A Personal Encounter with Idol Management

While the JKT48Stuff team congregated in Jakarta this past weekend, I made the decision to skip the JKT48 Handshake Festival for Anime Festival Asia (AFA) in Singapore. This was the first time I had attended an anime convention in Asia, and it was starkly different in scope and experience from anime conventions in the United States. One difference was the emphasis on idol group performances at AFA. Among those in attendance were Love Live!, Prizmmy☆, A応P, and BABYMETAL.

Prizmmy☆ is a four-person idol group under Avex Entertainment. Its members are very young, with the oldest member born just one month before JKT48’s Nabilah. Their entry into idol entertainment was helped by the anime series Pretty Rhythm, and Prizmmy☆ contributed multiple opening and ending theme songs. Their AFA performance was the first outside of Japan, so it is likely that their management is attempting to penetrate the Southeast Asian market.

It was clear that very few people knew of Prizmmy☆. During their first stage performance of the weekend, only the first row of an auditorium of hundreds bothered to stand up, chant, and dance with glow sticks along to their songs. Although I was aware of the group’s existence, I had never listened to their songs nor did I try to learn about the members because I never watched Pretty Rhythm. Nevertheless, I enjoyed their mini live event and reminded myself to learn more about them.

Later that day, I found Prizmmy☆ CDs for sale at one of the AFA merchandisers, so I decided to purchase their album and give their music a try. Upon checkout, the cashier immediately informed me that Prizmmy☆ was holding a meet-and-greet event at the merchandiser’s booth in ten minutes, and in order to get access I was short a few dollars on my purchase. I added one more item to my purchase and checked out with a Prizmmy☆ autograph ticket.

However, something struck me as odd on the autograph ticket. I was only the 15th person to have received a ticket. (There were actually about ten people in line for the actual event, so a few people also did not attend.) The meet-and-greet worked like any typical idol handshake event, with attendees being able to greet each of the four Prizmmy☆ members and receiving a pre-autographed card at the end. But with only ten people in attendance, this was extremely silly, and the line ended quickly as the merchandiser hurried the attendees along “to be sensitive of [the group’s] schedule”.

After a moment of awkwardness among the organizers, the group’s producer approached the sponsoring merchandiser and arranged for the event to be extended. As a result, it was immediately announced that anyone who purchased their single or album on the spot would be able to have it autographed. Of course, having that done earlier I was eligible, and we queued again to have our CDs signed by the members.

Following the second autograph session, the group’s producer and an Avex Entertainment staff member approached me and Melos (who had been the one to introduce me to the group in the first place) and asked about our honest thoughts on Prizmmy☆ and our experiences with other idol groups. I voiced that Prizmmy☆ certainly has its challenges given that its members are very young, even by the industry’s average age of idol group members. However, that doesn’t mean that it can’t find support in the region, especially given the burgeoning youth population. We even exchanged contact details in order to provide them with photographs of the session for their publicity purposes.

What can be learned from this encounter? There should be no doubt that the idol industry’s best practices come from Japan. Producers immediately noticed oddities in the event arrangement and adjusted in order to increase customer satisfaction. In the end, attendees were able to spend more time with the members given the event’s small scale. Producers also openly received feedback from attendees about how to better engage the fan base.

Too often fans are too busy being consumers that they forget the idol industry is a give-and-take relationship. Rather than voicing their opinions directly to management, fans discuss and complain among one another. Producers of idol groups who are open to input from fans are also a breath of fresh air. It creates a sense of pride among fans so that they feel their participation does not fall on deaf ears.

There was a time when JKT48 was a fledgling idol group much like Prizmmy☆, and open engagement helped it become the idol group that it is today. Perhaps in order to forge the path of the next two years, it needs to return to its roots and recreate an open discussion with its enthusiasts.