Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) 'Starting non-face-to-face promotional marketing for Global Generation Z.'
Celebrating the Lunar New Year holiday, girl group ITZY, a Hallyu star and honorary ambassador for Korean tourism, will promote Korea's tourism attractiveness to global fans through their avatars.
The Korea Tourism Organization (President Ahn Young-bae) will hold a non-face-to-face tourism promotion event using ITZY's avatar on ZEPETO, an augmented reality 3D avatar platform, from this week to the Lunar New Year holiday. The event, which will be held in collaboration with Naver Jet (CEO Kim Dae-wook), which runs Geppetto, is a non-face-to-face Korean promotional marketing aimed at not only the global Z-generation, the main user of Zeppetto, but also the Hallyu interested people from ITZY's fandom. It is also drawing attention that it is interesting to provide visitors with virtual activities that specialize in the Lunar New Year holidays.
What is noteworthy at the event is the virtual travel promotional video ‘Feel the Rhythm of Virtual Korea’, starring ITZY's 3D avatar.It is a 30-second video that sends a message to Geppetto to come to Korea, a virtual travel destination prepared by Geppetto, while it is unable to visit Korea directly due to Corona, and is produced in English, Chinese and Japanese. The video will be available from February 9 on the YouTube channel of the Korea Tourism Organization (@visitkorea), SNS accounts of headquarters and overseas branches, and Geppetto SNS accounts.
The highlight is a two-day fan meeting with ITZY's avatars at the virtual Han River Park from February 13 to 14, the Lunar New Year holiday. ITZY avatars and fans will wrap up the event by enjoying various virtual experiences at Hangang Park, including boat rides and skateboarding, after watching the 'Feel the Rhythm of Virtual Korea' video. In particular, in a food truck prepared by ITZY avatars wearing a hanbok to repay their fans' love for the Lunar New Year, there are experiences of eating ‘Tteokguk’, a Lunar New Year holiday food, and ‘Sikhye’, which is also familiar to foreign fans who often appear in Korean dramas(jjimjilbang).
Also, the hanbok costumes for avatars on the day of the fan meeting will vote by fans at the 'Hanbok Coordinator Selection Event' held from February 8 to 12. The corporation is also looking forward to promoting Hanbok, a traditional costume, to key consumers in the future, and also to promoting fan meetings in advance through events in which consumers participate
Geppetto, which has more than 200 million users, has 90% of overseas users, especially 80% of teenagers, and the corporation established a map of the Han River Park in Geppetto in November last year and held various promotional events for Generation Z. As a result, about 6.8 million people have visited the Han River Park map so far, and Korean tourism content produced by more than 10,000 users is evaluated as a successful viral marketing case.
"With the influence of Corona and the growth of Generation Z, Metabus (virtual reality) is now drawing attention as an essential marketing tool in the tourism sector, and the corporation will enhance the efficiency of global promotional marketing for Korean tourism through digital transformation," said Kim Yong-jae, head of the Northeast Asia team at the corporation.
