NCT 127 Paid Social Media Influencers to Promote “Cherry Bomb”

Apparently top social media accounts were paid to help promote NCT’s new song, “Cherry Bomb”.

According to the alleged evidences, SM outsourced the album’s marketing to another firm called You Are Blog Korea.

“Hello, it’s Youabl (Short for You Are Blog) ^^
We received a sponsor offer to promote the album of one of the big 3 agencies’ rookie group~
I’m contacting you, because they asked for simple photos or video uploads.
All you have to do is upload the video or photo that we send you with a short message and hashtag that sounds natural!
Are you interested? (compensation fee included)”

Each social media post was paid $17.40 USD (20,000 won) with the tag “nct 127 sponsor”.

SM Entertainment’s “NCT 127 x Genie Music Car Event” winners were also people who weren’t fans, but solely famous on Instagram.

One Instagram user revealed that she uploaded a post, because they said she would be invited to their fan meeting if she received a lot of likes.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BVcZm1fA7G3/?taken-by=sangininin

And in turn, she sold the ticket for $130 USD (150,000 won).

one of these ‘winners’ (i.e paid social media influencers) are in turn selling the ticket to fans for at least 150k won (130 usd). pic.twitter.com/gRpeKUqPew

— gem • 잼 (@svnthsns) July 3, 2017

Fans were disappointed by the fact that SM allowed a marketing firm to pay “muggles (non-fans)” to promote the group.

“ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ I’m so angry ㅠㅠㅠㅠ What are they doing with muggles ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ”

“Yeah I’m so mad wow SM didn’t even contact the accounts themselves, but just asked another firm to promote for the sh*t ㅋㅋ…”

They’re demanding SM to clarify on the subject.