Will it be a trump card to prevent “leakage”?

Early in the new year, Japanese celebrities have been making their way onto social networking sites one after another, and their activities have been attracting a lot of attention.

Kazuya Kamenashi (36) of KAT-TUN, Yuta Tamamori (32) of Kis-My-Ft2, and Raoul (19) of Snow Man have all set up Instagram pages since the beginning of the year. Kamenashi already has 400,000 followers, and Tamamori has over 600,000. Rahul is the most active of the two, with his active participation in Instagram live shows and other activities, and he is already approaching one million followers.

The founder of Johnny’s, Mr. Kitagawa (87 years old), respected the right of portraits, and for many years prohibited the posting of photos and videos of his talents on the Internet. For example, even if a talent was starring in a TV drama, their portraits would not appear in the character correlation chart on the program’s official website. With this background, many fans were happy to see the opening of social networking services for their talents, which has led to the rapid increase in the number of followers.

Johnny’s has taken a negative attitude toward the Internet and social networking services, but what is behind their aggressive stance? A source in the entertainment industry says, “It has to do with the outpouring of talent over the past few years.

As exemplified by the departure of Mr. Takizawa (Hideaki Takizawa, 40) and the members of ‘King & Prince’ last year, there has been a string of departures of their talents in recent years, and public opinion has been harsh toward the agency. Furthermore, with the rise of K-POP, 2.5-dimensional actors and voice actors, the centripetal force against the Japanese brand is declining. As an agency, we are now approaching a transitional period in which we have no choice but to break our ironclad rule and become more active on the Internet and social networking sites.

Johnny’s’s attitude toward its own talent has also triggered a change in its social networking strategy.

The current office policy is to move away from idols. In order to change the model to a multi-talented person who is not just an idol, they have decided that an aggressive social networking strategy is essential in this day and age.

In fact, many actors and actresses now have social networking sites. The number of followers has become a barometer of popularity and influence, and the number of SNS followers now has a greater impact than TV ratings or radio listening rates. Furthermore, in the past three years, as the world has been repeatedly confused and divided by the COVID-19 crisis, SNS has become an indispensable bridge between the talent and their fans.

Like other agencies, Johnny’s has also decided to go the SNS route in order to keep up with the times. However, SNS is not a panacea for fake accounts, account hijacking, and flame wars. Johnny’s, in particular, has not yet established its know-how in this area, so there is naturally some risk. How they will manage their operations in the future is attracting a lot of attention.

Will Johnny’s be able to show its overwhelming presence in the world of the Internet and SNS? How will this play out? ……