you want a piece of me
Let's not pretend that the auction of SNSD's "Chocolate Love" MV outfits wasn't a popularity contest. Because it was. Whether it was a case of fans trying to compete against the fans of other girls by proving theirs is more popular by beefing up the bids or an actual, outright bidding war among fans of the same girl who really, really wanted an outfit, the auction is a definite instance of each girl's earning power.
So let's do pretend that these numbers can translate more literally into quantifying the comparative popularities of the SNSD members, while keeping in mind that this is only one case and shouldn't be extrapolated to represent everything SNSD does and has done. Popularity among the girls is always shifting and each is strong(er) in certain categories. (For example, if the girls make money off of television appearances, Sunny should be making more these days than she has been since she has a regular spot on "Invincible Youth" now. Similarly, SooYoung should also be out-earning SeoHyun who doesn't have any current non-SNSD activity.) I'm using the auction because we have concrete numbers. I know that the auction only encompasses those that are willing to spend their money on their idols for collectibles--but this financial outpouring is exactly what I'm interested in and these are the pockets SM wants to dip into (the auction was for charity but these are the same people SM is tapping). So I'm going to play a little game of percentages.
I was originally going to use these numbers as part of a larger post musing on the SNSD fandom (the land of milk and honey, rainbows and lollipops, peace for all and good will toward men, kumbaya~), but then I saw the numbers and I thought they deserved a post of their own.
Total amount of money earned in the dress auction: 34,413,000 KRW
Closing Bid (KRW)% of Total
YoonA8,061,000 23.42%
Tiffany7,010,00020.37%
TaeYeon6,470,00018.80%
Jessica5,981,00017.38%
SeoHyun2,370,0006.89%
YuRi1,701,0004.94%
Sunny1,481,0004.30%
SooYoung718,0002.09%
HyoYeon621,0001.80%
Total amount of money earned in the 2-piece white outfit auction: 14,839,000 KRW
Closing Bid (KRW)% of Total
Jessica3,120,00021.03%
Tiffany2,700,00018.20%
YuRi2,190,00014.76%
TaeYeon1,730,00011.66%
YoonA1,540,00010.38%
Sunny1,260,0008.49%
SeoHyun1,213,0008.17%
SooYoung666,0004.49%
HyoYeon420,0002.83%
Combined total earnings from both outfits: 49,252,000 KRW
Combined Total (KRW)% of Total
Tiffany9,710,00019.71%
YoonA9,601,00019.49%
Jessica9,101,00018.48%
TaeYeon8,200,00016.65%
YuRi3,891,0007.90%
SeoHyun3,583,0007.27%
Sunny2,741,0005.57%
SooYoung1,384,0002.81%
HyoYeon1,041,0002.11%
You know how they say that there is a gap between the rich and the poor? There is a huge gap between the rich and the poor in popularity here. Wow. When I punched in SeoHyun's numbers in the combined totals portion (I was going in the order of the first list), I was shocked to see the nearly 10% difference between her and TaeYeon (I was rearranging as I calculated the numbers). The dress auction also really exemplifies this gap between the top tier and the second tier, from Jessica's 17% of the earnings to suddenly SeoHyun at around 7%. HUGE difference.
Technically, if popularity were equally distributed between all the members and if you consider popularity as being directly proportional to earning power, each member would come out to have about 11% of the total. As it is, altogether HyoYeon's outfits only earned around 11% of what Tiffany's outfits did.
That is to say: Tiffany's (basically YoonA's too) earning power is 9 times greater than HyoYeon's. Meaning that instead of Hyo being 1/9 of SNSD, she really only is 1/9 of what Tiffany alone is contributing.
*whistles*
Looking at the combined totals, the Top 4 members (Tiffany, YoonA, Jessica, TaeYeon) take up 74.33% of the total earnings! Four members means that they make up less than 50% of the group! As you can see from each's positive deviation from the equal distribution of 11% (+), their chunk of the SNSD pie is huge. It's almost insane. (Sorry, I have no pie chart for you.)
The differences in the bidding trends between the two outfits is interesting; SooYoung and HyoYeon stay firmly in the bottom in the same spots, but the rest of the girls are shifted all over the place. YuRi particularly took a great leap up in the two-piece outfit bidding--nearly 10% difference between the closing bids for her two outfits--while her "twin" YoonA was hit by an even bigger difference in the opposite direction (about 12.5%).
However, the first bidding brought in significantly more money (over twice the amount of money overall). YoonA's dress's closing bid of 8,061,000 KRW is about 2.5 times more than Jessica's two-piece white outfit's closing bid at 3,120,000 KRW. Jessica's dress out-earned her two-piece outfit by 2,861,000 KRW, even though she finished as the 4th highest earner in the dress bid.
Interestingly, YuRi is actually the only one who had her two-piece outfit close with a higher bid than her dress. Weird. I wonder what happened there. The two-piece outfit was evidently more desirable in some way in YuRi's case.
Comparatively, Sunny, SooYoung, and HyoYeon didn't experience that much difference in the two bids when you just examine the money totals--which might signify as the three of them pretty firmly occupying the lowest spots of popularity in the group. To be honest, the gap is so big between the first tier and the second tier that I'm not even sure any of these three could catch up to anywhere near the level of the Top 4. These gaps tend to get bigger, not smaller, I think. (Like wealth!)
I find this more interesting in the case of SooYoung because I get the impression that she's supposed to have more samchon fans, i.e. the ones with spending money? HyoYeon is less surprising as I think her appeal is much more generational and that it's her generation that'll find her attractive. People around her age don't exactly have money to throw around everywhere. Even taking that into consideration, though, she probably has the smallest (dedicated) fanbase, almost without a doubt.
In contrast, Tiffany's numbers are deceptive. She ends up "second" in both bids but in reality, she out-earned everyone, lol. It's a close call, though, between her and YoonA, with less than $100 USD separating them. Fany's popularity has obviously not flagged since the beginning of SNSD's promotions.
I am surprised that TaeYeon doesn't rank higher among the Top 4. I would have figured her to be the second highest earning, but apparently the power of JeTi has been mighty indeed.
I am also surprised that YuRi isn't closer to breaking into the top tier of the popular members and that her "other halves" (take your pick: YoonA, Jessica, Tiffany) so outdid her here. Especially since she was prominently centered in the "Chocolate Love" promotions and has been moved toward the center more and more recently. It may be that her fans aren't the spending type, for I think YuRi appeals very well across gender lines. People who can afford to pay about $6800 USD for one outfit are fans of higher income, probably samchon fans or a group of fans able to pool together money (even a group of 5 fans bidding together would end up paying about $1300 USD each D:).
I kind of wish to see another similar auction in like six month's time or after the next set of promotions, just to see if there's any shifting. I wish we had a similar bid closer to the time of when SNSD debuted to compare.
What do you think? How accurately do you think this reflects the SNSD fandom's division and make up? Is it too skewed in the support of single members instead of the group as a whole? Or is this an eye-opening peek into what the SNSD fanbase "really" looks like underneath all that talk of "Nothing without 9"?
ETA:
It's like LG CYON created this poster just for this post in order to better show the results of the above numbers! Meet the more popular 6/9th of SNSD.
So let's do pretend that these numbers can translate more literally into quantifying the comparative popularities of the SNSD members, while keeping in mind that this is only one case and shouldn't be extrapolated to represent everything SNSD does and has done. Popularity among the girls is always shifting and each is strong(er) in certain categories. (For example, if the girls make money off of television appearances, Sunny should be making more these days than she has been since she has a regular spot on "Invincible Youth" now. Similarly, SooYoung should also be out-earning SeoHyun who doesn't have any current non-SNSD activity.) I'm using the auction because we have concrete numbers. I know that the auction only encompasses those that are willing to spend their money on their idols for collectibles--but this financial outpouring is exactly what I'm interested in and these are the pockets SM wants to dip into (the auction was for charity but these are the same people SM is tapping). So I'm going to play a little game of percentages.
I was originally going to use these numbers as part of a larger post musing on the SNSD fandom (the land of milk and honey, rainbows and lollipops, peace for all and good will toward men, kumbaya~), but then I saw the numbers and I thought they deserved a post of their own.
Total amount of money earned in the dress auction: 34,413,000 KRW
Closing Bid (KRW)% of Total
YoonA8,061,000 23.42%
Tiffany7,010,00020.37%
TaeYeon6,470,00018.80%
Jessica5,981,00017.38%
SeoHyun2,370,0006.89%
YuRi1,701,0004.94%
Sunny1,481,0004.30%
SooYoung718,0002.09%
HyoYeon621,0001.80%
Total amount of money earned in the 2-piece white outfit auction: 14,839,000 KRW
Closing Bid (KRW)% of Total
Jessica3,120,00021.03%
Tiffany2,700,00018.20%
YuRi2,190,00014.76%
TaeYeon1,730,00011.66%
YoonA1,540,00010.38%
Sunny1,260,0008.49%
SeoHyun1,213,0008.17%
SooYoung666,0004.49%
HyoYeon420,0002.83%
Combined total earnings from both outfits: 49,252,000 KRW
Combined Total (KRW)% of Total
Tiffany9,710,00019.71%
YoonA9,601,00019.49%
Jessica9,101,00018.48%
TaeYeon8,200,00016.65%
YuRi3,891,0007.90%
SeoHyun3,583,0007.27%
Sunny2,741,0005.57%
SooYoung1,384,0002.81%
HyoYeon1,041,0002.11%
You know how they say that there is a gap between the rich and the poor? There is a huge gap between the rich and the poor in popularity here. Wow. When I punched in SeoHyun's numbers in the combined totals portion (I was going in the order of the first list), I was shocked to see the nearly 10% difference between her and TaeYeon (I was rearranging as I calculated the numbers). The dress auction also really exemplifies this gap between the top tier and the second tier, from Jessica's 17% of the earnings to suddenly SeoHyun at around 7%. HUGE difference.
Technically, if popularity were equally distributed between all the members and if you consider popularity as being directly proportional to earning power, each member would come out to have about 11% of the total. As it is, altogether HyoYeon's outfits only earned around 11% of what Tiffany's outfits did.
That is to say: Tiffany's (basically YoonA's too) earning power is 9 times greater than HyoYeon's. Meaning that instead of Hyo being 1/9 of SNSD, she really only is 1/9 of what Tiffany alone is contributing.
*whistles*
Looking at the combined totals, the Top 4 members (Tiffany, YoonA, Jessica, TaeYeon) take up 74.33% of the total earnings! Four members means that they make up less than 50% of the group! As you can see from each's positive deviation from the equal distribution of 11% (+), their chunk of the SNSD pie is huge. It's almost insane. (Sorry, I have no pie chart for you.)
The differences in the bidding trends between the two outfits is interesting; SooYoung and HyoYeon stay firmly in the bottom in the same spots, but the rest of the girls are shifted all over the place. YuRi particularly took a great leap up in the two-piece outfit bidding--nearly 10% difference between the closing bids for her two outfits--while her "twin" YoonA was hit by an even bigger difference in the opposite direction (about 12.5%).
However, the first bidding brought in significantly more money (over twice the amount of money overall). YoonA's dress's closing bid of 8,061,000 KRW is about 2.5 times more than Jessica's two-piece white outfit's closing bid at 3,120,000 KRW. Jessica's dress out-earned her two-piece outfit by 2,861,000 KRW, even though she finished as the 4th highest earner in the dress bid.
Interestingly, YuRi is actually the only one who had her two-piece outfit close with a higher bid than her dress. Weird. I wonder what happened there. The two-piece outfit was evidently more desirable in some way in YuRi's case.
Comparatively, Sunny, SooYoung, and HyoYeon didn't experience that much difference in the two bids when you just examine the money totals--which might signify as the three of them pretty firmly occupying the lowest spots of popularity in the group. To be honest, the gap is so big between the first tier and the second tier that I'm not even sure any of these three could catch up to anywhere near the level of the Top 4. These gaps tend to get bigger, not smaller, I think. (Like wealth!)
I find this more interesting in the case of SooYoung because I get the impression that she's supposed to have more samchon fans, i.e. the ones with spending money? HyoYeon is less surprising as I think her appeal is much more generational and that it's her generation that'll find her attractive. People around her age don't exactly have money to throw around everywhere. Even taking that into consideration, though, she probably has the smallest (dedicated) fanbase, almost without a doubt.
In contrast, Tiffany's numbers are deceptive. She ends up "second" in both bids but in reality, she out-earned everyone, lol. It's a close call, though, between her and YoonA, with less than $100 USD separating them. Fany's popularity has obviously not flagged since the beginning of SNSD's promotions.
I am surprised that TaeYeon doesn't rank higher among the Top 4. I would have figured her to be the second highest earning, but apparently the power of JeTi has been mighty indeed.
I am also surprised that YuRi isn't closer to breaking into the top tier of the popular members and that her "other halves" (take your pick: YoonA, Jessica, Tiffany) so outdid her here. Especially since she was prominently centered in the "Chocolate Love" promotions and has been moved toward the center more and more recently. It may be that her fans aren't the spending type, for I think YuRi appeals very well across gender lines. People who can afford to pay about $6800 USD for one outfit are fans of higher income, probably samchon fans or a group of fans able to pool together money (even a group of 5 fans bidding together would end up paying about $1300 USD each D:).
I kind of wish to see another similar auction in like six month's time or after the next set of promotions, just to see if there's any shifting. I wish we had a similar bid closer to the time of when SNSD debuted to compare.
What do you think? How accurately do you think this reflects the SNSD fandom's division and make up? Is it too skewed in the support of single members instead of the group as a whole? Or is this an eye-opening peek into what the SNSD fanbase "really" looks like underneath all that talk of "Nothing without 9"?
ETA:
It's like LG CYON created this poster just for this post in order to better show the results of the above numbers! Meet the more popular 6/9th of SNSD.