March 7, 2010
Kim Yu-na's Marketing Value Soars
More than 300 companies have been known to approach Kim with “business opportunities,” it said.
She is the first South Korean to win an Olympic medal in figure skating, and gold at that, while setting a new world record in the process.
She became the first female figure skater to achieve the "grand slam," winning the World Grand Prix Final, Four Continents Championships, World Championships and the Winter Olympics.
As South Korea has a series of sporting events this year, Kim’s gold medal will ignite the ever greater marketing craze, a PR specialist told the newspaper.
With Kim’s latest victory, any company hoping to have her in its commercial may need to pay 1.2 billion won per deal.
And the handsome price tag is understandable. “Kim is special in that she is liked not just by a certain group of consumers, but by all Koreans. Furthermore, she is now a global star,” Donga said citing an advertising specialist.
South Korea’s marketing community expects Kim’s revenue from corporate commercial contracts only surpass at least 10 billion won this year.
In the past, Kim participated in commercials by Hyundai Motor, Samsung Electronics, Maeil Dairy, Tous Les Jours, CJ Group, and jewelry maker J.Estina.
Meanwhile, international firms are also likely to jump in the bandwagon as well, including Risport of Italy, the skates she used during the Olympics.
source by Korean Times
Social networking media taking off in Korea
This is hardly surprising, considering her stellar performances on the world figure skating stage. What`s unexpected is her decision to glide onto the microblogging service Twitter (@Yunaaaa) in late May. As the word about her debut on Twitter quickly spread, the number of users following her Twitter messages shot up dramatically. The figure was at about 20,000 as of Wednesday, making her the most influential Twitter user among Koreans.
The role of social networking media, or SNS, is reshaping the local digital culture, and panel members at the Business Blog Summit in Yangjae-dong, southern Seoul, on Tuesday agreed that social media is finally taking off in Korea as well.
At the event organized by Korea Blog Business Association, Lee Sung-kyu, media division chief of Tatter and Media said Twitter gained key momentum in the U.S. presidential election last year, and a second wave of the "Twitter revolution" is hitting many countries, particularly in Iran, whose internal conflict was being reported real time through the service.
"You can write only up to 140 characters in a single tweet, but plenty of real-time information is delivered through the Twitter network worldwide," Lee said. "And the network is well-suited to expand at a rapid pace, as demonstrated by the release of a public statement about Korea`s political affairs."
The joint statement, signed by 400 Korean bloggers, was arranged mostly through Twitter and blogs, and then reported widely by the local press. The whole process took just a week, a feat unthinkable when people were stuck with previous media channels, Lee said.
But some critics expressed concern that Twitter-led SNS is just a fad, subject to a sudden demise as with other much-hyped yet short-lived digital services.
Myung Seung-eun at the planning division of Yahoo! Korea, said that such skeptical views were misplaced.
"When I began to talk about blogs at forums three years ago, people were not convinced," he said. "But the blog boom is now a reality that cannot be denied. More importantly, a new chapter is looming large in the field because portal operators are opening up their services."
Korea`s digital culture is dominated by leading portals such as Naver and Daum, both of which have long been unwilling to share their profitable platforms with outside companies. But their rigid practices recently began to give way to more open partnerships, a development that Korean bloggers expect will reconfigure the overall digital culture in the long term.
"More portals will share their platforms. Naver already started Opencast service, and more channels will be available to outsiders. Daum is pursuing the same strategy in favor of open social networks, which are supported by Google and Yahoo," Myung said.
The popularity of social media, in other words, is spurring the growth of open platforms in cyerspace, providing new opportunities for companies and individuals alike.
Lee Jung-dae, director at Edelman Korea, a PR agency, said there are some limitations in using social media as a marketing tool, but companies who lag behind in the trend might see their offline business in trouble soon.
"Companies may or may not launch corporate blogs, but what they must do is use social media to their advantage, for example, by asking customers to share their views," Lee said.
When asked about whether there are specific content tailored for social media, panelists said what matters most in SNS is not content but profile. "What`s important in social media is who`s talking, not what`s being talked, because SNS revolves around relationships," Myung Seung-eun said.
A striking example: on Sunday, Kim Yuna posted a simple tweet, "Going back to the big rink tmr!!^0^" and this otherwise straightforward message was echoed (or "retweeted," in Twitter lingo) enthusiastically among Korean users.
Source by Korean Herald
Golden Girl Yu-na Marketing in Top Spin
No one can escape Kim Yu-na in South Korea. The 19-year-old has just dominated the skating rink in Vancouver, and is now raising her share of the advertising market to another world-record level.
There was more than enough advertising and merchandise featuring the sensational figure skater even before her winning of the gold medal at the Winter Olympics; Yuna milk, Yuna bread, Yuna SUVs, Yuna air-conditioners, Yuna supermarkets, Yuna earrings, Yuna facial cream and Yuna teddy bears.
But now the competition for product endorsement is so high that firms are happily spending billions of won just to use her name.
Kookmin Bank (KB), which has been offering the "Figure Skating Queen Yuna Love" installment savings account, promised a 0.5-percentage point upgrade on interest rates to the account holders if Kim were to win gold in Vancouver.
Some 134,575 accounts will benefit from the rate hike, which will cost the bank some 1.3 billion won.
The bank had already raised the interest rate when Kim won first place at the World Championship in December.
But since the increase is applicable only once to each account holder no matter how many times Kim wins gold medals, the cost is not as much as outsiders may think, and surely less than the program's promotional effects. On a total of 934.6 billion won in deposits, there was an additional 4.8 billion won in yearly interest payments.
Meanwhile, KB has drawn 54 billion won in new deposits during the last seven working days of the Winter Games period.
There will be much more money to come over the counter before her next World Championship in Italy this month, the bank believes.
"The Yuna program will be the first installment savings account product to achieve 1 trillion won in deposits," KB said, saying the gamble between bank and customers on interest rates will continue in the future.
KB was one of first sponsors of Kim. They signed a contract in December 2006 when Kim was just a prodigy and not many Koreans were paying attention to the sport of figure skating, let alone believing she could win a medal.
This made Kim a symbol of the hard-working Korean. Her attractive appearance has also helped her become a favorite among advertisers.
The national attention was so great that even the stock market's trading volume halved while her performance was broadcast on TV.
After her near-perfect programs in Vancouver, KB, Samsung, Hyundai Motor and her other sponsors reacted fast to run new TV ads that stressed how they have sponsored Kim throughout her difficult career.
In some cases, "Yuna fever" has reached unreasonable levels. Some newspapers suggested Friday that her winning the gold medal caused share prices of a medical equipment firm to rise that day, because Kim's beautiful white teeth made people think of dental implant surgery. Other stock analysts also claimed that the producer of banana-flavored milk will benefit from Kim since she was once reported to have said she likes the drink.
More than 300 companies are known to have approached Kim with business opportunities.
Ironically, the unlikely loser on Friday was IB Sports, Kim's marketing agent. The company's stock price has risen from around 2,000 won in December to 4,460 won earlier this month, as Kim had emerged as the likely winner of the gold medal.
But on Friday, the shares lost 14.42 percent as short-term investors cashed out on the good news.
South Korea's marketing community expects Kim's revenue from corporate commercial contracts alone to surpass at least 10 billion won this year.
Meanwhile, international firms are also likely to jump in on the bandwagon as well, including Risport of Italy, as IB Sports plans to expand the Yuna franchise overseas.
She is also an ambassador for her university, Korea University, though she rarely attends class there.
source by Korean times.
Basic information about Yuna Kim
-Basic information
Kim Yu-Na (Hangul: 김연아, Hanja: 金姸兒, IPA: [kimjʌna]; born September 5, 1990 in Bucheon, Gyeonggi-do) is a South Korean figure skater.
She is the 2010 Winter Olympic champion in ladies singles, the 2009 World champion, the 2009 Four Continents champion, a three-time (2006–2007, 2007–2008, 2009–2010) Grand Prix Final champion, the 2006 World Junior champion, the 2005–2006 Junior Grand Prix Final champion, and a four-time (2002–2005) South Korean national champion.
Kim is the first South Korean figure skater who has medaled at an ISU Junior or Senior Grand Prix event, ISU Championship, or Olympic Games. She is one of the most highly recognized athletes and media figures in South Korea.
As of February 2010, Kim is ranked first in the world by the International Skating Union (ISU). She is also the current record holder for ladies in the short program,the free skating[4] and the combined total under the ISU Judging System. She was the first female skater to surpass the 200-point mark under the ISU Judging System.
-Olympic
Kim competed in the ladies event at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
In the short program on February 23rd, she executed a triple lutz-triple toe loop combination, a triple flip and a double axel. Her spirals and her spins were graded a level four. Her technical score of 44.70 points was the highest of the event. She also received superior scores in the program components, where she received 33.80 due to her interpretative artistic skills. As a result Kim scored 78.50 points, taking the lead by 4.72 over Mao Asada of Japan and achieving her best score in the short program. She set a new world record.
On February 25th she won the free skate with a score of 150.06 points, 18.34 ahead of Asada, who came in second place in that segment of the competition. Kim landed a triple lutz-triple toe loop combination, a triple flip, a double axel-double toe loop-double loop combination, a double axel-triple toe loop combination, a triple salchow, a triple lutz and a double axel as well as receiving level fours for her spins and her spiral sequence. Combined with her grace and musical expression, both her technical score of 78.30 and her presentation of 71.76 were the highest of the night. She was the only one who earned nines in program components marks.She set a new world record for the free skate under the ISU Judging System. Overall, Kim totaled 228.56 points, shattering her personal best and own old world record by a margin of 18 points.She won the gold medal, becoming the first South Korean skater to medal in any discipline of figure skating at the Olympic Games.
Balanced on a Skater’s Blades, the Expectations of a Nation
Balanced on a Skater’s Blades, the Expectations of a Nation
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Officially, Kim Yu-na of South Korea will be judged only for her jumps and spins when the Olympic women’s figure skating competition begins Tuesday. But there will be important political and cultural elements to her programs as well.
No South Korean figure skater has won an Olympic medal, much less gold, as is expected from the willowy Kim, 19. So not only does she have to shoulder enormous athletic expectations, but also Kim’s main rivals, Mao Asada and Miki Ando, are from Japan, which occupied the Korean peninsula for 35 years through the end of World War II.
More than a half-century later, South Korea’s nationalistic fervor and sense of victimhood still inform sporting rivalries between the two nations. The Olympic buildup has been fueled by great anticipation of Kim’s beautiful, speedy, flowing style, and also by Internet vitriol and fears that she will be unfairly marked down for the quality of her triple lutz-triple toe combination jump.
“Koreans’ blood roils when their country competes with Japan in sports or elsewhere,” said Song Doo-heon, a professor of computer science at Yong-in Songdam University in South Korea, who blogs about figure skating and is a popular commentator on Kim.
Figure skating is as much art as sport. Kim is a cultural icon as well as an athlete. Thus, Song said, the competition between Kim and her Japanese rivals will also be viewed as a referendum “on which country’s culture is better regarded by the rest of the world.”
Given that Kim is a national hero in South Korea, “her loss or her winning will be perceived as a national loss or a national winning,” said Kyung-ae Park, a political scientist who holds the Korea Foundation Chair at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
“If she wins the gold medal,” Park said, “I think it will be a great boost for national pride for Koreans. In a way, it will work as compensation for past humiliations.”
The first Korean to win an Olympic gold medal, Sohn Kee-chung, took the marathon at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but he had to compete for colonialist Japan and take a Japanese name. He remained a fierce Korean nationalist, though, and his story is still taught to South Korean schoolchildren.
“I know of him,” Kim said at Skate America in November. “I will try to be like him.”
Some South Korea experts suggest that anti-Japanese sentiment ebbed once Kim became the 2009 world champion, vanquishing Asada and Ando, the previous two champions. Also, when the countries co-hosted the 2002 soccer World Cup, South Korea advanced further than Japan, to the semifinals.
“Anti-Japanese sentiment in sport has decreased a lot,” said Chung He-joon, a professor of sports science at Dong-A University in South Korea. “It’s not what it used to be, partly because South Korea has defeated Japan very often, especially in soccer. Nationalistic fervor has found other vents as well — for example against the United States. There are even many South Korean fans of Mao Asada, because she is pretty.”
Kim is also popular in Japan, said Lee Yun-hyang, an Olympics interpreter who was born in Seoul, South Korea, and now works for the United States State Department. The enmity felt toward Asada and Ando, Lee said, does not match the antagonism directed toward the American short-track skater Apolo Anton Ohno over the disqualification of a South Korean competitor during a race at the 2002 Winter Games.
“We want to see Kim do well, but we don’t want to see Mao Asada fall,” Lee said. Yet, she conceded, “We have to win against Japan in every way.”
Chung, the sports science professor, said that South Korea seemed unique in the sense that “the whole nation laughs or weeps depending on one athlete’s success or failure,” a prospect that he found “a bit absurd,” considering that “these athletes do what they do for personal success and fortune.”
Michelle Kwan, the two-time Olympic medalist from the United States, experienced Kim-mania when she visited Seoul last month as a public diplomacy envoy for the State Department. She saw Kim pictured on numerous billboards and shown on televised replays of her previous competitions.
“She is the nation’s sister,” Kwan said. “That’s a lot of pressure.”
This pressure, of course, would bring huge financial reward if Kim — who already makes $5 million a year in endorsements, according to her agent — transformed expectation into gold.
“If she wins, she’ll be a Godzillionaire,” said Frank Carroll, who coaches the Japanese-American skater Mirai Nagasu, mixing his monster metaphors.
Yet pressure can also be straining. Kim has trained in Toronto, thousands of miles from her yearning fans. At Skate America, held in Lake Placid, N.Y., in November, she won the overall competition but seemed nervous during a faltering long program attended by several busloads of Korean supporters, who came from New York City.
Here, Kim has sometimes seemed tense, struggling to land her triple flip in training, while Asada possesses the more difficult triple axel. In practice Monday, though, Kim smiled and seemed commanding. Afterward, Brian Orser, her coach, said, “I think today was a turning point.”
Four gold medals won by South Korean speedskaters here have relieved some pressure on Kim. But only some. If she is defeated, there will be “some kind of panic” in South Korea, lamented Chung, the sports science professor.
“The society and media have publicized her too much,” he said. “The whole nation hanging on to one athlete — as if some crisis might befall the nation if she didn’t win a gold — this is not good sportsmanship.”
Yuna Kim, Gold medal
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Yuna Kim
asiancemagazine.com