BH Corporate Briefing - Eve Griffiths

Big Hit Corporate Briefing with the Community:

Big Hit's Plans for the Future and Beyond

by

Eve Griffiths

Big Hit Labels

This is Big Hit’s second corporate briefing that has been made available for the public to watch, the first took place in August 2019, this briefing will follow on, updating the viewer on how previously mentioned projects are progressing and introducing new and exciting business ventures.

Following the opening video, the background screen fills with images relating to Big Hit, their achievements and things yet to come drawing the viewers eyes to the stage.

The staging and lighting are as usual dramatic and meaningful as Bang Si-Hyuk, CEO of Big Hit Entertainment enters the stage to introduce the briefing.

Displayed on the screens are the seven main headings of the briefing, covering Big Hits achievements of 2019 and their plans for 2020.

1. Opening

2. Earnings and Keynote Speech

3. 2019 Big Hit Business Case Study

4. 2020 Big Hit Business Vision

5. Big Hit Labels update

• Big Hit
• Source Music
• BELIFT

6. Big Hit Business Expansion

7. Closing

Opening

Bang Si-Hyuk – CEO, Label Group – Big Hit Entertainment

Referring to Big Hits August briefing Bang mentions the intention to create a customer focused ecosystem and create new business using these plans

Earnings and Keynote Speech

Innovation

Big Hit has doubled its profits since 2018 by diversifying their business model and evenly distributing their revenue between music, album sales and concerts, content, IP products and platform business.

BTS’ 3-day performance saw an increase of foreign tourist attendance to 187,000 which experts estimate had an economic effect of nearly 1 trillion won “rivalling that of an Olympic games”.

A BTS hosting city turning into a festival like the Olympics has become a reality.

Big hit has been working hard to ensure their future vision becomes a reality and that they continue to create these kinds of positive results.

Big Hit winning formula for success

The process to find the Big Hit winning formula began several years ago when at a New Year meeting in Mr Bang said “We must be able to reproduce success, when we remember what we did well, do it better, and move towards a common goal, we can create sustainable success even when things are strange and unfamiliar. Our core values remain ‘content’ and ‘fans’. We focus on the fundamentals”.

Back then the above was relevant to improving Big Hit, now Big Hit wants to take these ideas to encourage improvements to the wider industry.

As they understand how they created and produced the levels of success they are cultivating now, in turn they will be able to bring about greater change and innovation into the industry – Big Hit’s “winning formula” will become the ‘de facto standard’.

Fans will be treated as customers; artists will be able to freely and happily express their talent and reach for their dreams; everyone in the industry will be able to reap the rewards of their effort and have pride in their work and achievements.

2019 Big Hit Business Case Study

Lenzo Seokjun Yoon – CEO, Business Group - Big Hit Entertainment

• Concert Experience Enhancement and Revenue Modal Expansion
• IP Diversification and the Pop-up store
• Platform Experience Enhancement

The Big Hit business group has been putting their efforts into pioneering new adventures, focusing on music industry innovation and customer experience innovation.

DJ Kim – general manager of Big Hit Three Sixty

Big Hit Three Sixty are responsible for performance, music and album distribution, commercial partnerships exhibitions and the media content businesses of all Big Hit’s family companies.

They plan and operate BTS’ world tour, TXT North American showcase and develop on and offline multimedia content.  They operate the new ‘Play zone’ within concert venues and a wide variety of other content and services aimed at expanding the customer experience.

2019 achievements for Three Sixty – qualitative and quantitative growth expansion of the concert experience, and diversification of revenue streams.

BTS Love Yourself, Speak Yourself tour from Aug 18 → Oct 19 consisting of 62 Concerts, with an audience of 2,060,000 covering stops in Asia, Europe, and south America.

Big Hit brought all their own equipment to each stop to ensure the highest quality content, this filled 50 12-meter containers. For the Seoul concerts alone 12 billion won was invested into production, labour and more.

A video of the stops throughout the tour was then shown, it made the reality of the scope of money, time, planning and effort of the faceless but dedicated team behind the tour hit home.  For us attending we see the surface the years, months of planning of every minute detail is what makes the concerts so much more than an event, they are an experience. Fireworks, drones, sets, wardrobe, music, lighting the list could go on and on…

New possibilities were explored for the concert-going experience – removing inconvenience and adding fun so visitors enjoy the entire day of the concert as if it is a festival.

There was the introduction of the F&B Zone (Food & Beverage) & Rest Zone including fun activities put together with Big Hit partners, massages, games, AR Booths, random photocard printing and much more.

Different ways to enjoy the show were put into place online and offline, so more fans could join the experience, live viewing and live streaming.

Live viewing in Korea, the U.S and Japan took place in cinemas – 410,000 fans took part in these viewings.

Across the world live streaming was made available on mobile devices and PCs – 230,000 tuned in to enjoy the spectacle of a BTS show.

Movies, documentaries and media content based on performances were produced, 4.6 million people watched Burn the Stage: The Movie, Love Yourself in Seoul and Bring the Soul: The Movie.

Overall 5.55 million people experienced seeing BTS without setting foot into an arena or stadium. This is over double the amount of concert goers, 2.06 million, that have experienced the concerts via different multimedia options.

These results proved that it is possible to maximise the link between growing profits and a customer experience that leaves fans feeling fulfilled.

Big Hit intends to help everyone enjoy the performances regardless of time and place, focusing on encouraging fans to make connections at concerts and find the as of yet unidentified invisible needs of everyone attending the concert.

There are plans to use Weverse to provide these services again in 2020 and beyond.

Ha Se Jung – General Manager of Big Hit IP

Big Hit IP plan and develop secondary content using the artists and artist IP (Intellectual Property) – characters, animation, and publications are used to create a variety of products.

Pop up stores – enhance artist brand value and diversify business models.

Two types of pop up store were introduced in 2019: –

Tour Pop-Up at tour host cities – integrated experience space that was a more permanent pop-up store in La, Chicago, New York, London & Paris.

The stores ran for a week with a lot of interest from the local media.

Interesting results were recorded at the London store, it was three times farther away from the concert venue than the Chicago pop up store but had the most visitors and the highest sales. Confirming that the pop-up shops provide their own kind of enjoyment regardless of distance from the venue.

BTS Pop-Up: House of BTS – a global-scale integrated hands-on space.

The House of BTS ran for 1-3 months in Seoul, Japan and Mexico with 400,000 fans visiting.

The spaces sold artist merchandise, recreated music videos, offered a photo spot featuring huge army bombs, opportunities for hands-on experiences of the artists and their music and more. Food/drink products were added continuously, and bingo and seasonal events added to enhance the everchanging fun.

These pop ups showed the possibility of developing the hands-on fan experience into an ‘urban theme park’.

TXT pop-up stores were launched because of the success of the pop-up House of BTS. Three cities in Japan welcomed many TXT fans.

Songs were turned into IP, creating a wide range of sought-after lifestyle items – DNA, Mic Drop and Boy With Luv were the first songs to be developed in this way.

Pop-up stores are going to be developed more in 2020 and will be opened in cities that have hosted concerts and locations not yet visited.  Bespoke products will be created for each location and will be rolled out to include other artists on the Big Hit labels.

Currently Big Hit IP are developing their own products and collaborating with world-leading partners. They are also preparing even more fun music IP products which will be revealed as and when they become ready. They will of course be using feedback from fans to continue to provide excellent services and experiences.

Seo Wooseok – president of beNX

beNX developed and service the community platform “Weverse”, connecting artists to fans and the online shopping platform “Weply”.

Their services are used to integrate all the concert and IP businesses that were mentioned earlier, all helping to maximise the fan experience

As of January 2020, 3.3 million fans have joined the BTS fan areas on Weverse, coming from 205 countries. 1.25 million for TXT and 380,000 for GFriend – totalling 5 million members. Over 1.4 million visitors log into Weverse every day.

Weverse is being seen globally as the next step in the fan-artist community, with international artists enquiring about joining the community.  The platform has already won at the 2019 Google Play user’s choice awards.

The app creates an intimacy in communication between artists and fans not experienced anywhere else.  Allowing artists to find posts to interact with easily and giving fans the chance to communicate in real time with their favourite stars.

In Weverse a wait time alert was newly introduced for the BTS Seoul performance, including seating maps for the venue, waiting times for play/rest zone and f&b zone plus maps of concert venue.  All there to help attendees plan their day, have fun and reach their seats in good time for the start of the show.

On-offline merchandise buying system was also included in the app to add efficiency at the venue and reduce the concert goers’ inconvenience of waiting in long queues. Because of this merchandise sales rose 2.1-fold from the Aug 18 to Oct 19 show in Jamsil.  A more diverse list of merchandise was also created due to the new system including items created by Big Hit IP.

2020 Big Hit Business Vision

Lenzo Seokjun Yoon - CEO Business Group, Big Hit Entertainment

Big Picture

All three of the previous business sectors are essential to Big Hits plans for the future, Big Hit Three Sixty, Big Hit IP, and beNX,  the link between the three creates the basis of a plan that can be rolled out to other artists and the entertainment industry – The Big Hit Winning Formula.

One more thing that is required to ensure the Big Hit formula reaches its goal, the ‘fans’ are the core value of the business.  Big Hit sees the fans as valued customers and precious allies that continue to show infinite love and passion for Big Hit’s artists and music.

Big Hits intention was to invite the fans to the briefing as they are such a big part of the community and a central pillar of the music industry, but due to recent events it wasn’t the safest of options, this again reaffirms Big Hits respect for the fans.

One of the nice points made in this briefing is the responsibility Big Hit has taken in identifying how fans were treated in the past, and look back at how the music industry hasn’t always been able to provide the ideal environment to allow fans to make the most rational choices and the most reasonable of purchasing decisions, they looked at how they were made to wait and had to endure discomforts. Bit Hit also mentioned that they were also at fault and that as processes were improved fans had been inconvenienced due to the improvements, but they will continue their efforts to improve and to ensure their fans receive the fair treatment they deserve as customers.

Innovations for 2020

More +

Continuing to create enjoyable experiences

Expand customer experience at tour stops so more fans can join in the fun

Play Zone to be part of the world tour

Events to enjoy together with the performance

Hosting cities to be turned into a festival

Tour Villages to include sight-seeing, cuisine, BTS themed hotel rooms, BTS exhibition, BTS Pop-up store, BTS themed beverages at nearby F&B store.

Reservations made via beNX platform in conjunction with local travel packages for more fun.

A festival for BTS and their fans.

Cities are expected to welcome these events because of the proven positive economic effect.

Less -

Less inconvenience for fans.

Develop and upgrade services.

Improve merch purchasing until there is no more need to wait for extreme amounts of time.

Improving overseas distribution systems to ensure global fans don’t have to wait, payment systems will be simplified to ensure fans can buy with greater ease.

Best -

Best content “Whatever you expect, we will exceed it”

Continuing to talk about Big Hits vision for 2020 the production for upcoming BTS Map of the Soul tour was confirmed to include STUFISH-entertainment architects, stage design team that have worked with Beyonce, Jay-Z, U2, Madonna and more.

Even with all the planning, Big Hit still want to ensure all the growth that they go through will be organically developed to ensure nothing is rushed, they aim to discover the hidden needs of the fans and provide a diverse and enjoyable experience for all.

Big Hit believes it can take all it has learned and to create business models that can be exported out to the Korean music industry but also possibly to the wider global music industry.  Categorising their models on 2,000-person, 5,000 person or 40,000-person sized performances, these packages can be applied at each event and services can be tailored to each customer and individual artist’s needs.

It was announced that Seventeen will be joining Weverse, leaving the possibility of more artists from all over the world joining the fan/artist community wide open.

After the recent change in Big Hit’s YouTube channel name the difference between Big Hit Entertainment and Big Hit Labels was explained: -

Shin Young Jae – Vice-president, Big Hit Label

Returning to speak about Big Hit’s artists' imminent plans, BTS’ recent award wins were recapped.  BTS won two prizes at the BBMAs, three at the AMAs, winning a total of 81 prizes at 22 awards worldwide, and topped notable global charts.

They were the first Korean singers to perform at the Grammys. July 2019 “Lights/Boy With Luv” received the “million certification” from the recording industry association of japan.  This was the first time ever for a foreign male artist, and the first time in 12 years for any artist, Japanese or foreign.

The global contemporary art project “Connect, BTS” was launched and is still showing the world, BTS’ link between their message and the expressive form of contemporary art, inspiring fans and new audiences all around the world.

The new album to be released 21st Feb “Map of the Soul:7” will expand on BTS’ narrative, further inspiring ARMY to theorise and communicate en mass what they think is going to happen.

Interlude: Shadow, the first trailer, the first single Black Swan and Outro: Ego are gaining lots of attention with global views and streams climbing every day.  Map of the Soul:7 has already hit over 4 million pre-orders, with 3.42 million in the first week already out selling Map of the Soul: Persona.

BTS’ Map of the Soul tour will include new tour stops at places that haven’t hosted a BTS concert before, with more on and offline streaming and content options.

After listing all these accolades and exciting things still to come this year, Big Hit Labels’ Vice President urged their fans to please continue to love and support BTS.

TXT debut in March saw them achieve the title of 2019’s most popular new group and global super rookies. Their showcase abroad received positive responses and they received 9 new artist prizes at the year-end awards. March will be their first ever fan live performance and a world tour will follow. The first half of this year will see the release of a new TXT album.

Big Hit is also currently working on the creation and launch of a new boy band aiming to debut in 2022. Big Hit will be using their experiences and production capabilities from making BTS and TXT a success towards making this boy group just as successful, more information coming soon.

So Sung-jin – President, Source Music

Since their incorporation under Big Hit Entertainment, they have been concentrating on creating synergy between Big Hit and Source Music.

The first project was the Plus Global Audition – invitations were sent out to girls across the world who had potential.  Auditions were focused on having fun and ensuring a more positive experience for all the participants. Souvenirs were prepared for the girls attending. Auditions were in 16 cities around the world with 50,000 girls aged 13 – 19 participating.

This has resulted in a girl group aiming to debut in 2021.

GFriend had a successful 2019, touring in Asia meeting over 40,000 fans.  They again will be touring Asia in 2020. Stay tuned to the continuation of their coming-of-age story.

Source Music aims to become Korea’s girl-group powerhouse and become the top girl-group label. They are making sure to continue their efforts in making their artists happy and help them continue to make great music.

Choi Yunhyuk – vice-president, BELIFT

BELIFT is a joint venture between CJ ENM and Big Hit Entertainment, the goal is to become a label that takes “K-pop into the mainstream”.

They have observed that K-pop is starting to be loved all over the world and they want to make K-pop that is created by people all over the world for people all over the world to enjoy. They are going to plan how to reproduce the K-pop development system into the global market, while planning their project BELIFT have begun to understand that this is going to be a long process.

Step one is to create a multinational boy group to debut in 2020.  Auditions have already been held in 17 cities. Expectations and concerns are high regarding this project.

The next step to create the boy group is an observational reality program that will showcase the debut of a group of BELIFT trainees.

BELIFT is aiming to expand on the newly found global awareness of K-pop and this is the first step towards “Idols for the global market”.

Part of the reality program will enable fans and viewers from around the world to take part in the process. Using a Weverse verified log in to the BELIFT website viewers will be able to take part in the evaluations and offer their opinions on the trainee’s performance.

As this is such a new concept, the team understand and appreciate concerns that have been put to them, but as they have trainees already doing their best to create their future as part of the project, they do not want to deprive them of this opportunity through no fault of their own. They are working by the “Promise of social responsibility” and “fairness” that Big Hit and BELIFTs partner must uphold.

Big Hit Business Expansion

Big Hit’s Business Domain has seen an expansion into numerous and diverse areas.

O Minhwan – co-CEO & game producer, Superb

Superb brings a huge amount of music game development expertise – past games include TAPSONIC and the Superstar series, which includes Superstar BTS, plus the recently released game Pianista which so far has received many good reviews.

Another game proving Superb’s expertise is Yumi’s CELLS with Naver Webtoon – a game based on the Naver Webtoon was released in 2018. This game proved the link between music IP with music games would be well received and had the possibility to create a huge gaming hit.

Their first project – A BTS music game, the main characters will be the BTS characters unveiled by Big Hit IP last year seen in the IDOL video and found at the House of BTS pop-up shops.

The characters will have a variety of interactions with the player to bring joy and delight to the gamer again Weverse will be the way to log-in to play the game.

Bang Si-Hyuk – CEO, Label Group – Big Hit Entertainment

More to come in 2020.

A new music video for the BTS characters will be released in the first half of the year plus four short animated episodes in the second half. There will be more new content and products to follow, this was illustrated by a short teaser trailer of the BTS characters in their own Mic Drop music video.

HYYH the Notes 2 – sequel to the first HYYH the notes novel, based on the BTS universe storyline – 200,000 copies were sold on Weply last year alone, Big Hit are hoping for equal success this year.

Really exciting release of graphic lyrics books of HYYH – this project has been created to convey the lyrical experience in the form of a picture book. Five songs from HYYH will be recreated as five picture books. The beautiful illustrations accompanying the lyrics will offer a new different method of enjoying the music.

The previously spoken about drama series based on the BTS Universe is getting closer to release – Big Hit have been working with Chorokbaem Media – the creators of “My Mister”, “W”, “Memories of the Alhambra”, “Another Miss Oh” and “Oh my ghost” and writer Kim Su-jin, whose past works included “Dazzling”.

It will tell the coming of age story about seven boys, how they met and embarked on a journey of healing together. It’s expected to be released at the end of 2020 or beginning of 2021.

From games, more characters, dramas, Big Hit’s business expansion and imagination knows no boundaries to creating amazing content to not only entertain but also to inspire:

That inspiration can be found in new Korean language education content created for the fans – its aim is to help fans who can’t enjoy the depth of the Big Hit content to the fullest due to a language barrier.

Recently foreign media have pointed out that there is a growing global demand for learning Korean because of K-pop, but there were only a few limited ways fans could learn Korean with ease.

Big Hit has created a Korean-learning media tool that uses artist content to create a rewarding and immersive experience for fans.  It will begin with BTS content and expand to other artists included under Big Hit labels. The content will be revealed in stages from March, look out for “Learn Korean with BTS”.

In Closing

Bang Si-Hyuk – CEO, Label Group – Big Hit Entertainment

Big Hit Entertainment is working to the hope that in the next briefing they will be able show how they have come closer to their goal of industry innovation through even bigger wins.

To achieve these wins, they may require additional investment capital, the media have recently reported about the possibility of an IPO, no decisions have been made yet.

Instead viewers and attendees were urged to keep their eyes on how the diverse elements presented at the briefing come together in the future to create an even greater value. They will continue with their organic and inorganic growth in 2020 expanding their labels and businesses.

Fundamentally they work to the belief there are X, Y and Z axis in the music industry, these are the fan, artist and company. Big Hit is creating a picture of joint growth between the artist, music industry and customer experience, all vital to reaching the winning formula that Big Hit continues to explore.

Still at the heart of the company is the want to ensure that artists are happy and that they are given the opportunity to make their voices be heard.

After watching the second Big Hit Corporate Briefing with the Community, I find the whole thing inspiring not only in the essence of business leadership and planning and how they don’t put boundaries on the directions their company can take, but also inspiring in how they want to take a social responsibility on top of all of the business stuff.  They want to improve the way Korean music artists are treated, they want to improve the way fans of Korean music artists are treated and they want to empower both parties to expect more from the corporations that run the industry behind the scenes.