China: Girls' Generation Next Destination

Hello everyone!

Today is August 5^th 2014, which means that today marks the seventh year anniversary of Girls' Generation (So Nyeo Shi Dae/SNSD). For those of you who have regularly read my blog, you will notice about how much I like them. Girls’ Generation is not only my most favorite K-Pop girl group, but also my inspiration to reach my dream further. I always admire their hard work towards success.

What Girls’ Generation has achieved for these past seven years are quite rare for girl groups. Topping chart everywhere, having successful tours, and getting various brand endorsements are some of their achievements. Their latest accomplishment is that their newest Japanese album, “The Best”, has topped Oricon Weekly Album Chart for two consecutive weeks in Japan. The girls scored a record by becoming the first Korean group and the second Korean artist after BoA in 2004 to top the chart for two weeks straight.

The girls seem to accomplish everything in seven years of their career, so what’s next from them?

Apparently, Chinese market is the next for Taeyeon, Jessica, Tiffany, Sunny, Hyoyeon, Yuri, Sooyoung, Yoona, and Seohyun. It has been reported that the girls will hold their first fan meeting tour in China between the end of September and early October. It stated that they will start their fan meeting in Shenzhen and later on, will be followed by various cities in China.

Beside fan meeting, Girls’ Generation also set to appear in Korean-Chinese variety show program called The Ultimate Group along with label mates, Super Junior and f(x) Victoria. They have finished the recording process last month. The girls branch out their individual activities to China too with Yoona confirmed to star in Korean-Chinese movie, Goodbye Annie, and Jessica modeled for Chinese sports brand, Li-Ning.

Girls’ Generation expansion to China is not really surprising. Since K-Pop popularity in Japan declining, many entertainment agencies have set their eyes to shift their market to China. China dubbed as a prospective market for K-Pop with their huge population and economic growth. Also, Chinese fans have known for their loyalty and willingness, which will contribute a lot to K-Pop idols’ success.

SM Entertainment has known to be the pioneer of this movement. They debuted sub-unit of their group, Super Junior M, which has Chinese members and focused on Chinese market, in 2008. This followed by EXO-M in 2012, which received huge popularity in 2013 along with their EXO-K sub unit. To gain more recognition in China, SM Entertainment also joined partnership with Baidu, China biggest search engine, earlier this year. Looking at their success, it is just about time for SM Entertainment to expand Girls’ Generation to China.

Personally, I am excited with this news. I see it as another challenge for the girls. Currently, the girls are on their comfort zone by having popularity in both Korea and Japan. It is like whatever the girls do; it will always be a success regardless the quality of the material. As a result, there is stagnancy on their music, concept, and most importantly, performance. People have pointed out that some of the girls often look bored and lazy on stage.

That is why I think it is a great thing for them to keep up their spirit and challenge themselves again in Chinese market where the competition is tighter.

As for the success chance, I think they have a chance to success. Their brand name is already super popular and they already have solid fan base in China. At least, they can achieve success based on this.

However, I think they still have to struggle if they want to achieve success above their casual fans. The biggest issue will be the language and culture barrier. Most of K-Pop groups that expand to China has Chinese member, which speak Mandarin fluently and already accustomed to Chinese culture. As for Girls’ Generation, some members have known to be fluent in Mandarin, but still they are foreigners.

Since they still dubbed as foreigner, it will be harder for them to penetrate the market. It is because China has strong restrictions on import, copyright, and broadcasting foreign cultural content. This also explained why it is hard for K-Pop music to reach Chinese market.

Another issue will be the fact that Girls’ Generation is a girl group. It would always be harder for girl group to attract fans everywhere. Boy groups have teenage fan girls that are willing to buy their albums, merchandises, and concert tickets. But for girl group, their fan boys do not have the same willingness like fan girls, which make it harder for them to gain more success.

Other than fan boys, Girls’ Generation usually targets older men and teenage fan girls. Just like what I explain earlier, it would be harder to attract fan girls since they usually preferred boy groups. It is quite difficult for older men too since they already have certain type of music preferences. Most of them do not have much time to pay attention to other type of music, especially new and foreign music like K-Pop.

At the end, all of the above is still a speculation from me. We still do not know what kind of success that Girls’ Generation will achieve in China. Heck, SM Entertainment even have not yet announced whether they would make official debut for the girls in China and what kind of debut that they would make.

One thing that we should take note is that the girls’ success in China depends on the efforts that SM Entertainment and the members willing to do. If they feel that they only need to reach the established fans, they will only get certain amount of success. But if they want to reach new market, the chance of having more success is still huge although the struggle will be times harder.

Whatever happens, I always wish the girls for the best. Once again, happy seventh year anniversary Girls’ Generation! Keep rocking the K-Pop music industry!



PS : Check out last year's post about my favorite Girls' Generation ballad songs for their sixth anniversary: http://diramonds.blogspot.com/2013/08/happy-6th-years-anniversary-girls.html 

Categories: Anniversary, Choi Sooyoung, Girls Generation, Hyoyeon, Jessica, Kpop, Personal, Seohyun, Sunny, Taeyeon, Tiffany, Yoona, Yuri