CHAPTER 053: Zeigarnik Effect
CHAPTER 053: Zeigarnik Effect
“You at home?”
Han Seungwoo suddenly called and asked if I was home.
Does he think I’m that free?
Well, I was home right now, though.
“Come with me to the hideout. I’ve got something to talk about.”
Perfect.
I was just about to ask to meet him first anyway.
A little later, Han Seungwoo came to pick me up in front of my place.
“Aren’t you moving? Why do you keep living in a place like this? Is it a concept?”
“I’m moving soon.”
After some meaningless small talk,
I got into the lethal McLaren Han Seungwoo drove, and we arrived at his hideout.
“There’s nowhere as comfortable as here.”
I agreed.
There was no risk of anything leaking out, and it was spacious enough to feel cozy.
But Han Seungwoo, who’d been studying my face intently for a while now, asked,
“Did you get plastic surgery?”
This was the first time someone had asked so bluntly, straight-on.
“I didn’t.”
“Treatments?”
“I didn’t.”
“Tsk. Then I’m losing here. Okay. I’ll concede on the face. I admit it.”
As he said that, he flipped all the mirrors in the hideout face-down, then brought up the internal screening.
“Your acting was good. I usually don’t rewatch movies I’ve already seen, but this time, when the DVD comes out, I’m going to watch it again in my room’s living room.”
My room’s living room…
That was a truly unfamiliar phrase.
They say rich people’s homes are so big they have a living room and multiple rooms inside their bedroom.
And he just tossed that expression out without hesitation.
Feels like they really live in a different world.
“But why not watch it in a theater?”
“The equipment I installed in my room’s living room is better. And if you watch in a theater, you can’t scream.”
It didn’t really seem like the kind of movie you’d scream at.
Anyway.
I could guess why he asked to meet.
Since he said recently he wanted to talk about the film, he probably came to talk marketing.
“The company employees came up with this and that, but none of it sits right with me. You got any good ideas? You’ve got a fresher brain than our company’s old-suit dinosaurs. And you’re an Advertising Awards winner, aren’t you.”
From how hard he was hyping me up, he clearly had expectations.
That was what I wanted.
I had a neatly organized file on my laptop, but I figured it’d be better to persuade him verbally first, then show the document.
Ideas look brighter once the other person opens the door in their head.
“Lately, the formula for a film to hit seems to be word-of-mouth marketing based on SNS and communities.”
“Right.”
“But if you get obsessed with word-of-mouth and promote it in a direction that’s different from the film’s essence, you only create negative viral. Luckily, thanks to you, Division Head, we were able to stop that kind of disaster.”
“This is me.”
When I subtly raised his credit, Han Seungwoo’s mouth corners shot up.
As expected, he was weak to praise and recognition.
“Honestly, these days I don’t think genre has a huge influence on whether a film becomes a hit. A few years ago, Exhuma pulled ten million viewers even though it was an occult, a non-mainstream genre—but in the end it blew up because of word-of-mouth.”
“Mmm… Exhuma was fun. I agree. That’s the kind of thing I wanted to discover.”
“In the end, what matters is leaving a strong impression on early viewers. That experience creates a spontaneous fandom, and that fandom pulls in new viewers, creating explosive power.”
“Okay. I know that much too. So the conclusion.”
“The film is already well-made, so we can expect that deep impression. What matters is early inflow. If enough people pile in early, there’s room for word-of-mouth to spread and you get staying power. But if early inflow is small, even a well-made film just gets buried.”
“Mmm… then?”
“The strategy I’m thinking of is simple. We have to reveal only part of the film’s information in an intriguing way, stimulate the public’s curiosity, and keep their attention.”
Reveal only part of the information to stimulate curiosity.
That’s a marketing technique using the Zeigarnik effect.
It’s also called the “incomplete effect,” a consumer psychology theory.
If you deliberately reveal information in an unfinished state, people try to fill the gap themselves, so it stays in their memory longer.
It’s a technique heavily used in advertising.
The most common example is a teaser ad that doesn’t reveal the company name and makes people go, “What is this?”
Going further, even the fame of the world’s most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, is a result of the Zeigarnik effect.
“Is the woman in the painting smiling?”
“If she is, what does that smile even mean?”
Because that unresolved mystery stirred people’s curiosity, it went down in history.
Rather than perfection, you have to win with attractive imperfection.
So—
“Using the Zeigarnik effect, we can make people’s curiosity explode by putting out on the street…”
When I explained the concrete idea, Han Seungwoo’s eyes went wide and he stayed silent for a while.
Then he suddenly shouted,
“You bastard, are you a genius?”
Han Seungwoo and Ryu Sunho sharpened the film’s marketing strategy.
A few days later,
The results of the drama script contest co-hosted by Content Trinity and JTBN were announced, and related articles started pouring onto the internet.
[JTBN–Content Trinity drama script contest: Out of 1,200 entries, Doctor Princess wins the grand prize]
[A meeting of medicine and romance… Doctor Princess selected as grand prize winner by unanimous vote]
[Doctor Princess sweeps the script contest as a fresh rom-com]
…
But Ju Hanbit, unaware of all that, was moving nonstop inside a massive parcel logistics center.
Wiiing—
Amid the constant roar of conveyor belts, Ju Hanbit sweated buckets in a safety vest.
Scan barcodes, lift boxes, place them onto the rails—mechanical motions repeated.
The muscles all over her body screamed, but her mind felt calmer instead.
‘Yeah. Using my body is better. I don’t have to think about anything.’
There was no time to think about writing, no room to recall Choi Jeongin.
Right then, with a light music cue, the belt stopped.
It was a short break.
Ju Hanbit collapsed where she stood and took off her gloves.
When she pulled out her phone, the group chat with her friends was blowing up like crazy.
‘What? What happened?’
Seeing notification after notification mentioning her name, she hurried into the chat.
As she read from the beginning, Ju Hanbit’s eyes grew wider and wider.
‘…Huh? I got selected in the contest…? And it’s the grand prize…?’
“Wah!”
She let out a short scream.
People nearby startled and turned at the sudden noise.
“Jeez, you scared me.”
“I thought there was an accident. What is it?”
“Sorry…”
Under the stinging glares, Ju Hanbit clapped a hand over her mouth and ran to the restroom.
Click—
The moment she locked herself into a stall, she screamed soundlessly.
‘It worked! It worked! My writing got recognized!’
All her hardships and resentments flashed by like a spinning lantern.
The days under writer Choi Jeongin—being ground down in body and mind while not even being paid minimum wage.
Humiliating words and false hope.
All that pain felt like it was being completely washed away by the two characters: “Grand Prize.”
But in that moment of joy, a dark shadow slowly bloomed.
The curse-laced words Choi Jeongin spat out at the end rang vividly in her ears.
“If you walk out of here on those feet, don’t even think about holding a pen again. Blocking just you from debuting? That’s nothing.”
In an instant, her heart went cold.
If it was Choi Jeongin, she absolutely could—and would—do that.
A personality with a vicious grudge. And in the broadcasting world, the power and connections she had were massive.
Burying one unknown writer really would be “nothing.”
The joy that had felt like she owned the world a moment ago turned into worry in an instant.
‘Was it a mistake to submit to the contest…? This is why I was going to give up…’
If you soar high and then crash, you get hurt that much more.
So she’d tried to stay pressed to the bottom.
No crashes. No attention.
Had she failed to let go of lingering regret and made something she’d regret…
As despair began to swallow her whole,
suddenly, her friend’s voice came back to her.
Even in the loud noise of the beer hall, her friend’s voice had been unusually clear.
“There’s a beer ad copy I like the most, you know? At the end of the ad, it ends like this: ‘Crash into it, thrillingly!’”
“You should crash into it too. Whether the glass shatters, or the foam thrills as it overflows—you only find out by crashing, right?”
‘An ad is just an ad…’
Negative thoughts kept rising.
But her friend’s last line burrowed into her ears.
“Who knows? Maybe the shards from the broken glass will fly into that bitch’s eyes and she won’t even be able to see straight.”
That one line reignited the weakening heart.
‘Yeah. You never know.’
If she gave up like this, she’d spend her whole life hauling boxes in a logistics center, trapped under Choi Jeongin’s curse.
Was that the life she wanted?
Was that why she’d made that scene and walked out on Choi Jeongin?
‘No. Absolutely not.’
Ju Hanbit clenched her fist tight.
The pain digging into her palm only made her mind clearer.
‘What did I do wrong? I can walk forward proudly. Even if I break, I won’t break for nothing. If I crash and leave something behind, that’s enough. If I crack Choi Jeongin’s head, even better!’
Courage flooding in, she sprang up and slammed her tightly clenched fist into the stall wall—BAM!
A bold move.
But—
“Oh my god! You scared me! What’s going on!”
At the voice from the next stall, a flustered Ju Hanbit scrambled for an excuse.
“T-that… I’m constipated…!”
Two more months passed, and it was already June.
In the meantime, the trailer edit and poster production were nearly complete, and the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival judging was reaching its final stretch.
A screening room inside a building in Bucheon.
Three judges in charge of final deliberation for the feature competition sat facing the screen.
Yeominju, head of a leading domestic film company.
Joo Youngjun, Chungmuro’s top cinematographer.
And James Rodriguez, a genre film director known as Hollywood’s bad boy.
After days of forced marches, their table was piled only with empty coffee cups and crumpled documents.
“Next film.”
At a staff member’s guidance, a new film began.
A slick crime thriller.
“The cinematography is flawless. Technically, it’s quite good.”
“Commercially, it won’t be bad either. It’s exactly the kind of style that works these days.”
Director Joo Youngjun and CEO Yeominju gave positive evaluations.
But James Rodriguez shrugged with an indifferent expression.
“Clean. Too clean, so it doesn’t stick. Feels like a movie I’ve seen a hundred times in Hollywood.”
It sounded like praise, but it was a lukewarm assessment with a barb.
The next film was similar.
“The idea is good, but it lacks finishing power.”
“The mise-en-scène is excellent, but the actors’ performances feel a bit detached.”
In the end, James Rodriguez couldn’t stand the boredom and started fiddling with his phone.
They were strong award contenders, but none of them fully captured his heart.
“This is the last one. A rookie director’s work… Let’s push through, watch it quickly, and finish.”
At CEO Yeominju’s words, they all straightened up as if squeezing out their last strength.
On the screen, the title Vacuum State appeared.
The film’s strange, unfamiliar opening.
The judges’ expressions shifted.
“……!”
Soon the film entered the middle, and the moment the scene came where the protagonist Jeong Dogyun smashed a sleek sports car with an axe, James Rodriguez began to chuckle.
“This is fun.”
At last, an interested smile spread across his face.
CEO Yeominju unconsciously set down her pen.
Director Joo Youngjun leaned forward like he was being sucked into the screen.
A reaction of total immersion.
And finally, the film’s climax.
As Jeong Dogyun—having lost everything—screamed in the middle of the street, a surge of emotion swelled in their chests.
But then came the twist.
Everyone’s jaws dropped.
“Wow… no, this…”
Even after the ending credits finished and the lights came on, no one could speak for a long while.
A screening room swallowed in complete silence.
The one who broke that silence was James Rodriguez.
“Holy… shit.”
The curse slipped out of him, and then, eyes shining, he said,
“This is insane. This movie. And who the hell is that actor?”
At the same time.
Instagram, Twitter, and all kinds of online communities were boiling over a single photo whose identity was unknown.
[Live Gangnam Station situation—what is this?]
Near Exit 11 of Gangnam Station, where foot traffic was the heaviest, an expensive sports car was parked in front of a building.
What was strange was that the sports car was utterly wrecked—smashed to pieces.
And on top of the car, like a trophy, an axe was embedded deep.
A photo with a shocking visual.
People got curious, and in an instant it flooded SNS timelines and spread in a chain reaction.
The comments section seethed with confusion and curiosity.
-?????? what is this?
-Isn’t it a composite?
└no no, I asked my friend passing through Gangnam Station and they said it’s real
└yeah, I’m at Gangnam Station right now—people are taking photos and going crazy
-The owner… damn. What sin did they commit in a past life
-Did some gangster fight break out?
-Is this a crime scene? What are the cops doing?
One photo.
No explanation, no context—but that was exactly why people were insanely curious.
The unknown question spawned new guesses, one after another.
As everyone’s speculation ran wild, someone voiced a doubt.
-But doesn’t this feel like an ad? If it were a real incident scene, it wouldn’t be that neat
└Looking closely, the axe is a fake axe too. It’s reinforced plastic
└Oh, yeah. It doesn’t look like it’s really embedded—more like it’s glued on?
└But who advertises by smashing a car? And a McLaren, at that…