KiiiKiii Accused of Viral Marketing with “SM Trainee” Rumors, Turns Out to be True
KiiiKiii, Starship Entertainment’s latest girl group and IVE’s “younger sister”, has been drawing significant interest since even before its 5 members were revealed. Recently, official information about the academy that members attended was released, and it turns out that member Subin, stage name Sui, was indeed a trainee under SM Entertainment.
In fact, before KiiiKiii debut, there were rumors of a member being a former SM entertainment trainee, leading to curious netizens looking for the truth.
However, it was later alleged that these rumors are not true, as an employee in SM’s Artist Planning and Development Center left a comment on Subin’s photos, saying, “Who is she? This is my first time seeing her?” This exposé led to people accusing Starship of using the “SM trainee” title for viral marketing. However, this seems to be a mistake on the employee’s half, as Subin turns out to be a true trainee. It seems that the employee was confused since initially released information about Subin is wrong – with her real name being said to be Sujin and her birthyear being wrong spread as 2005 instead of 2006.
“Wow, when people asked who the SM staff member was back then, someone on the K-pop category said it was probably a trainee from a mid-sized company about to debut. They said the mid-sized company deliberately spread rumors to make it seem like they were an SM trainee, and now it turns out to be true”, a netizens said on the Korean forum “theqoo”, followed by various comments calling Starship “sloppy” and “cheap” for employing such a tactic.
Additionally, there have also been complaints about the group’s name, KiiiKiii, coinciding with the nickname of MONSTA X’s Kihyun, who is also under Starship.
Particularly, fans pointed out that Kihyun uses the name “Kiki” (similarly written in Korean with “KiiiKiii” on his messaging app, and even his official content series was named “Kiki Trip”. Moreover, Kihyun is set to be discharged from the military soon, and his group, MONSTA X, will be holding a fanmeeting after his discharge.
This means that Starship is now basically using Kihyun’s “brand” as their new girlgroup name, a “foul move” considering that he is an artist from under the same company, said netizens.
“Doing that in the same company is basically mocking…”, a netizen said, while another commented, “I’m not a fan of MONSTA X, but this is definitely foul. What is the company thinking?”
