Snoworld™

It’s not often that I browse YouTube, I just don’t have the time. But if the network is very restricted to what you can do and you have nothing else to do, that’s when I start searching for videos. For a few days now, I wasn’t disappointed, my little search turned-out good videos.

This is one of those good videos. A music video of IU’s “Good Day” playing side-by-side, with the left side playing the Korean version while the right side playing the Japanese version. What makes this different from my previous post about IU’s “Rain Drop”, this time your task is to identify and appreciate the differences between the two.

More inside…

Follow up:

This video is very interesting because the two music videos showed the different cultures of their target audience. The Korean MV concentrated more on the “Drama” aspect while the Japanese concentrated more on the “Pop/Dance” side of the MV.

As we all are aware, Korea is very well known in the televona scene. I dare say that it is more popular than the so-called Hallyu Wave or K-pop face of South Korea. Then on the Japanese side, we know them more in J-pop than drama, which their respective music videos showed.

I wonder if this was intentional or not. Regardless, I personally haven’t seen this strategy in MV creation and song promotions. What we usually see are MVs that were simply translated into the target audience’s language, but overall it’s similar in concept and design with the original.

But with IU’s “Good Day” MVs it was different. This makes the said MVs more attractive to their target market - unknowingly (to the audience) because they catered to what is more popular in that country’s culture. LOEN - IU’s agency - did not just translate her song and created just another MV, they reinvented it.

Notice that the dancers are Japanese. The guys playing the musical intruments are Japanese too. The scenery and theme are different also from the Korean version - yet the message of the song is the same. IU’s dance steps were also changed making it fresh and unique.

If I were their target audience, I would feel good day indeed to see that they took the effort to create something new that is for me and my countrymen.

So Good Day and kudos to IU, LOEN, and all the staff behind IU’s Japanese debut.