"Could I just purchase 200 bottles of Vita500 with Taeyeon's face only?" According to Kwangdong Pharmaceutical, a Taiwanese businessman in his 40s walked into the head office last weekend asking this question. The man who happened to be on business trip to Korea had been "under special orders" from his son, a fan especially of SNSD Taeyeon, to bring back "Taeyeon Vita500" and Vita500 promotional posters featuring SNSD.
Recently , Kwangdong Pharmaceutical (henceforth Kwangdong) put forward the big star girl group SNSD as their new endorsement models for Vita500 and have been reaping the rewards of the "Soshi Effect". The biggest selling point in Kwangdong's marketing strategy is not just the television advertisements but also the product packaging itself. With each of the nine members' photographs printed on the packaging, bottles have since been nicknamed "Taeyeon Vita500", "Yoona Vita500", "Seohyun Vita500", creating nine different Vita500 products.
The new packaging went into production in the middle of last week and are mostly awaiting distribution in warehouses, with extremely limited numbers currently on sale. However, a lucky few have already posted pictures of Vita500 on twitter and blogs, creating an incredible buzz even before the full launch of the product (expected end of this month).
A source at Kwangdong reported that some people online were hoping to collect all nine labels, while the corporate twitter account (@kwangdongpharm) was "being overloaded with dozens of questions & comments about SNSD Vita500 being sent daily"
There has been a huge response from America. The 120,000-member* American fanclub for SNSD, Soshified, announced through their official twitter that "The new Vita500 images with Girls' Generation is great!". They continued "Are the labels with the girls going to be used outside of Korea as well?" asking if it would be possible to purchase the products in America. Unfortunately for them, the endorsement contract that Kwangdong held was only applicable within Korea.
The mastermind of Kwang Dong's SNSD-package marketing idea was their chairman, Choi Soobu. A representative at Kwangdong stated that "[Chairman Choi] ordered that we shouldn't just stop at television advertisements, but use SNSD's image more aggressively through packaging". Vita500 currently makes up 30% of Kwangdong's sales. Last year, it recorded a revenue of 83.5bn KRW (US$74.1m)
*Note: This number is out-dated; Soshified currently has over 150,000 members
Strictly speaking, we are "international", and not exclusively "American"
Translated by: oniontaker @soshified.com
Credit to: 신호경 기자 - yonhapnews.co.kr
