Companies Expanding Business Using Influencers

[Asia Economy Reporter Donghyun Choi] Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the increase in social networking service (SNS) usage time has led to growth in the digital marketing market and an expansion of the influence of influencers active on social media platforms.

Companies utilizing KOL (Key Opinion Leader) marketing in various forms are attracting attention by enhancing influencer-based content creation and dissemination capabilities, selling collaborative products, and launching brand business partnership matching services to advance and expand their businesses.

Storelink, aiming to become a brand aggregator, is maximizing its influencer-based content provision capabilities for product marketing management by expanding collaboration with various players in the e-commerce sector.

Recently, Storelink signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for investment and business cooperation with Consumer Intelligence, the operator of the corporate D2C (direct-to-consumer) marketing platform ReviewShare. As SNS influence expands and online content production and dissemination become essential for brand growth, they support comprehensive data strategy design.

In April, Storelink launched Unibi, a group-buying e-commerce platform, in Vietnam in partnership with DADA M&C, a media commerce specialized subsidiary of CJ ENM. The platform supports easy sharing of deal information on social media. Additionally, through collaboration with DADA Studio Vietnam, a subsidiary of DADA M&C, they have established a systematic system to produce and disseminate high-quality influencer-based SNS content.

In the fiercely competitive e-commerce industry, Tmon is actively collaborating with influencers. Tmon operates the collaborative brand "WithTmon," where famous influencers personally use and confidently recommend products that Tmon co-plans and sells exclusively. The strategy is to increase product influence based on influencers’ informative content and strong fandoms, while strengthening the platform’s competitiveness through limited quantity exclusive sales.

The first product of WithTmon, a Korean beef sirloin planned with YouTuber "Jeongyukwang," sold over 7,000 units, surpassing cumulative sales of 370 million KRW. Additionally, the steak product collaborated with influencer "Gonggyeoksu Chef" sold about 10,000 units, generating nearly 300 million KRW in sales.

In April, NHN Bigfoot signed an MOU with global influencer marketing company GG Content. Through this agreement, NHN Bigfoot plans to leverage GG Content’s global influencer marketing capabilities to conduct various marketing activities to brand its games in the global market.

GG Content, based in Silicon Valley, USA, specializes in influencer and social media marketing. It possesses extensive know-how gained from managing over 450,000 influencer channel data and executing more than 360 influencer marketing campaigns. Based on this, it can conduct effective influencer marketing across various social media channels such as YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, and Twitter for major domestic and overseas game companies.

A service has also emerged to support influencers in easily partnering with brands wishing to collaborate with them. Naver officially launched the Brand Connect service in May, efficiently connecting brands seeking content partnerships with specialized Naver influencers.

Brand Connect hosts a variety of influencers with expertise in 20 thematic areas including beauty, fashion, health and wellness, childcare, and language education. It features easily accessible quantified influence indicators such as topic-specific rankings, channel influence, and fan counts, along with key content and related keywords. Brands can refer to this information to propose content collaboration, and partnerships are decided based on the influencer’s consent. To date, over 5,600 influencers have been active through Brand Connect, with more than 10,000 partnerships established so far.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.