South Korea’s Biggest Photo Booth Cross Promote With BTS Member

Photomatic, the biggest photo booth chain in South Korea, has unveiled a limited-edition photo frame inspired by a song by popular K-Pop idol Jin, highlighting the potential for cross-promotion in corporate photo booth hire designs.

The frame, known as Earth & Moon, is named after the song Moon, a song by Jin and released on the 2020 BTS album Map of the Soul 7. It features the singer on the right of the frame, allowing for people in the booth to take pictures with him, making the frame a viral hit with BTS’ considerable fanbase, the ARMY.

The success of cross-promotional frames such as this highlights the ability of photo booths to provide a somewhat unique connection between a brand and its audience, something that is particularly potent with this crossover.

The Bangtan Boys’ relationship with their audience has always been especially strong, and the song Moon is believed by music critics to be about the relationship between Jin (and by extension the BTS members) and the fans.

Whilst the song wasn’t released as a single, it was the group’s longest charting song by an individual member on the Korean streaming service MelOn’s Top 100 list and it is presumably this success combined with the theme of connection, support and understanding that led to the crossover.

With that said, this is far from the first time a music idol and a photo booth have joined forces, with one such cross-marketing exercise being cited as the reason why photo booths became massively popular in South East Asia.

Photo booths initially became popular in Japan in 1995, where they are known as purikura (short for Print Club), but the moment that pushed their popularity over the edge is when they were endorsed by J-Pop band SMAP in 1997.

SMAP, a band who, like BTS, were huge cross-cultural successes in Japan, took pictures in a purikura booth on an episode of their variety show, SMAPxSMAP in 1997, making the booths ubiquitous in Japanese youth culture to this day.

Photomatic is in a similar place in South Korea, being seen as a trendsetter in Korean culture and having already been endorsed by several K-Pop groups. Time will tell if this newest will take this success to new heights.