LG has built an idol group with a disbandment date in the media plan
LG Electronics has launched a five-member idol group to advertise a washer-dryer, the company said on Monday, with each member standing for a feature of the machine.
The group, AI-Dol, is signed to AWC Entertainment, a label that exists only inside the campaign. Its members, Leeyeon, Moa, Sung-hyun, Hee-jae and Sua, stand for the AI WashCombo's all-in-one capacity, its time sensing, its combined washing and drying, its flat design and its four-kilogram Mini Wash.
The appliance itself takes 25 kilograms of washing and 21 kilograms of drying, which LG says is the largest in Korea, and carries a seven-inch display.
An idol group is now a marketing template rather than a product of the industry that invented it. It is unprotected, it is legible to anyone in Korea within about four seconds, and it can be assembled by a company with no relationship to music at all.
Five members, a fictional label, one song about laundry. The format costs nothing to borrow.
Two others arrived this year. The Saemangeum Development and Investment Agency launched Mangeum Boys in June, a group built around the region's target industries of AI, robotics and hydrogen. The education platform NIUSN has two virtual artists, Chuu and Mary.
LG has done a version of this before. It introduced a virtual influencer, Kim Rae-ah, described as a 23-year-old singer-songwriter and DJ living in Seoul, who appeared at CES 2021 with the company's laptops and a disinfecting robot.
The group is not virtual, despite the name and despite how it has been reported. LG told The PR it considered a computer-generated group to match the product's branding and decided against it, because the campaign depended on the public believing it was watching a real debut. The members are performers, some of them former trainees; Moa competed on JTBC's R U Next? in 2023.
That decision is the campaign. A virtual group announces itself as advertising. A real one, on screens at Gangnam and Samseong stations with no logo attached, does not, and the four weeks before the reveal are the part LG was buying.
The campaign was built to be mistaken for a debut. AI-Dol appeared from 28 August on digital screens at Gangnam and Samseong stations and at Gwanghwamun, Namdaemun and Myeongdong with no visible connection to LG, in what the company calls a Neo Y2K concept.
The song, "I Wash", was pre-released on the group's Instagram account on 30 July. LG said it went on to top Instagram's trending audio chart and that the choreography video reached fourth on the platform's Reels ranking. Neither figure is independently verifiable.
The dance challenge that followed pulled in people from inside the industry the campaign is imitating: the singer Choi Yena, the comedian Lee Sun-min and the choreographer Choi Hyo-jin all posted versions.
"Washing machines are already a familiar necessity for all generations," Oh Sung-taek, who heads Korea marketing communications at LG Electronics, said in a statement. He said the company wanted an unfamiliar way to show what the new model does.
Brands have put mascots on records for decades, and there is a reading in which this is that, with better production. The difference is structural rather than tonal. What LG borrowed was not a jingle but an entire apparatus: a label, a debut, a lightstick-shaped fandom grammar, a member-to-concept mapping; and none of it required a licence.
LG said AI-Dol will stay active on digital channels until the end of September.
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LG Electronics has launched a five-member idol group to advertise a washer-dryer, the company said on Monday, with each member standing for a feature of the machine.