Jellyfish Entertainment recently found itself in hot water after accidentally divulging its strategy of artificially creating viral content to promote VERIVERY online.
On August 2nd, popular online communities shared how VERIVERY's label tried to engineer viral moments for the group rather than letting them organically arise among netizens. This whole "viral marketing tactics" unfolded when an insider from the agency unintentionally leaked information regarding their calculated approach to content creation.
This user's profile on a popular online community for K-pop idols revealed that the user has been continuously writing posts for VERIVERY, especially pushing member Kangmin. One of the posts accidentally included a link to a notion page which had materials and instructions to post on various online communities. Each link in the notion page listed a post title and which online communities to distribute the post. For instance, the post titled "The boy group whose MV leaked a day ahead of their comeback" was set to be distributed in two different online communities on May 15, 2023.
Word on the street is that such posts across multiple online communities to make the group go viral or increase the group's presence online are getting paid about 80,000 KRW ($61.35 USD) per post.
While the entertainment industry has long been associated with manufactured hype, many are disheartened to learn that even seemingly organic posts were fabricated.
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I'm mostly shocked that anyone would be shocked at this, doesn't it go on all the time?
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I thought it was common knowledge that social media is awash with vested interests all trying to produce viral posts and articles, from Putin's rabid Russian comment farms, to their equivalents amongst the Americans (and probably Chinese, along with others), to all kinds of anything trying to sell something, whether it's music or cat food, there will be someone, somewhere, in a PR campaign team posting about it on forums, review sites, and comments boards.
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They're normally formulaic and pretty easy to spot, but I'm going to assume that some get through.