Lessons In Self Marketing - Clara Knows Best

Actress and self marketing grand master Clara has been a bit hit lately. She is easily enjoying the most attention she’s ever had since her debut many many years ago. She’s the topic of attention wherever she goes and has shown just how effective self-marketing is in terms of achieving success. Today I will be going through some of the indirect lessons she has given us up till now in terms of how to effectively market oneself.

Disclaimer: The writer is not really an expert at anything much and is just a mere casual fan. I have been known to be rather weird and cynical at times. My opinions certainly DO NOT reflect the opinion of Soompi’s news team or Soompi as a whole.

Revision – Why Exactly Is Clara A Self Marketing Grand Master?

Given that most readers here probably don’t even know who Clara is, it’s probably for the best if we do some revision of her prior successes in marketing up till now. The most prominent case is the famous/infamous zebra leggings that she wore during a baseball ceremonial throw.

Next we have the Gym/Cleavage Bonanza Scene from MBC Every1’s Women’s Variety Show “Singles Season 2,” Her Baseball Throw Parody on SNL wearing the same leggings again and more cleavage, and lastly her suggestion that she and her actress colleagues in her new drama “Goddesss Of Marriage” should do a nude photo shoot if the ratings for said drama goes about 40%.

Suffice to say, her self marketing have been a massive success and she has garnered the most attention she’s ever seen since her debut in 2006.  I will use this opportunity to analyze those successes and find out why this self-promotion strategy has been so successful.

Lesson 1: Makes Sure You Always Keep The Competition At Bay.

The key to any successful marketing campaign is to ensure that the competition doesn’t copy yours. In a recent episode of “Cultwo’s Verandah Show,” Clara made sure to keep her competition at bay by saying,”I believe that being deliberately and excessively revealing isn’t a good thing.”  

When asked about  recent revealing fashion trends, she remarks, “A lot of celebrities these days are wearing revealing clothing because they have gained confidence in their body. If they are confident and they believe it suits them, then I don’t think it’s a bad thing.”

But! She goes on to say, “However, I don’t think deliberate and excessive clothing for the sake of gaining popularity is a good thing.” See? Brilliant PR here; she makes sure she doesn’t bad mouth other celebrities climbing up to her level, but then slyly makes sure that any further attempts to reach her level is clipped in the bud before they have a chance to bloom.

Lesson 2: Provocative Headlines = More Attention. 

Now here is a classic marketing strategy. As everyone knows, provocative statements and the resulting articles from said statements tend to get a huge amount of attention. It doesn’t really matter whether that is negative or positive attention at this point but just attention as a whole.

So how does Clara do this? On TvN’s “The Person from Our Fantasy” Clara talks about how David Beckham and So Ji Sub are her ideal types.Great start here: mention some popular names to get her foot in the door, but this is still a bit weak, lets go for the home run now.

Clara is then asked about what she thought about guys that are two timers and her opinion is, “Two-timers are fine. As long as I don’t know about it” and “I believe if my partner is two timing on me ,then I also did something wrong.” Home run statement right there; you can just see the headlines pouring out. A simply outstanding performance.

Lesson 3: Make Sure You Keep Your Fan Base Adequately Supplied 

An effective marketing strategy isn’t very useful if you run out of things to supply to your client base, in this case Clara’s fans. On that note, Clara runs a fairly regularly maintained Twitter account, Facebook page, and a fairly well designed personal website. But all of this is naught if you don’t provide your fans with what they REALLY want and that is not cutesy pictures.

No, it’s picture like this from her latest commercial recording for “Sprite.” There is a hidden strategy here as well. If you just post bikini pictures without any sort of reason, then you will end up looking desperate, BUT if said pictures are part and parcel of the job she is currently doing, then it doesn’t seem as blatant.

Also you have to make sure that pictures like this aren’t released too frequently or you end up over saturating the market. Moderation is key and Clara knows this as well.

Lesson 4: There Needs to be  a Method Behind the Madness

As mentioned in Lesson 3, just posting revealing pictures without any sort of rhyme or reason is effectively a dead end solution. You need to have a clear set of goals as to what you want to be doing and how you plan to keep that momentum going. Why am I bringing this up? Well, because Clara has already explained the method in her madness.

A famous author by the name of Gong Ji Yong had this to say on her Twitter regarding recent trends in revealing clothing: “To be honest when I see female celebrities being aggressively revealing or going for cosmetic surgery, etc., it immediately reminds me of the difficulty females have in getting a job,” and that “They really don’t have a way of making a living. Now every women, not just celebrities or women that appear TV or in mass media, are part of that competition.”

Regarding this Clara had this to say on her Twitter “I’m saying this because it pricked my consciences…For me, people’s attention is like a salary worker’s salary. Public indifference is like retirement” and that “I need to receive a salary to survive. However, just like how your salary isn’t the goal of your life, the goal of my life is also not public attention. It’s to become an amazing actress.”

Conclusion – You Can’t Help but Feel Sympathetic at Times

Despite the tone that may have portrayed in this gallery, I am sympathetic towards her motives. I’ve seen her since she was on the sitcom “Tae Hee, Hye Gyo, Ji Hyun,” when she was still called Lee Sung Min and then watched her other dramas like “Baby Face” and “Take Care of Us Captain.”

She’s been around for quite a while, but she’s just never really taken off in terms of popularity with her old image. Now that she has found a sure fire way to garner attention, pointing fingers at her and saying she shouldn’t be taking advantage of that seems a bit unjust.

I just hope that she keeps to her life goals of becoming a great actress and just uses this new found attention to allow her to pursue roles and jobs that she wouldn’t even had a chance to do in the past.

On that note, she is definitely reaping the benefits of her new found popularity, having recently been cast in both “Goddess of Marriage” and in the real variety sitcom “Thoughtless Family Season 3” on MBC Every1.