Chapter 5. The Joys and Sorrows of a Salesman
Team 1’s Team Leader Jang Wonsik, Manager Kim Sunyoung, and Team 3’s Team Leader Cheon Gihong were attending the meeting.
Just because I mentioned their names didn’t mean I knew them.
I’d simply read the nameplates placed in front of them.
I hadn’t even seen the faces of Team 1’s managers when I went around introducing myself.
The CEO sat at the head of the table, while Daehoon sat immediately to his left.
“Before we begin, I’ll summarize the reports we’ve received so far.”
Daehoon was leading the meeting.
Team 1’s Astra was nearing the end of promotions for their new album, and it looked like total sales would settle somewhere around 200,000 copies.
Astra really was a well-made group.
Of course, Victory had once sold as many as two million copies of a full-length album, but even for Victory, that had been a record.
Album sales depended heavily on timing and the nature of the fandom.
For an idol group from a small-to-mid-sized agency, selling 200,000 copies was already an impressive success.
“Most of their music show schedules, from the cable show Music Bang Bang to the major network program Let’s Go Music, are already finished. Starting next month, they have fan meetings and CF contracts scheduled. Aside from major events, are you pushing any individual schedules for the members?”
Managing all three groups at once basically put Daehoon in the same position as that bastard from Pantheon.
That guy usually just listened to reports during monthly meetings and told everyone to handle things themselves.
I’d actually been grateful that he wasn’t smart enough to interfere seriously.
So seeing Daehoon actively helping with everything felt strangely unfamiliar.
Management Director?
I’d always thought that position was basically a winning lottery ticket that paid you for life.
After Team 1 finished their miscellaneous reports, Team 3 took over.
Wait.
Shouldn’t Team 2 come after Team 1?
“The album… well, you released it, but it didn’t sell particularly well, correct? Still, the report says the online reaction and digital music response are positive. Do you have any evidence supporting that?”
“Yes. Their recommendation rate compared to the number of streams is relatively high. We also checked five major entertainment communities to see how often the Solis members’ names were being mentioned…”
Apparently, expectations for the rookie group they were currently promoting were quite high.
Perhaps because of that, Team 3 was different from Team 1.
They even turned on the projector and prepared visual materials for CEO Oh.
“Their current level of public attention is still low, but they’re showing the fastest growth. They’re also scheduled to appear on Challenge, Four Heavenly Kings! next month, so they may reach profitability sooner than expected.”
Everyone here knew what they were doing.
According to the CEO, there would soon be an opening in Team 3.
Did that mean Cheon Gihong was planning to leave?
He certainly looked half-dead already.
I didn’t know if the work was simply exhausting him, if he’d already decided to quit and lost all affection for the job, or if Solis had sucked every last drop of energy out of him.
Daehoon gathered up the documents, glanced at me, and added,
“As for Team 2, the timing isn’t very good, so they currently have no scheduled activities. Still, once August comes and schools go on vacation, there will be many regional cultural festivals. I think we can wait and see with some optimism.”
“Send them out aggressively for military慰問 performances and things like that, too. Those are honestly more profitable than local festivals.”
Oh Soo, who had been silently sitting there the entire time, finally spoke.
Just a little while ago, he’d been talking about putting Team 2 straight into a coffin.
And now he wanted military performances?
Was he planning to squeeze every last bit of money out of them before their contracts expired?
“Team Leader Do. You haven’t said a word today. Is there something you’d like to say?”
Near the end of the meeting, everyone’s eyes turned toward me.
Of course I hadn’t said anything.
I was being treated like an uninvited guest from the beginning.
“Yes. I do have something to say, but I think you’ll want to discuss it privately.”
That should have been enough for him to understand what I wanted to talk about.
Oh Soo immediately dismissed the other team leaders.
As Daehoon left the meeting room, he gave me a sharp look.
He was probably warning me not to upset the CEO.
Once we were alone, Oh Soo asked,
“What did you want to talk about?”
“When you selected the Blue Moon members, what exactly were you looking for?”
I skipped the formalities and went straight to the point.
Oh Soo didn’t seem surprised.
He walked over to a bookshelf and pulled out a file.
It appeared to contain the evaluation records from the Blue Moon project.
“Serin’s visuals and vocals alone were enough to make her worth selecting. Youngchae’s dancing and Anna’s excellent rap skills made me think they could raise the tempo and energy of our songs. And they did. As for the youngest member… well, she was young, and she was decent at pretty much everything.”
After saying that, Oh Soo handed me the file.
It was packed with detailed numerical evaluation criteria.
I’d expected the selection process to be thorough, but it was even more systematic than I thought.
The members had scored highly in most of the categories.
“But why are you suddenly asking about that?”
“Because the girls are too good to waste.”
That was the first reason.
The second was that I didn’t like Solis.
“When Blue Moon debuted, your main promotional strategy was Serin’s visuals, right? Even when they occasionally appeared on cable shows, it was usually Serin or Youngchae. I think that was one of the reasons they failed.”
“……”
Forget all those evaluation scores.
If they had considered the natural chemistry between the members, they should have pushed Anna and Aran together.
“Isn’t Aran the member with the most activities right now?”
That was true.
But even if she had the most activities, she was still at the level of an unknown celebrity, just like the others.
And it wasn’t as if they were pushing her aggressively like they had during the group’s debut days.
Besides, what I was talking about was her chemistry with Anna.
“I have a good marketing plan. How about watching them one last time?”
“Are you talking about renewing their contracts?”
“Yes. It would be different if they were still inexperienced or lacking, but these girls are already fully developed idols. If they’re given enough time, they can recover.”
Oh Soo scratched his head and closed the file.
He didn’t seem particularly convinced by what I was saying.
“If I could agree with you, I’d do that. But Team 2 has already tried far more things than you can imagine. We’ve been repeating the same mistakes for over two years. We can’t keep doing that forever, can we?”
If I didn’t manage Blue Moon, I would have to take Solis.
And honestly, Solis wasn’t a better choice than Blue Moon.
Their dancing was decent and their singing wasn’t bad, but they didn’t feel properly trained.
Their habit of breaking away from standard vocal technique was also incredibly obvious, generic, and excessive.
In other words, they just sang however they felt like singing at the moment without actually studying what they were doing.
Their dancing was more or less the same.
At that level, their school friends probably clapped for them and showered them with praise.
But the actual public was much harsher.
Still, technical shortcomings weren’t necessarily the biggest problem.
There were plenty of idols with weaker skills, and they could always improve through training.
The important issue was something else.
How should I put it?
Something about them felt… off.
Once you spent years in this industry meeting countless teenagers, you naturally started picking up on certain things.
Wouldn’t your instincts sharpen along with your years of experience?
I couldn’t explain it properly, but the kids who later caused major scandals often gave off a similar feeling.
Calling it prejudice would be fair.
But you could also call it statistics gathered over eight years.
Then why hadn’t my brilliant instincts warned me that Wonwoo was suspicious?
……
Let’s just say I only reached this level of enlightenment after experiencing all of that.
Anyway, Youngchae had said that Solis still had “the habit of acting overly submissive.”
That alone didn’t sound particularly strange.
But when I combined it with this unpleasant feeling I was getting, only two possibilities came to mind.
Either they had been school bullies…
Or delinquents.
Whichever one it was, the result wasn’t much different.
