved 50 million views after just 5 days of release. At the same time, the sharply increasing number of views also "draws" an upward curve. The album climbed to the top of the iTunes Album chart in 12 regions. Along with this achievement, Itzy received a Rookie Award at "2019 M2x Genie Music World Awards" held on August 1. Love calls from advertisers are also continuously sent to the girls. From the morning of August 5, the dating news of Kang Daniel and Jihyo (Twice) stirred up all the websites. Amid that heat, Itzy is still leading the chart of searched keywords as Andar fashion brand's models.

Analysis indicated that JYP's differentiated strategy has contributed to aiding Itzy's popularity. During the past time, JYP has set up a head office system, in which a male director is in charge of girl groups and a female director is responsible for boy groups. This is JYP's own method to give a fair evaluation of the groups' charms through the perspective of the director of the opposite gender. On the contrary, unlike previous groups, Itzy is currently under the management of branch 2 that is managing GOT7. Under the instruction of the female director, the group is displaying their charisma through powerful girlcrush performances and songs with strong girls' voices. In fact, there appeared a lot of information claiming that there witnesses an increase in fangirls' comments on online videos of music stages posted on Naver TV Cast and even in fan accounts that share behind-the-scenes stories, there also are many fangirls.

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In particular, according to the representative, Itzy possesses an outstanding team spirit because besides the thorough attitude education, the girls have also learnt a variety of lessons at JYP (specifically Yuna spent 3 years as a trainee, while Ryujin spent 4 years, Lia 2 years, Chaeryeong 5 years and Yeji 3 years). It also became a platform for them to create the brand Itzy that stays firm in front of crises when Jeon Somi terminated the contract. True to the tradition of the JYP girl groups, all the focus is on the youngest member. Following Sohee (Wonder Girls), Suzy (Miss A), and Tzuyu (Twice), Yuna is an Itzy member who is well-known to the public. Yuna even entered the Top 20 of the individual brand reputation rankings for 455 girl group members conducted by the Korean Business Research Institute from June 19 until July 20. This representative evaluated, "With a bright and exciting attraction, Itzy is leaving an impression as a typical girl group of the 4th generation."

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Ilgan Sports = Reporter Hwang Ji Young hwang.jeeyoung@jtbc.co.kr

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