Chapter 106: Overnight Black and Red (2022)
After hanging up the phone, Jiang Shu thought for a moment, then waved to Lee Ji-eun's assistant.
"President nim!" The assistant scurried over, bowing to Jiang Shu in greeting.
"Get me an iPad."
"Yes!"
Before long, the assistant brought an iPad.
It must be mentioned that ninety-nine percent of the digital products in the Korean Entertainment circle come from Apple. Even though Samsung, the perennial runner-up, is from Korea, these Koreans talk about supporting domestic products, but in reality, when choosing between Apple and Samsung, they would mindlessly pick the former.
Jiang Shu's phone wasn't an iPhone; he was used to Android phones, and he didn't have high configuration demands for a phone—it was just for making calls and reading news. Naturally, he wouldn't force himself to switch to the iOS system for performance or configuration reasons.
He was currently using Samsung's S9 from this year. He originally wanted to buy a flagship phone, but when he saw the Heart to the World W2018 flip phone, Jiang Shu instantly lost interest.
It's 2018, and they're still using flip phones?
If it were the later W22, W23, W24, or other large foldable Heart to the World series, he would be very willing to buy them.
But now...
Forget it.
Logging onto the DM Entertainment official website, when Jiang Shu first arrived, the DM Entertainment website was very rudimentary, not much better than www.zhangwei.com. There was no problem with that; how could an entertainment company on the verge of bankruptcy have spare money to fiddle with a website?
But with IVE's explosion in popularity and the continuous expansion of company staff, all aspects gradually improved.
After borrowing a large loan from the bank, the operation of the official website also found suitable personnel.
Currently, the DM Entertainment official website is operated by the public relations department, and the server uses that of Kakao, the internet giant company that started with a national social software in Korea. However, Kakao's server actually uses that of the domestic 'penguin' company.
Roughly speaking, DM Entertainment uses the penguin's server. Is there anything wrong with thinking that?
With the involvement of professionals, and given that the DM Entertainment official website doesn't need to handle the massive fan numbers of the Three Greats in a short time, looking good is sufficient.
On the official website, he found the 'Artist Groups' section. Originally, there was only IVE, but now two more were added: IU and Red Velvet.
He clicked into the Red Velvet section.
Entering the sub-page, photos of Red Velvet's four members came into view.
The reason there were four...
Jiang Shu clicked on the dark Irene page in the avatar section, and Bae Joo-hyun's related information was revealed.
Age, height, zodiac sign, group position, and so on, all appeared before his eyes.
Looking only at the information without seeing the person would easily give the public an impression.
Nepotism, royalty.
Not tall, already so old, and photos not public—it would be strange if the public had a good impression. But whether they have a good impression isn't important; curiosity is certain.
He closed the page and directly logged onto Instagram to search for K-pop related content.
As expected, many trending topics were related to Red Velvet. In contrast, not many people were paying attention to IU, who debuted today. Only the album release event co-hosted by Jiang Shu and Lee Ji-eun ranked seventh on the hot search.
He clicked on a trending topic titled "#27-Year-OldGirlGroupVisualAboutToDebut" and browsed the comments.
Mockery.
Overwhelming mockery.
Not only were they mocking Bae Joo-hyun for being twenty-seven and serving as the group's leader and visual, but they were also mocking DM Entertainment for getting ahead of itself, trying new tricks after IVE's success.
A twenty-seven-year-old female idol, and a visual? How could DM Entertainment even think of that?
Among them, a highly upvoted comment caught Jiang Shu's attention.
"Twenty-seven! Other idols are preparing to retire and have babies at twenty-seven, but our DM Entertainment's twenty-seven-year-old female idol is just about to debut, and she's even the visual~ I wonder how beautiful a twenty-seven-year-old old woman can be. Can she be half as pretty as my Karina?"
Jiang Shu excitedly clicked on the comment section of this message. As expected, the Yuan Shen army had already arrived and were locked in battle with the Liu fans.
To contend for IVE's sole visual, Liu Zhimin and Zhang Yuanying's fans often clashed. Under any news related to these two, both fanbases would hurl insults at each other.
Liu Zhimin and Zhang Yuanying's fans were notorious in the industry, fighting wherever they went. It would be a miracle if passersby liked them.
But fans are fans. The double-center appeal of IVE is indeed terrifying, especially in a girl group market with no real competitors. You either don't watch girl groups, or you get drawn in by IVE's double-center. It seems like a dichotomy, but this is the awkward reality of the current K-pop girl group market.
Other than IVE, there are no other groups that can really stand out.
Jiang Shu stroked his chin, somewhat anticipating the scene when Bae Joo-hyun debuts.
Red Velvet's members are not young, so they certainly can't follow the original path step by step; they have to go all out from the start.
Red Velvet has a lot of strong material, but not many are suitable as a debut song. For example, the divine "Psycho" would set the tone too high as a debut song, feeling like using a cannon to kill a mosquito.
It's like playing cards; others test the waters first, but you throw down two jokers right away. How do you play after that?
But they also can't start with small cards. The current Red Velvet cannot afford to slowly build up their momentum.
After removing some songs with too high a tone, and also removing average songs like "Dumb Dumb" or "One Of These Nights," there are actually only a few title tracks left to choose from.
Moreover, Red Velvet is not IVE; they cannot highlight Bae Joo-hyun at the expense of other members.
So the question is, which Red Velvet title track would be beneficial for all five members?
Jiang Shu happily watched these taunts, hoping that after Red Velvet debuts, none of them would become a Wang Jingze.
However...
Jiang Shu picked up his phone and dialed Qin Zhen's number.
"Boss," Qin Zhen's voice came through the receiver.
"I've seen the reaction to Red Velvet's member information release. This level of black and red seems to have exceeded our expectations?"
"Yes, public opinion monitoring has already detected it. Liu Qi is tracing the source and should have results very soon."
Just as Qin Zhen finished speaking, Liu Qi's voice came through the receiver.
"Brother Qin, I found the source, it's a..." Jiang Shu heard it intermittently and not very clearly, but he caught the keyword.
YG!
A moment later, Qin Zhen's voice sounded again.
"Boss, it's been found. YG hired internet trolls to fan the flames."
"YG, huh." Jiang Shu's first thought was of Heo Yunjin and Isa at YG. He needed Heo Yunjin, but it wasn't a must-have in the short term. Compared to LE SSERAFIM, IZ*ONE was more important.
"Since someone is helping us, it just saves us effort," Jiang Shu said with a chuckle.
The relationship between YG and DM had already plummeted to freezing point when Zhang Yuanying became popular. There had been more than one friction between the two sides; they basically wanted to kill each other.
However, DM Entertainment couldn't do anything to YG at the moment, but YG could move against DM Entertainment.
It's just...
Are these tactics really not helping?