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Clothing companies who signed up soccer stars such as Ahn Jung-hwan and Song Jong-kuk are shouting for joy because unpredicted advertisements have caused sales to shoot upwards as the popularity of Korean players becomes higher.
Last April, Puma Korea made a W150 million one-year contract with Ahn Jung-hwan, and on the back of his growing recognition, they introduced the 'Ahn Jung-hwan T-shirt' on June 22. The T-shirt is like a soccer top and has Ahn's number '19' and English initials. Even at W27,000 per shirt, all 1,500 were sold in one day. Puma is now busy making 18,000 more. Ahn also wears Puma shoes in the game instead of those of official sponsors and is making Puma very happy. Puma is thinking of marketing strategies to continue the Ahn fever even after the World Cup.
Jeans company Levi's Korea is humming to the tunes of the 'Song Chong-kuk project.' Last February, Levi's made a contract with Song to be their model for six months at the relatively low cost of W70 million. At the time, Song was chosen to be the "player with most possibilities of being popular" and even former coach Huh Jeong-mu was consulted.
Since last March, they have been pursuing a "moving advertisement" with a large picture of Song kicking the ball on the entire side of trains on subway line six. "After last March, sales have increased more than 70%," says marketing executive Koh Yoo-hyun, "We are considering extending the contract."
(Cho Joon-seok, jscho@chosun.com )
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