Week 5 Original: The Influence of Social Media

Recently, I found it strange that "eating fried chicken and drinking beer in snow days" suddenly became a hot topic in Asia. McDonalds and KFC, as well as beer retailers in Asia area, are enjoying the sales increasement of fried chicken and beer. More surprisingly, not only fried chicken and beer, but also certain brands of cosmetics and clothes have their sales enhanced within last two months. So what brought to this phenomenon?  The answer is, a famous Korean drama, "My love from another star," draws the attention of Asian people. 

MV of My love from another star

"My love from another star" is so clever to make good use of the powerful influence of social media to help advertise the drama and embrace the groundswell. After the drama came out, it took no more than a week to become a hot issue in various social media. After a couple of weeks , almost everyone is talking about the scenes and lines in the drama, no matter whether he/she is a fan of it. This is the influence of word of mouth. Just as Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff explain in the Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies, "[word of mouth] is self-reinforcing. Hear it from one person, and it's intriguing. Hear it from five or ten, even if you didn't know them before, and it has to be true." Now, no one can stop the drama from going viral.

The drama mainly talks about an alien landed on earth from another star 400 years ago in the Joseon Dynasty and had fallen in love with a Korean top star in the modern society. In one of the episodes, the actress mentioned that it was the most enjoyable thing that having chicken and bear when it snows in winter. Right after this episode came out, having chicken and bear in snow days became  the No. 1 topic in Weibo, having over 3,500,000 posts related to chicken and beer. People were talking about this "fashion" crazily. Under this circumstance, more and more people became aware of My love from another star, even though some people were not interested in Korean drama at all!

the official poster of My love from another star 

As a Korea drama fan, I am also addicted to this drama since it first launched. Let's see what My love from another star has done in social media to increase its fame. Firstly, it applies a variety of social media tools in order to gain the popularity. The drama creates topics that attracts people's attention on Facebook, Twitter, Line, Youtube, Weibo, Instagram and Wikipedia. Impressively, the director was so smart to use scenes to emphasize the importance of using social media. The actors and actress in the drama always use different social media to contact each other. This definitely helps catch audiences' attention. 

"My love from another star" official page on Facebook

Secondly, The staffs of the drama established an official page on Facebook, and updated the news of the drama everyday. We can see there are nearly ten thousand fans following that page. Compared to many other dramas, this number is not impressive though, you have to notice that the major target audiences are not able to log in to Facebook. Besides that, the staffs also applies "Line" to increase the fame of the drama. Line invested the drama without knowing the rapid increasement of the drama's popularity. Now, Line is one of the most famous and frequently used social media in Asia.

                                     The leading actress is using "Line"

Twitter is another social media that all the fans discuss about this drama. Among these fans, they do not only come from Asia, but also from other areas in the world. It is Twitter that connects these fans with each other, providing the platform for them to exchange their thoughts on this Korean drama.

Fans' discussion of the drama on Twitter

In this case, we can find how important it is to utilize social media tools in publication. I will keep on following this drama and see what social media applications can bring to increase the reputation of "My love from another star".