YouTube fame = K-pop + fitness, says professor at South Korea's first 'department of influencing'

With his softly-spoken manner and quiet air of calm, it is not hard to picture Ryo Chuh-yeop in his former job as an aerospace researcher for South Korea's Agency for Defence Development.

As someone who has spent most of his professional life studying, he is contemplative and methodical in his speech and not particularly talkative.

Which is perhaps why it is somewhat harder to picture him in his present job, as a "Professor of Influencing".

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Ryo scored his job as an adjunct professor at South Korea's first "department of influencing", at Daegu Cyber University, after impressing talent scouts with his unlikely rise to internet fame.

He previously ran a mentoring programme for aspiring YouTubers in association with CJ ENM, one of South Korea's biggest entertainment companies, but it was his role in building from scratch Allblanc TV, a fitness and lifestyle YouTube channel with 1.83 million subscribers, that really caught their eye.

However, his role at the university will not be limited to teaching students YouTube tricks, but how to make friends and influence people via a wide variety of mediums. It will also touch on aspects of marketing, communications and even business administration, and be open to people who might not want to become an influencer but will need to do business with them.

"I will be lecturing about making intriguing content, but a lot of the studies will pay attention to the influencer market in general," says Ryo, 36. "This includes how to communicate with influencers and how to understand them for people in marketing or working for entertainment agencies. It will also touch on managing business as an influencer who mostly works alone."

The university is expecting the course to prove popular. Surveys regularly find that "internet influencer" is one of the most desired jobs among young South Koreans and in 2019 an education ministry study found "YouTuber" was the third-most wanted job among elementary students.

Given the salaries that are commanded by the best in their field, that should be no surprise.

The average monthly income from YouTube earnings for South Korean influencers with more than 100,000 subscribers in 2019 was 9.33 million won (US$7,789), according to national tax records. But the top performers can earn far more. According to the YouTube marketing platform NoxInfluencer, singer JFla's self-titled channel with 16.3 million subscribers in 2020 was estimated to make 1.5 billion won (US$1.25 million) a year. Meanwhile SeoeunStory, a channel featuring a 7-year-old girl named Seoeun who introduces her 7.51 million subscribers to toys and snacks, made 8.5 billion won (US$7.09 million) a year, mostly from advertising deals.

Such riches are a far cry from where Ryo began, uploading a fitness video on Facebook with little expectation it would be watched.

"The title of 'influencer' used to sound awkward to me," Ryo says, speaking at his office space in the central district of Jongno in Seoul. "Our team merely started YouTube to advertise our business, but we naturally became influencers as our audience base grew all of a sudden."

He and two business partners had founded a start-up in 2017 that organised open workout sessions at fitness centres during days when the facilities were empty. They began to upload videos online to promote their business, but had no idea doing so would alter their lives beyond recognition.

"We had well below a hundred followers on our Facebook page, so we were quite surprised by the amount of attention our first video got," Ryo recalls.

That video, a four-minute workout aimed at burning off calories gained during the Lunar New Year holiday, received more than 2 million views in a single day.

Then they tried their luck on YouTube and had a similar response.

"Our first five videos on YouTube nearly all got over a million views, so we decided to make this our main source of business," says Ryo, Allblanc TV's CEO.

Within a year, they had 100,000 YouTube subscribers and decided to transition their company to an online multimedia business.

Allblanc's success may have been sudden, but it was driven by more than luck. A large part of its success can be attributed to Ryo's tactical-based approach that drew heavily on his years as a researcher in the aerospace industry. He simply became a student of YouTube and the influencer market, he says.

"We actually prepared quite a lot for our first video, doing a lot of market analysis and interpreting the needs of viewers at the time.

"There were YouTubers who taught exercise, but there weren't many who made content where you followed an instructor who was exercising on-screen, especially in our country. And if there were, they were usually women."

And that is where Ryo had a career-changing idea.

"We thought that if guys who sort of looked like K-pop idols with muscular bodies appeared on camera with up-tempo music, we could distinguish ourselves from the field," he says. "And it wasn't just one man on camera. We luckily had three guys on our team who fit the part."

Ryo met both his co-founders, Louis Oh and James Seo, at a fitness contest before they started on their business venture together.

In January, all three of them appeared on one of the most-watched television shows in South Korea, Master in the House, proving that their channel had become a mainstream hit.

Their viewer demographic is almost equally split between men and women. It is most popular with viewers in their 20s and 30s and the majority of their audience is based overseas.

Beyond the K-pop-style good looks of Ryo's business partners, it was the Tabata exercise craze that really helped their channel take off. Tabata is a form of high-intensity interval workout, which involves a four-minute repeating pattern of 20 seconds of a gruelling exercise (such as push-ups or squats), followed by 10 seconds of rest. Tabata's time efficiency has helped it sweep the fitness scene in both South Korea and overseas.

Ryo is happy to offer a tip even for those unable to attend his lectures at the university.

"Ultimately, you are making stories that viewers find compelling," he says. "You have to have a high self-esteem that's OK with showcasing even your flaws to attract the interest of viewers. In the end, I tell my students to not rely on equipment. You have to have the ability to make intriguing content even if all you have is your phone."

Like her mentor, Anna Lee never imagined a life in front of the camera. The 27-year-old uploaded her first YouTube video in 2020 about her plane trip to Incheon from London where she used to work as a freelance violinist.

The pandemic had put a pause on her career, forcing her to cancel the concerts and showcases she relied on for her income. That's how she came to start looking for a job that required only "a computer and a camera".

Like Ryo - who mentored her through his programme with CJ ENM - she didn't do too bad on her first try as an influencer. Her first video went on to amass more than 17,000 views.

"A lot of it was luck and the fact that K-culture was gaining massive interest," she says. "So I knew early on that I should revolve my content around K-pop and everything about our culture."

Since then, some of her most popular videos have included her trying the diet of BTS member Jin and reacting to trending videos like one of Oli London, a British man who spent over US$150,000 on plastic surgery to look like BTS member Jimin. Another one sees her pranking her grandmother, pretending to have gotten tattoos and forgotten how to use chopsticks.

Within a year, her self-titled channel "Anna Lee" had reached 100,000 subscribers. It was at this point she got to to meet Ryo; she was recruited to join CJ ENM's Global Sellist Academy, which trains influencers on how to advertise products on their channels.

The live commerce market was estimated to be worth 3 trillion Korean won (US$2.5 billion) in 2020 and is predicted by Statista to double this year.

Lee chose Ryo to be her mentor for the two-month programme after seeing one of his online lectures.

"He was like Superman, having done all these things in his career and having so much going on in life," she recalls. "I was like, 'how do I become like him?'"

The two have continued their mentor-mentee relationship since then, even going on a business trip together to Paris where Lee saw her teacher at work.

"He doesn't sleep and does so many things," Lee says.

One of the biggest influences Ryo had on Lee was on the business side of influencing.

Lee presently has 185,000 subscribers and hopes to expand her influence to other fields of business.

"I'm really into fitness now, so I want to sell gym wear. Maybe run my own podcast later on," she says. "As long as you have an audience, you can find different ways to have an online business. If you want to teach a language, you can sell an online course and you can also teach people how to lose weight this way."

She says the key is just to "have the drive". "And, ultimately, you have to have a certain enthusiasm and charm in front of the camera and not be too serious," she says. "I think that's what separates us from celebrities. We have a much more personal relationship with our fan base, kinda like friends."

Says Lee: "Being an influencer sure can be a fun and comfortable way of living."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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