The Marketing War Begins
“…It's over.”
Ae-ta-mi, who had been staring blankly at Yeomga just moments before, murmured the words. The instant she felt her fine hairs standing on end, goosebumps broke out across her entire body.
“Everyone's reacting right now—”
She refreshed the phone in her hand to check the Bulpan responses.
“Huh?”
“It's gone insane. Genuinely.”
In just those few seconds, the Bulpan had exploded. A live broadcast thread belonged to the ddeokdeoks — the hardcore genre fans.
“And the ddeokdeoks are absolutely lapping it up!”
Which meant the remaining targets were ordinary viewers.
Ae-ta-mi realized this was no time to be sitting around. She quickly got off the bed and sat down at her desk.
“Whew….”
Yeomga's entrance scene. The hairpin scene where the adorable Seoryeong pulls out her hairpin — how much is it worth? The scene where she swindles an old man, the scene where she blows the ash off her palm, the scene where she saves Myeongdo from certain death, and finally, all the way through Jeong-an's death and Yeomga's curse.
“There are way too many clips.”
Click.
Ae-ta-mi, mouse now in hand, spoke.
“Commencing marketing operations.”
Her hands flew, snipping cuts from episode one of Strange Tales. The moment she uploaded, the retweet velocity was anything but normal. Quote-posts kept rolling in without pause.
Everyone wanted to talk about Strange Tales.
Gulp….
Ae-ta-mi swallowed.
“Oh, right — the gallery!”
She hurried into the Strange Tales minor gallery.
Click. Click. Click.
IP 85.152, who had been saddled with the gallery moderator role thanks to the clueless ddeokdeoks who'd set up the minor gallery so well, clicked away without even noticing how tired he was.
Work tomorrow had long since been erased from his brain.
Even the ddeokdeoks, who hadn't expected much from a fusion historical drama, had all gathered in one place.
The footsteps crossing the great hall and the vistas of the palace, the direction that wielded shadow and light with precision, the subtle touches signaling a fictional world.
“And there's already more than enough to dissect, isn't there?”
The ddeokdeoks were as serious as detectives working a cold case. Even watching the same footage, they were a different breed from ordinary viewers.
The volume of the sound, the hand gestures of the characters, the angle of a cup, even the foreshadowing of events yet to come — none of them could sleep for the sheer thrill of it.
No — they couldn't sleep. Speculating about episode two, anticipating the story to unfold, everyone's pounding hearts simply would not settle.
“Why is this posting so fast, though?”
IP 85.152, who had devoted his whole life to the single road of theater and musicals, was diligently curating the best posts. The posts kept coming all through the night.
“Wait… is this going to snowball by tomorrow until there's more than anyone can possibly handle?”
Gripping his mouse, IP 85.152 was swept up in a strange flutter of anticipation. Never in his life had a drama made him look forward to the next day like this.
“WAAAH!!! Absolutely! A SMASH success!!!”
This was the Strange Tales set in Namyangju. The faces of the Strange Tales team, who had watched episode one together, were glowing. Uncontainable joy radiated from everyone.
The pleasure of seeing every scene they had shot in fragments stitch seamlessly into a single whole and come into the world — only those who've known it can understand that feeling.
Everyone on set was electric with joy.
“Director Jjang, when will the ratings come out?”
“Ohhh, Jun-hyeok! You can check tomorrow morning. Goodness, someone's impatient~.”
At Director Jjang's teasing, Kwon Jun-hyeok's face went red.
“What? Does our little Jun-hyeok want to cut Top Class's throat ASAP?”
Martial Arts Director Kang Han-seong of the If You Try, It Works Action Academy, who was on set, gave Kwon Jun-hyeok a playful jab. Jun-hyeok fumbled for words.
“N-no. Hyung, that's not it.”
“Ohh? So you're okay with losing?”
“We have to win….”
Watching Jun-hyeok mumble it out so shyly, the staff burst into laughter. Director Jjang turned to the drama's lead, Yeoreum.
“And Yeoreum-ssi? What did you think of episode one!”
Yeoreum beamed brightly as she typed replies to the flood of messages on her phone.
“Honestly, I came out SO adorable…. I dedicate this glory to all of you. Team Strange Tales. The best team. Fifteen hundred stars.”
Everyone burst into applause at that utterly shameless answer. But Yeoreum meant every word.
Who am I? Han Yeo-reum, who unveiled a flawless Seoryeong from episode one.
As Yeoreum swelled with pride to the point of declaring it out loud, a huge hand appeared in front of her, low and steady. It was Director Jjang's.
“Alright! Let's keep the momentum going and nail the rest of our shoot!”
One by one, hands piled on top — the lighting director, the sound director, Kwon Jun-hyeok, an assistant director, Martial Arts Director Kang Han-seong.
“I'll pass.”
It was Yeoreum who grabbed and pulled over the arm of Geum Bit-gang, who stood with her arms crossed.
“Aw, Professor! You can't sit this one out. There we go — our shining Professor Bit-gang too.”
“I said I'd pass, honestly.”
And so, atop the gathered hands, Geum Bit-gang's and Han Yeo-reum's were layered on as well. Their warmth flowed into one another. Between the hands of the people stitching broken scenes into a single whole, heat passed from palm to palm.
“Okay — on 'one, two, three,' Strange Tales blows up! Let's go!”
One, two, three! Everyone shouted in unison and swung their hands down, as if pressing their good wishes firmly into their own palms.
“Strange Tales!”
“Blows up!”
Hands shot up vigorously toward the sky. Each person's joy scattered into the air. It was the dead of night, long after the sun had set.
The set lights shining down on them lit their faces as bright as day.
The next morning. The world was in an uproar.
Episode one of a cable network drama with a 1.2 percent viewership rating had set the internet ablaze.
Anyone who had watched Strange Tales episode one talked tirelessly about how gripping the drama was.
And that, in turn, stirred curiosity even among the public who hadn't seen it.
The fire had truly caught. Wherever you went, it was nothing but Strange Tales. Naturally, episode four of Top Class, which had aired at the same time the previous evening, was getting devoured.
Strange Tales had slammed head-on into Top Class just as it was trying to seize the public.
(StrangeTales screen capture.jpg)
Ever since the teaser it was all Bit-gang this, Bit-gang that, but now that I've actually watched it, she's even MORE insane — the whole Bulpan is burning white-hot lmaooo
The topic that had devoured episode one was Geum Bit-gang's maddeningly brilliant acting. Everyone cheered at the uncanny character work that overpowered the audience through the screen.
Writer, actor, director — the three elements that make a work. Every one of them meshed without a single gap. Viewers could feel it from episode one alone.
This drama must be seen through to the end.
It had the kind of pull that grabs you by the collar and drags you along.
Of course, the reaction to Yeoreum was anything but ordinary either.
She clearly has a record of fraud… she smells like a professional
She'd carried off long dialogue effortlessly, and her male disguise was quite convincing — so Yeoreum's presence wasn't drowned out by Yeomga's.
Memes were springing up from Strange Tales one by one. JC ENM was not about to let that slip by. From morning on, fingers were flying.
Tap-tap. Tatatatak.
“Team Leader Hong! We're spreading the Han Yeo-reum fraud-record meme right now—”
“Yes, and before that, post it on the official InTube as a clip title too. 'The Dazzling Crime Scene of Han Yeo-reum, Whose Record Needs Checking.'”
The JC ENM PR team had worked overtime on top of overtime on top of overtime, yet not one of them showed a hint of exhaustion.
They could feel all the firewood they'd stacked up over the months burning properly at last.
“Brand N just called — they want to renew her contract!”
“How much are they offering to raise it?”
“A big one. A full tier.”
“Tell them we'll think it over — then keep pumping out the Strange Tales articles! Make them sweat for it.”
“Hmm, her contract is about to expire, though.”
“Exactly, which means they'll be pacing the floor. Take a look at the articles Brand N's putting out right now. Start to finish, it's all Yeo-reum! Yeo-reum! Nothing but Yeo-reum.”
Brand N, the company Yeoreum had signed with as a model, had started firing off press releases the instant episode one finished airing. They'd clearly sensed where the wind was blowing too.
For hours on end, Strange Tales dominated the real-time trending charts.
“Check Top Class's ratings from yesterday!”
“13.7 percent!”
Team Leader Hong smiled smoothly through his thread-thin eyes.
“I see…. The war starts now.”
The chase between Strange Tales and Top Class had begun.
Team Leader Hong had loosed the arrow.
This was the SBC Drama Bureau. Through the door marked 'New Media Content Team,' everyone was registering the same realization: the public's reaction to Strange Tales was not normal.
“Bureau Chief, what do we do?”
“Do? What is there to do? Check the clip responses right now and get articles out — fast, fast!”
Following JC ENM's lead, all three terrestrial broadcasters were pushing to expand their InTube channels, and the subscriber count just behind JC ENM's belonged to MBS.
SBC regretted being a step behind, but it was currently beaming over its plan to sweep up subscribers with Top Class.
It hadn't named its department the slightly more impressive-sounding 'New Media Web Content Team' — versus MBS's 'Web Content Team' — for nothing.
“Before Strange Tales climbs up here!”
For the war, SBC had stacked walls of buzz-brick and stockpiled press-release ammunition with care.
Let Strange Tales fling all the arrows and spears it wanted — SBC already had its existing viewers standing in front as a shield.
“How are the articles about the sponsor brands doing?”
“Reactions are solid. They say every outfit Ju Jun-seo wore is selling out.”
“Okay. Rotate the summer travel spot round again as a Top Class filming location. Youstagram card news first and foremost!”
It was SBC's flagship. This side's odds looked no worse than Strange Tales'.
No — if you broke it down piece by piece, precisely: not only did it have a popular webtoon source, its writer had a solid prior hit; Top Class's Director Na carried more name value than Director Jjang, who'd been toiling away on web dramas; and above all, the lead was a mid-career male actor.
“Fine, Geum Bit-gang is Geum Bit-gang, but does it make sense that a rookie actress is going head-to-head with Yu Ji-wook? Hm?”
SBC's Drama Bureau Chief let out a sigh. The new-media staffer who had uploaded clips to every one of SBC's Drama Bureau social accounts tilted his head.
“Hmm… this actually looks… plenty fightable to me…?”
At the sound of fifty billion won going up in smoke, the Bureau Chief shouted again.
“What kind of nonsense—!”
“Look.”
With a complicated expression, the staffer thrust the screen in front of the Bureau Chief.