Beyond Baby Shark: Pinkfong founder's gameplan for business longevity post virality

The Baby Shark song, which became a global hit around 2018, sparked a viral dance craze across the world and dominated the YouTube charts. The company behind Baby Shark, Pinkfong Company, leveraged on the song's success to build a brand and a world of content, releasing merchandise plushies, band-aids and even cereals. 

Pinkfong Company's co-founder Ryan Lee, shared at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE's Content 360 conference, the company is working on creating new intellectual properties (IP), allowing its content to carry on the relevancy of the Pinkfong brand, and to grasp potential users' attention following up on the success of the Baby Shark character. 

"Some brands prefer having a big brand as an umbrella company. But for other FMCG brands, they are known for pushing their product brands instead. At Pinkfong, because we have new IPs such as Seal Look or Bebefinn, it boosts our brand. And that decreases the cost of marketing, since we use the Pinkfong brand as a leverage," said Lee. 

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"In every business and domain, there is a memorable brand. But in the kids' sector, usually kids' songs, there is no brand. So, we tried to make Pinkfong into a brand," said Lee. "When people are asked 'What kind of song do you like best?' or 'What kind of fable do you like best?' We would like them to answer— Pinkfong. That's our concept."

Banking on collaborations

Lee explained that many people, especially the investors, are always curious as to what the company will next achieve since Baby Shark was considered to be a 'one-hit' wonder.

"We tried overcoming this buy building fandoms. Although not easy, because we do not have lifelong users as kids eventually grow up, we really needed to find a way," Lee explained. As such, brand partnerships are key allowing for Pinkfong's collaborations with notable children's content brands such as Hello Kitty, Sesame Street, Wiggles, and more. It also attempted to enter new segments by incorporating electronic dance music (EDM), the metaverse, and characters from BTS. 

When asked if he feels the pressure to replicate the viral hit, Lee shares that it has been stressful. He said that with a 400-strong company with staff across South Korea, Hong Kong, and L.A., everyone is quite familiar with our playbook on what made Baby Shark work. 

"But people are changing, and kids are changing. Sometimes, we just lose. For instance, we don't like using 3D animation very much because it costs a lot. However nowadays, every kids' content is made with 3D so we have to do the same," said Lee. 

Lee is the executive director and producer of the content business — animation, mobile app, and online games — seasoned through various project launches and operations in South Korea and the global market for over 20 years. He also directs Pinkfong’s brand marketing, while spearheading its licensing business and diversification of content distribution channels.

The co-founder also has an extensive knowledge and experience in the content industry, building networks and co-working with internal and external stakeholders. At the Pinkfong Company, he has produced three seasons of The Baby Shark Big Show! with Nickelodeon and produced more than 1,000 songs and stories including the viral ‘Baby Shark’ video, which has garnered over 15 billion views as YouTube’s the No.1 most watched video.

The success of Baby Shark 

Lee said at the 13th edition of Content 360, that Baby Shark was initially a camp song from the 1950s which originated from the United States. Pinkfong managed to catch the song, and switched it up with a K-pop style, to suit the new generation of kids. 

"It's not just an old song that we decided to modify or change slightly," he said, referring to other children's songs like Old McDonald, or Itsy Bitsy Spider which has seen a multitude of renditions and updates over the years. "That's the secret of Baby Shark. We turned it into something completely different," added Lee.

Pinkfong Company also banks on the use of colours to stand out as a brand. By ensuring that its YouTube channel thumbnail is pink coloured, correlating to its name, Pinkfong, children will be able to easily identify its account. 

"YouTube has an auto algorithm. Because there's so many other content, even kids themselves search for Pinkfong on YouTube. Since that is the case, we wanted to create an identifier for kids to see that the content they are watching is from Pinkfong company," said Lee

We believe that the success of Pinkfong, and Baby Shark, relies strongly on the brand we created. 

He also added that it is important for brands and marketers to understand the needs of the real end-user. In the first two years of its inception, Pinkfong created thousands of show songs, and in the midst of that, the company discovered that young boys have an affinity for fierce animals. 

"They would prefer the T-rex over small dinosaurs. We thought to ourselves, how about we make characters which meet the unmet needs of the children in the segment, by focusing on some fierce animals? Such as lions, sharks, and eagles. That was the start of our animal album," Lee explained. 

"By observing what a two or three year-old boy likes, we were able to create Baby Shark," he added. 

It doesn't just stop there. Besides incorporating universal familial values which are familiar to children with the mother, father and grandfather sharks, Pinkfong has been branching out into the realm of collaborations to expand its segment reach.

Overcoming challenges in the kids' songs segment

Despite the viral success of Baby Shark, and achieving a diamond label from YouTube, Pinkfong still had hurdles to overcome. Mainly, regarding its reliance on global platforms such as YouTube, Netflix and Spotify. 

"Without YouTube or Netflix, Baby Shark would not be that popular," Lee admitted. 

"We rely highly on such global platforms nowadays. A lot of our revenue comes from third parties, who give us some money, but they rarely give us data. That is why we decided to operate our own app. Even though we have just a very small number of users, we can get real data that way," he said. 

"I think data is very important nowadays, but it is very hard to get. That's the reason why we still invest a lot to get data, and the reason why many companies like to run direct-to-consumer businesses," added Lee. 

Lee also compared the success of Baby Shark with PSY's hit song, Gangnam Style. "Following the success of pop star BoA and Winter Sonata actor Bae Yong-joon overseas, many South Koreans wanted to invest in the entertainment business. Because of that, oversupply made for good quality content, and it's easily exported because of new media. But for songs like Gangnam Style, without YouTube, it would have been difficult to become popular," he explained.

Additionally, Lee also believes that both the entertainment and marketing industries, can fall prey to becoming formulaic, in terms of what creates success. 

"Everyone is quite afraid of failure, and there's always an easy way out by following the 'formula'. By doing that, I can blame other people, and not my own brand or advertising for the failure. It's an easy temptation to just follow others and what they usually do," he said. 

However, in many cases, it is the outliers who will change the world. 

"This takes knowledge and bravery, and it's not easy," added Lee. 

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