Black Eyed Peas’ singer typifies new marketing

Electronic firms are tying music marketing to music player functions in their digital gadgets. Samsung Electronics Co. has been sponsoring major music festivals in Korea and conducting collaborative marketing with famous foreign pop musicians to promote its MP3 player brand YEPP.

Samsung sponsored the Mnet KM Music Festival, a major Korean pop music event held on Saturday. Between June and October, it also sponsored a street performance series of the Korean pop singer Lim Jung-hee and the YEPP Music Expedition in June. Samsung is also conducting collaborative marketing with the American singer Fergie, a member of the well-known group Black Eyed Peas. In the music video of “Fergalicious,” which is the title number of her newest album release, “The Dutchess,” the sexy female vocalist appears in the video with Samsung’s latest MP3 model K5. According to the storyline of the music video, Fergie uses the K5, which has embedded speakers, to start a party. The K5 appears also in the music video “Wait a Minute” by the Pussy Cat Dolls and the music video “La Femme Chocolat” by Olivia Ruiz. Jeon Dong-soo, a senior executive of Samsung Electronics’ audio visual department, said that this “music marketing” is the company’s way of pursuing a more dimensional approach to global marketing. LG Electronics Inc. also conducted a type of music marketing with its a cappella music phone. Vocal sounds recorded from the world-famous a cappella group The Real Group were used for the ring tones, push-button sounds, and other sounds on the phone. When the phone was released, LG held concerts with The Real Group to market the phone and advertised the phone with people singing to show the phone’s high-quality audio functions. by Wohn Dong-hee