How a Fan Would Manage a Band

Fans know what they like. Sometimes, it really doesn’t seem like the management of the bands that fans follow know what fans like. Either that, or they ignore what they know fans want. There might be obstacles in getting there or maybe Management has priorities other than pleasing fans. With a fan base large enough, you’re bound to have some smart cookies who come up with managing plans that seem quite a bit better than what’s actually happening. The suggestions below are gathered from a few years time spent in boyband fandoms, as well as some thoughts raised by other fans.

Exposure- Not The Dirty Kind… Usually:

There’s a saying that the quicker a band rises to fame, the quicker they’ll fall. There’s something to be said for building a solid base and taking the slow road to avoid the mistakes that come with rushing into things too eagerly. Then again, it isn’t really a band’s choice whether they achieve massive fame instantly or not, and once it’s happened, that’s what you’ve got to work with.

Overexposure can be a huge problem, however. If a band turns up everywhere the public looks- on commercials, on talk shows, on the radio incessantly, at first it might catch interest, but it doesn’t take long for that interest to turn into exasperation and dislike. This can be especially true if the band is being featured for one thing only. For example, if the band was working on a charitable event, had released a single, and one of the members was producing a solo album, this would be grounds for a lot of promotion and the public would likely understand. There would be a lot of material for discussion and topics for conversation wouldn’t get repetitive.

On the flip side, if a band is promoting everywhere for the release of one single only, even fans will get tired of watching the same questions and answers get played out over and over. If you don’t believe this, just watch every video of a press junket for a movie release sometime. It gets unbearably old even when you like the actor or actress giving the interviews. Seeing this happen makes the public think the group is boring, as well as giving the impression that a big fuss is being made over relatively little achievement, breeding resentment in the people who are having it thrust in their faces constantly.

So yes, overexposure is a problem, but so is underexposure. There’s a certain healthy amount of promotion that should go on for any release or event a band is taking place in. It’s hard to draw in new fans if you aren’t reaching out to new audiences, or the same audiences at new times. It’s also easy for fans to lose interest when they aren’t being rewarded with new material, however loyal they may try to be. There’s only so many times old material can be dissected and reused before it just doesn’t have the same appeal. Bands deserve a break of course, but staying completely out of the limelight for more than a few months at a time can be disastrous for the popularity of a band, especially if a new band arrives on the scene in the meantime.

Conclusion: promote judiciously.

Field Day Activities:

Being in a girlband or boyband isn’t just about the music, as you can read about here. Idols, in South Korea and Japan especially, become full-fledged entertainers who function as everything from actors and actresses to radio DJs to talk show hosts and much more. This is actually extremely helpful for the longevity of a band for several reasons.

Relating back to the idea of exposure, too much monotony will never be good for interest. Playing multiple roles allows idols some variety in their own lives as well as giving it to their fans. It opens up new markets to show off their charms too, and it garners respect when an idol does well as an actor or comedian. Although many idol actors are considered barely adequate, there are also a fair number that have gone on to have serious credentials. A prime example is Ninomiya Kazunari from the Japanese group Arashi, who was a main character in Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima.

Another benefit of creating diversity in the work of an idol group is that building the idols’ skills can help them retain a place in the industry when they start growing up. Being in a girlband or boyband is all about being young and pretty when you start out. As the members get older, they’re likely to have trouble attracting new fans unless they shift the focus from their looks onto their entertainment abilities. If worse comes to worse and the group splits, only those with great musical ability and charisma (and great luck) will manage to come out with successful solo careers, and the rest have to depend on their entertainment skills if they want to remain in the industry.

The final, but definitely not least significant, benefit of creating diversity in a girlband or boyband’s activities is that this often allows for solo appearances. Solo activities are a lot more important to a band than they would seem, because when a member goes out and makes fans on his or her own, he or she ends up bringing those fans back to the group a large percent of the time. Being “baited” by one member and then falling into loving a band is not an uncommon occurrence.

Conclusion: vary it up with quality diversification.

Beautiful Snowflakes:

From the outside, the news and tabloids seem to assume that fans go crazy over idol groups because they’re “cool” or “hot”. This is only a tiny bit of the story. Of course a group has to have some charm and suave moves, but as long as that pinch of charisma is there, the main meat of the dish is often goofy, silly, dorkiness. Fans love their idols because of their quirks. Quirks allow fans to claim ownership over the idols by knowing their odd habits and outrageous stories. They also make idols seem more approachable, because really, they’re people just like you and me, who have weird phobias about birds and who don’t like to be forced out of bed in the morning.

The upshot of this is that while fans want to see their idols act cool, they also want to see them be themselves. The Japanese have a great way of describing this as a “gap”. The gap between stage persona and an idol’s real personality can be extremely attractive. Unfortunately, there are situations where the band’s management will try to curb the members from acting as they naturally would. In South Korea there have been multiple idols who have later revealed that they were instructed by their management not to talk in order to help maintain a mysterious image. The idols who have spoken out about this are obviously the ones who defied the orders, and often turned out to be the funniest people in the group.

Letting idols act naturally is one of the best things a management company can do in order to gain fans. Authenticity is always a keyword when it comes to music, and because girlbands and boybands are often created by companies, don’t write their own music, and don’t play their own instruments, the only place left where they can showcase authenticity is with their own personalities. A big draw of groups is also the member interaction, which can’t happen properly if the idols aren’t allowed to be themselves.

Conclusion: can’t crush the dorkiness, so let it shine.

Marketing School Lunch Boxes vs Shot Glasses:

This is actually an important caveat to the previous section: a group’s image must be allowed to grow up as the group matures. Time and again, this has been a huge problem for girlbands and boybands. Management companies seem keen to keep their groups in whatever market is likely to buy the most merchandise, which everyone seems to think is the tween and teenager market. Staying in this market requires some sacrifices on the part of the band members though. Cursing, drinking, smoking, and sexual remarks, which are considered somewhat acceptable in adults, are off limits to band members because of the inappropriateness of those actions for their young fans. This isn’t fair to the band members or their same-age or older fans.

Fans often grow with the band, so there’s no reason that if management companies conscientiously upgrade merchandising and marketing to target the older audiences, they won’t still be able to make money. This is best for both the band and the children who could be lured into becoming fans of a band of young adults that aren’t really appropriate role models for that age group. It may be possible to market a band of 25 year-olds to children, but it’s near impossible to do the same with a band reaching 30 or 40. If a group is never allowed to mature, grow, and earn the respect of older fans, the management company is consigning them to an eventual death sentence.

Conclusion: Peter Pan belongs in stories only.

Fan Interaction:

Fans want to support their idols, but they also want to be recognized for it. It can be said that part of being a fan is being lonely. You look up to and obsessively follow and claim to be in love with members of a band that don’t even know your name. Worse, it’s not like you can just walk up and introduce yourself; it’s not a matter of courage on the part of the fan. The only way you can meet your idol is if you become a celebrity yourself or if you’re just very very lucky (which are kind of the same thing anyway).

Fans do their best to get the attention of the members of boybands and girlbands, and who can really blame them for the sentiment? Attempts are made to satisfy this need of fans to be noticed, but generally fall short. The basic methods for allowing fans to interact with bands in person have been concerts and meet-and-greets. Concerts are problematic for this because there are just too many people and the fans are more of a faceless blob to the band. Meet-and-greets bypass that issue, but are extremely tiring for the band members and also give fans a minimum of time to see them. One method that is used more seldom is holding competitions of various natures and allowing the winners to meet the band for an extended period. This sits more closely to a fan’s dream of having time to really meet and talk to the members.

Owning Social Media-

Thankfully, the internet opens up the playing field a little. Fans who persistently try to get the attention of a band member may succeed in real life or on the internet, but the difference is that the internet requires far less effort to both be seen and to see, giving more people the opportunity to get noticed. You don’t have to drive hours and hours to go to a concert. Instead, you simply type a sentence and click a button. If you can capture the interest of other fans and get your message or artwork trending, you raise the probability of getting a message from your idol significantly by utilizing social media to communicate.

On the side of the band, the speed of delivery of social media means that it’s much easier for bands to provide new information to keep fans interested in the goings-on around the members. A single tweet exchange between members, requiring little time and no money, can cause a frenzy of fan activity online. If a band is going to be on hiatus, just a few online liaisons with fans can stave off the dangers of inactivity that were discussed above.

Fan Sites-

The other thing that could be much improved on in terms of the internet is the official organization of fans. Fans online are more than just individuals, but are grouped into armies that often clash during public voting for awards. These communities of fans also have to deal with trying to regulate themselves and keep the more extreme segments of the fandom from running rampant. When an extreme segment of a fandom gets enough media attention, they overshadow the rest of the fans who then end up typecast by the general public.

This could all be orchestrated more efficiently if a group’s management team would set up an official fanclub and fansite where fans could get instantaneous news and interact with each other. Sites like these do exist, but most are either sparsely updated, or don’t have many features useful to fans. Links to current online votes, trending topics in the fandom, and moderation to quell arguments that get out of hand would all be helpful. South Korean groups are the only ones that seem to try to combine an official fan club with the advantages of the internet, and even they don’t cater to everything mentioned.

Conclusion: love the fans, meet the fans, regulate the fans.

Feed your addiction to girlbands, boybands, idol groups, and whatever other term we can find for them by returning next week for a summary of the situations a fangirl or fanboy most wants to see the members of a band in.