#bc pledis very intentionally didn't market svt heavily overseas until they had a strong kr fanbase

[lesbiancarat]

i feel like i had a revelation last night like i really had an "i connected the two dots" moment bc i was watching these video essays about the history of nct and exo respectively and there were two things in particular i thought were interesting

the op pointed out some of the similarities between exo-m and wayv, in the sense that they're both units sm tried to market in china that didn't really succeed in breaking into the chinese market the way they were intended to due to a lack of understanding of the chinese idol market

the fact that nct was originally supposed to have a graduation system that mirrored those seen in jpop with like akb48, and that this plan also fell through

the op also kind of talked about this but it's clear that sm's goals with these things were to a) introduce a graduation system into the kpop industry and b) expand their influence in china (and japan and other countries with the idea of nct tokyo, hollywood, etc. which obviously have not come to fruition)

the reason i found these things interesting is bc there are direct parallels of these goals with pledis groups. after school famously also had a graduation system, which, unlike nct, they did actually use, though it also wasn't successful and the group didn't continue in the long term. and there was also nu'est-m targeted toward promoting in china, which also fell through. you can also see these goals in some of the early plans for "seventeen" which at one point was intended to have 17 set members split into 3 subunits to promote in korea, china, and japan respectively

and for anyone who doesn't know, han sung soo, the ceo and founder of pledis, literally got his start in the idol industry by working for sm and was even a manager for boa before he founded pledis, so i doubt all of this is a coincidence. he probably picked up the ideas sm was aiming for and tried to mirror them in his own company. idk there's no big takeaway here i just think it's really interesting that you can see the influence of sm and it's goals on early pledis groups and their goals