Company: SM Entertainment, INC.
SM Entertainment is a music production and management company that discover aspiring performers and provide them extensive rigorous training to make them become K-pop idol groups. It has boasted that it is the inventor of the “cultural technology” that has contributed to the spread of Korean pop music worldwide and will lead the world entertainment business.[1] One of the major issues SM Entertainment recently facing is public doubt about abuse to its celebrities after a popular celebrity under its management took her own life on October 14, because of mental issues caused by overwhelmed working pressure. The increasingly criticism of SM Entertainment’s management violating human rights has brought damage to the company’s reputation, and the company’s stock price went down immediately on the day when the news of the suicide was reported. [2]
In order to repair the company’s reputation, a thought leadership platform that SM Entertainment can consider in establishing its position is human right protection. In other words, the company can get itself a thought leadership personality as support and protect human rights away from abusing. This platform can serve to create stakeholder’s engagement strategies that deepen understanding, build trust and better deliver on their expectations. Plenty of stakeholders of the company has been affected by the happened issue with different concerns, for example, shareholders, customers, medias and so on. In this thought leadership program, the position will be established mainly based on concerns from the first three of the stakeholders in terms of employees (celebrities and coordinators of the company), business partners and the community (people who cares about K-pop and human rights). These are the stakeholders who will be in this thought leadership platform.
Employees(Celebrities and Coordinators of the Company)
The employees here are mainly regarding to the artists currently under SM Entertainment’s management. Most of them are picked up by the company at a young age, their lives then taken over by grueling singing and dancing training. The ultra-competitive environment makes them under ever-present risk of falling foul of a cut-throat screening process. [3] Many of them struggle with a constant lack of sleep and privacy because of the company’s arrangement. SM Entertainment’s celebrity, Kim Se-Jeong, once told an interviewer that she had to perform on stage, appear in TV shows and shoot ad commercials all at the same time. Kang Daniel, another celebrity under SM Entertainment, once admitted that his biggest wish was “having just one day of rest.” [4] Several celebrities even ever proposed lawsuits to protect their civil rights, claiming that the company violated their human rights as treated them more like an objective than a human being. [5]
It is apparently that the employees’ concern is how to keep their physical and mental health under such a stressful schedule. They expect the company to give them more time off, leave them more options to choose the content of work depending on their own wills, and treat them more humanly. In case of this, as to build a brand image of protecting human rights away from abusing, the company can first improve the internal communication to increase employees’ engagement. To illustrate, launch surveys, collect wishes from its celebrities, and adjust its operations with proper negotiations. By doing so, the company can develop itself to a better place with consistent company culture – no human rights abuse, whereK-pop practitioners like to work. At the time when the company meets its employees’ expectations, the employees will be transformed into ambassadors. The company can educate their celebrities about its leadership position of human rights supporter, then make them become advocates and role modules to promote company’s reputation rather than letting them judge the company in a negative light while under media exposure.
Business Partners
As the standpoint of business partners, after the issue happened, their top concern of SM Entertainment is whether the public opinion against them will endanger their own companies. More and more companies are realizing that building a good reputation depends not only on their own efforts, but also on their partners. Therefore, companies are often reluctant to do business with enterprises with poor reputation, so as not to affect the credible nature of their companies and weaken the competitiveness. [6] If SMEntertainment did nothing to repair their image to win public trust back, their business partners may break the contract with them when they finally lose faith in SM Entertainment one day. However, once a company being regarded as a human rights protector, the company will have an evergreen character on the ethical standpoint, and this character can help the company win more credibility.Therefore, establishing a thought leadership platform at human right protection field can be helpful to keep SM Entertainment’s partnerships on track and achieve a win-win strategically cooperation and enhance corporate reputation.
Take the business partnership between Tencent and SM Entertainment as an example. SM Entertainment has started its partnership with Tencent Music Entertainment from February 2019. The companies announced that they entered into a strategic partnership for music distribution and marketing in the Chinese music market. As SM Entertainment is the leader ofK-pop production, Tencent Music Entertainment happens to be the industry leader with high reputation, running the top music service platforms in China. [7] A thought leadership program for SM Entertainment can help to avoid the worst situation happening, termination with Tencent, and provides them with a chance to go beyond music or entertainment and tell new companies’ story at the same time. Tencent is a company actively participating in humanitarian relief, who runs a foundation and offers help to children with serious diseases. [8]
To develop a much solid business partnership with Tencent, SM Entertainment can join this program to run the foundation, or to start a new program to support human rights protection activities together with Tencent, as they all care about human rights. According to Kevin Money’s research, once a company owns the reputation for mutual understanding and exploration of synergy in partnerships, it may influence new or existing suppliers to choose the company as their preferred first option when sharing product or process innovations. [9] In this case, it can be said that owning a personality of human rights protection leadership will help SM Entertainment develop more solid business partnership and increase its partnership reputation. With good partnership reputation, the company can achieve genuinely earned organizational reputation and greater credibility. [10]
Community (People Who Cares about K-pop and Human Rights)
Except the business reputation being discussed above, social reputation is also one of the main dimensions of corporate reputation’s conceptual delimitation. [11] The “community” here means people who generally cares about K-pop and human rights subjects. It includes the fans group, who can be regarded as the customer of SM Entertainment, as it is K-pop fans that buy SM Entertainment’s products which relevant to its K-pop celebrities. When the public condemns and questions SM Entertainment getting involved with human rights abuse, the company’s social reputation among community is being threatened. Therefore, in order to repair the company’s reputation, it is important and necessary for SM Entertainment to get and maintain a sustainable community relation. According to a research made by theWalker Group, result shows that companies can achieve an increasing competitive advantage on community relations through social responsibility. [12] In light of this, establishing a thought leadership position of human rights protection subject matter will be great helpful for SM Entertainment.
A brand image of protecting human rights helps to express that the company’s genuine attitude as it cares about human beings, which positively shows that the company is taking charge of its corporate social responsibility. Data from World Population Review shows that South Korea has the third highest suicide rate in the world in 2019, and the reason for most of the suicides is because of depression.[13] In this case, human rights protection can be seen as an issue of national concern. For seeking an authorized position at human rights protection, SM Entertainment can work with third party organizations and advocacy groups for credibility and support, especialNGOs and charities, or hotels. For example, the company can raise money and donate to Korea Human Rights Foundation, the largest non-government human rights protection organization in South Korea [14]. The company can also leverage its existing community outreach programs to create a signature platform. To illustrate, it has already been running an online quick news reporting platform called “SMTown”, so for getting a human rights protector personality, it can start a new section on the SMTown website and focuses on writing about what SM Entertainment has done to support human rights.
These programs will improve the community and customer perceptions to the company, which will help to build authentic conversation between community and the company. At the same time, being a thought leadership of protecting human rights also helps to differentiate SM Entertainment company’s brand with its competitors in a meaningful way. What’s more, as SM Entertainment has already been recognized as a thought leadership of the largest Korean pop music entertainment company that leads the world entertainment business [15],building a new thought leadership position on human rights protection will further increase company’s credibility and awareness in a comprehensive way. All of these can help to maintain good community relations, promote community engagement, and then further contribute to turn the community interactions into positive word-of-mouth marketing [16] which is benefit to enhance the company’s reputation.
In light of above, with establishing a thought leadership position in human rights protection area, SM Entertainment can generally eliminate the negative voice from the public about the abuse to human rights, and transform the distrust into trust, as thus to repair and enhance its reputation.
References:
[1] Tae-Jin Y., & Dal-Yong J., (Eds.).(2017). The Korean Wave: Evolution, Fandom, and Transnationality (pp.33). South Korea: Lexington Books (peer reviewed)
[2] https://k.sina.cn/article_7058893534_1a4be2ade00100lg1m.html?from=ent&subch=star
[3] Bongchul Kim, Jooyoung Kim, Hana Kim& Myungil Choi (2017) Practitioners’ celebrity endorser selection criteriain South Korea: an empirical analysis using the Analytic Hierarchy Process,Asian Journal of Communication, 27:3, 285-303, DOI:10.1080/01292986.2017.1284247. Retrieved fromhttps://doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2017.1284247 (peer reviewed)
[4] https://www.rappler.com/entertainment/news/191925-kim-jonghyun-suicide-death-highlights-dark-side-k-pop-dream
[5] https://www.soompi.com/article/609383wpp/reports-claim-sm-violated-exo-m-kris-basic-civil-rights
[6] https://wiki.mbalib.com/wiki/%E4%BC%81%E4%B8%9A%E7%BB%BF%E8%89%B2%E5%A3%B0%E8%AA%89
[7] https://www.forbes.com/sites/caitlinkelley/2019/02/15/sm-entertainment-tencent-music-kpop-exclusive/#5d01d2d12382
[8] https://www.google.com/search?authuser=1&sxsrf=ACYBGNSNwgBvCt_aNBxPHHvrzpcsZrt8Wg%3A1574317772497&source=hp&ei=zC7WXeaoG4SxggfTjrSoCQ&q=%E8%85%BE%E8%AE%AF%E4%BA%BA%E9%81%93%E4%B8%BB%E4%B9%89%E6%95%91%E6%8F%B4+&oq=%E8%85%BE%E8%AE%AF%E4%BA%BA%E9%81%93%E4%B8%BB%E4%B9%89%E6%95%91%E6%8F%B4+&gs_l=psy-ab.3...860.6784..8246...9.0..0.99.2360.32......0....1..gws-wiz.....10..35i39j0i131j0j0i67j0i10j35i362i39j0i12j33i160.vK__BBP6qk8&ved=0ahUKEwjmvtzc1vrlAhWEmOAKHVMHDZUQ4dUDCAg&uact=5
[9] Kevin M., Carola H., Marc D., GregoryM. M., (2010). Exploring Reputation of B2B Partnerships: Extending the Study ofReputation from the Perception of Single Firms to the Perception of Inter-firm Partnerships.Industrial Marketing Management, 39(5), 761-768. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2010.02.015.(peer reviewed)
[10] https://thepartneringinitiative.org/about-us/philosophy-and-approach/the-benefits-and-risks-of-partnering/
[11] De Castro, G., López, J., & Sáez,P. (2006). Business and Social Reputation: Exploring the Concept and MainDimensions of Corporate Reputation. Journal of Business Ethics, 63(4),361-370. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/25123718 (peer reviewed)
[12] https://www.strategy-business.com/article/17964?gko=27dcc
[13] http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/suicide-rate-by-country/
[14] https://www.humanrights.go.kr/site/program/board/basicboard/list?boardtypeid=7031&&menuid=002006001002&searchcategory=NGOs
[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM_Entertainment
[16] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/word-of-mouth-mzarketing.asp
