When K-Pop Idol Cosmetic Advertisements Go Horribly Wrong

Cosmetics and make up in general is usually designed to make you look prettier. Certainly if you’re trying to market your cosmetic products, you’ll try to make it so that it leaves a positive and lasting image on your potential customers. Because of this, cosmetic companies are very picky about who they pick to model their products. Being picked as the main model for a cosmetic product line is seen as one of the highlights of any female celebrity’s career, a sign that they have truly reached mass appeal. Unfortunately, it appears that certain cosmetic companies aren’t as careful about picking their advertisement concepts as they are picking their ideal models. This is a list of cosmetic ads that does the frankly amazing task of making their idols model look substantial worse for wear.  

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.

Guinea Pig No 1: A Pink’s Son Na Eun

First on our list is A Pink’s goddess Son Na Eun. Her fellow A Pink members call her goddess and they have even stated on “A Pink News” that A Pink wouldn’t have their pure innocent image if it wasn’t for her. She garnered press for her beauty even before her debut in A Pink when a picture of her and After School’s Lizzy was posted on the internet. Along with her good looks, she was been active in a wide variety of fields, from advertisement, dramas, and even variety shows. Her appearance on “We Got Married” with Taemin has seen her popularity increase and this has lead to her finally get selected as the model for a new line of cosmetics.

Evildoer No 1: Peripera

If only she knew her first cosmetic modelling job would end up making her look like a porcelain doll owned by an extremely enthusiastic five-year-old. Peripera, in their press releases, talk about how her purity and innocence was the type of image that Peripera wanted to pursue for their lovely brand. Umm, I’m not sure if I would personally use the words pure, innocent or lovely to describe what I’m seeing above. Frankly, her cheek touch up makes her look like she’s just gotten out of a sauna, while her exaggerated eye lashes looks like one those prank eyes you would draw on your friend’s eye lids when they are asleep. It’s still not extremely bad I guess. Unfortunately, it only gets worse from here on.

Guinea Pig No 2: f(x)’s Sulli

Next we have f(x)‘s youngest member Sulli. Known for baby-like face and white skin complexion, she is capable of exhibiting a wide range of looks going from cute to lovely to elegance and even going as far as looking like a handsome boy in her drama appearance. So if you happened to be a major cosmetic brand with Sulli as your main model, how would you utilize her to ensure that both the model and your product is shown in the best of light?

Evildoer No 2: Etude House

Well, if you happen to be Etude House, what you do is not bother trying at all. It looks like they got Sulli to sleep for a few hours, suddenly woke her up, painted her lips with red marker, then once again liberally applied blush to her cheek. The photo on the left seems to do the impossible in making Sulli’s eyes look absolutely miserable. As for the photo on the right- where to begin? Well, the obvious place to begin is the mess of hair strands they call a hair style along with what appears to be a rather gaudy pink window curtain she seems to be wearing as a dress. Surely it can’t be that hard to find a style that highlights Sulli’s charms. There possibly can’t be a worse example than this.

Ah…

Guinea Pig No 3: IU

The “Nation’s Little Sister” and talented singer IU. Her singing talent is well known with a string of popular songs like “Good Day” and “You And I.” She has also been rather successful in the acting field, featuring in “Dream High” and “You’re the Best, Lee Soon Shin.” Let’s also not forget her cute looks and fair skin complexion. However, that’s not the only image she can portray, having portrayed a more mature image in various photo shoots and in albums such as Real+. So which image should we choose for our cosmetic advertisement? Should we go for her cute lovely image or go for something a bit more seductive and mature? Such a tough decision.

Evildoer No 3: the SAEM

For the SAEM, it was such a tough decision that they decided to go with neither option. Instead, they thought that making IU look a bit fruity loopy was the best way of accentuating IU’s charms. The picture above is some screen caps from a video they posted up on their official YouTube page. The subtitles go “After finding out about the SAEM, I’ve become a lady with slightly different views.” Well that definitely seems to be the case if the video is anything to go by because they’ve somehow convinced her that painting a set of leafy traffic lights to her eyes was a good idea. I wonder how they convinced her.

Maybe they showed her this picture again? I guess traffic lights are better than putting make up on half your face.

Guinea Pig No 4: 2NE1’s Sandara Park

Finally, we have 2NE1’s Sandara Park. It’s hard to believe that she is almost 30 years old just by looking at the photos. It seems like she hasn’t aged a bit since she turned 20. Frankly, I thought she always looked better with extremely light makeup. Having too much make up on would cover up her beautiful skin. Given the circumstances it would be pretty hard as a cosmetic company to really use Sandara Park as a model. How do you utilize someone that actually looks better with less make when trying to market your cosmetic products?

Evildoer No 4: Etude House again

Well, Etude House loves a good challenge as their usage of Sulli showed before. However, this also shows that Etude House really doesn’t seem to think much farther than “Yeah she’s good, let’s pick her.” They do however seem to love doing horrible things to the eyes of their models. I don’t know who it is, but I would love to hear from whoever thought it was a good idea to paint pink and tangerine test strips onto her eye lids. Etude House also seems to really love the “Just got out of bed” look in their ads because they used it here as well. It’s actually in chronological order from left to right- “I just woke up after a binge drink night,” to ” Starting to regain sanity,” and lastly, “I give up trying to look normal.”