When casts of a Korean drama were deciding where to have their lunch date, have you ever made a correct guess of having Subway be shown in the next shot? It is never uncommon to see this American fast-food franchise appearing in numerous blockbuster K-dramas like ‘Crash Landing for You’, ‘Guardian: The Lonely and Great God’ and more. While this should not be a coincidence of how scriptwriters set their scenes, the convergence of the brand in a drama is a form of product placement, an indirect advertising strategy which in Korea, is abbreviated as the term ‘PPL’.
“Product placement was a relatively cheap way to get us brand awareness” – Colin Clark, Country Director for Subway in South Korea
Having the first Subway store opened in 1992 in South Korea, it expanded its Asian market to 548 Subways up until now. Colin Clark, director of the South Korean market, has witnessed the opportunity of how product placement in K-dramas could highly increase brand awareness on screen in a more cost-effective way. With the popularity of Hallyu around the globe and the recent switching of media viewing from local broadcasting channels to online streaming platforms, K-drama is likely to reach more international fans, exposing its brand globally. Also, famous actors can create a huge impact on their fanbase while consuming specific brand products in the drama. Celebrity effect can be constantly seen in the consumer market, where certain products go out of stock right after it launched for a minute.
Jonathan Hardy mentioned that there is a shifting power from communicators to consumers in marketing communication, this implies that people nowadays are aware of how they are actively and unintentionally being consumed. They are eager to be more independent on how and when to reach the message. Some may apply ad avoidance strategies like ad-blockers to filter away advertisements. Nevertheless, PPL in drama can never be filtered while viewers are watching the content unless they simply skip the episode. So, this marketing strategy can provide seamless promotions to the brand and at the same time maintain the dominance of brand power.
The Evil Scene-Stealer
The New York Times has once calculated that Subway appeared in 17 K-dramas, winning its title as the ‘scene-stealer’ in Korea’s entertainment industry. Yet, more viewers are conscious of the excessive use of Subway’s product placement in shows, leading to a sense of fatigue when viewing different contents with the same ‘Subway scene’ appearing. Some even pointed out that PPL is now the ‘scene-stealer’ that steals protagonists’ attention while obstructing their viewing experience and directors’ storytelling. This could also explain Hardy’s viewpoint of how ‘editorial independence and creative autonomy were influenced by the emergence of advertisement to media contents.’ Disappointedly, the failure of a K-drama is now not determined by creative approaches, but by the interference of PPL. Moreover, audiences started to slowly aware that they are commodified while viewing content even if they are paid for the subscription of online streaming platforms. The integration without separation has blurred the boundary between advertisements and media contents, consumers are hence involuntarily consuming advertisements during their leisure time.
The Revolution of PPL – ‘Lovestruck in the City’ (2020)
With the perception of people’s reaction towards excessive PPL in K-drama, the industry did not stop adopting this market strategy but turned crisis into opportunity. In 2020, KakaoTV launched its original drama series ‘Lovestruck in the City’. This drama had played with the explicitness and awkwardness of PPL in normal K-dramas, and tailored drama scenes particularly for the PPL. The use of a direct and undisguised way of telling audiences that ‘this is PPL time!’ has surprisingly gained support from audiences, as it managed to create a sense of humour that allowed viewers to laugh. Although the success of the unique PPL insertion in ‘Lovestruck in the City’ could be attributed to its style of pseudo-documentary storytelling where protagonists in the story were always facing the camera and being interviewed in the story, we could not deny that it made a clever decision in successfully blending PPL into the drama content.
I am not saying that Subway could try the way ‘Lovestruck in the City’ presented PPL on screen, as the brand has adequate exposure in K-contents. Yet it is noticeable that there is a shifting trend in how the Korean entertainment industry integrates media content and commerce, and Subway should therefore in future also find alternative ways to maintain its title of ‘scene-stealer’ in a positive way.