Lady, You Can Be Free

While everyone is caught up with the #deletefacebook drama which send Facebook shares tanking around 10%. A headline caught my attention.

BIGHIT entertainment beats the big 3 agencies and records the highest profit for 2017

How did a small entertainment company like BIGHIT with only 1 idol group beat the profits of 3 KOSPI listed companies that hosted a number of very popular groups ?

If you look at the numbers, SM brought in the most revenues but is unfortunately not profitable. BIGHIT although has the least revenue is far more profitable than any of the Big 3.

When I googled “Why do you like BTS“, most of the fans highlighted that these are the key attractions

1. Personalities
2. Stage Presence
3. Great Choreography
4. Creative Team (Storytelling / Alternative Universe MVs)
5. Active Social Media Engagements with Fans
6. Relatable Lyrics (Youth Growing Pains)

Some quotes from a fan, Heather Lee :

From their song Am I Wrong:
“The world’s goin’ crazy. And you? How bout ya? You think it is okay? I really don’t think it is. Even with ears, there’s no listening; even with eyes, there’s no seeing. A fish lives in everyone’s hearts – Its name is SELFISH SELFISH”

From their song Baepsae:
They call me a try-hard. Our generation has had it hard. Hurry, chase ‘em; My teachers were born with it all. At my part time job, it’s “all for experience”. At school, there’s the teachers. My superiors use violence. In the media they go on about ‘the generation that’s given up.’”

From their song N.O:

“Dreams disappeared: There was no time to rest, it’s a cycle of school, home or an Internet cafe. Everyone lives the same life; students who are pressured to be number
one, live in-between dreams and reality.”

“Who is the one who made us into studying machines? They classify us to either 
being number one or dropping out; they trap us in borders, the adults; there’s no choice but to consent. Even if we think simply, it’s the survival of the fittest.”

However, I believe that their ARMY (or, Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth) fanbase are the ones that really pushed them to the global stage. The way the fandom operates on social media is AMAZING. They create a calendar of hashtag keywords that they wish to trend on twitter and it will start appearing in the worldwide and local top trend list on the exact day that they have planned. They even have twitter groups like “BTS ARMY Statistics” @btsarmystats , “BTS Voting Team” @btsvotingteam and “BTS_on_Billboard!” @BTS_Billboard which keeps track of all their tweets, retweets, vote and view counts across all the different social media platforms and music charts. I’m not sure whether there’s any digital agencies today that can be as dedicated, coordinated and effective as them. Their hard work resulted in BTS topping many music charts worldwide and winning many music awards. They overtook Justin Bieber for the Billboard Music Award for Top Social Artist in 2017. They even earned a Guinness World Record 2018 for the most Twitter engagements for a music group.

Source : @BTS_Billboard

The ARMY are also an extremely creative group when it comes to content creation. If you do a simple search on youtube, you will see a huge range of entertaining and sometimes high quality contents. I thought the MV analysis made by the fans were extremely deep and impressive. Probably could be used as teaching aid materials in class. Never thought one could analyze an MV like that. Here are some samples :

MV tribute to Sewol Ferry Disaster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tye1ONFeKis

MV based on the book Demian by Hermann Hesse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_VDSKdi_2U

Fascinated, I decided to take a peek at the quarterly reports of Twitter to explore whether BTS were responsible for expanding Twitter’s international user base and helped them achieved profitability for the first time in Q4 2017. Apparently, BTS started gaining worldwide popularity during their release of The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Part 1 album launched on April 29 2015. Looking at the user growth charts, there were 12 million new users added to Twitter between Q2 2015 to Q4 2017. With BTS gaining more exposure in US and launching new album in Japan, I will be keenly interested to see whether that would significantly influence this growth

.

Source : Twitter Quarterly Results Presentation for 2015, 2016 and 2017

There were talks that BIGHIT might launch an IPO. If they do, they probably should do it in the US. Looking at the way ARMY is ran, who knows it might become the biggest IPO in history.