Meeting Director Yang Su-seok, who has lived through the history of vertical platforms
An early member of the curated select shop 29CM (a Korean fashion and lifestyle e-commerce platform), part of the initial planning of EQL, the select-shop brand of Handsome (a major Korean fashion company), and even film marketing for The Mimic and Steel Rain!
Calling this man's career legendary is no exaggeration 👍
I got to meet Director Yang Su-seok in person. He now oversees the live commerce channel OFM at LF Mall (the online mall of Korean fashion company LF) and is writing a new chapter there 😄
We happened to share a table at MAX Summit 2023 (a Korean marketing conference), and the very next week we were able to follow up with a coffee chat 🥰
Talking marketer to marketer, two hours flew by!
In this post I want to share the parts of our conversation that left the deepest impression on me.
The secret to consistent success: 'obsessing over differentiation'
Everyone knows 29CM today, but when Yang joined as an early member, it was a small project with fewer than ten employees.
Vertical platforms and select-shop brands are everywhere now and case studies are easy to find, but back in the 2010s he had to try and pioneer almost everything from scratch.
I was struck by how fiercely he had wrestled with creating points of difference from existing brands.
Later at Handsome's EQL, he kept producing results by reinterpreting the same products from a different angle, even when selling the same things. 😄
As we talked, I realized that his formula for success starts with 'questioning and thinking about the problem itself before solving it.'
I could see this strength clearly in his current project, too: LF's live commerce 'OFM' (Orange from Mars).
"Do we really have to sell?" OFM, live commerce without show hosts
His past achievements were impressive, but personally the most fascinating part was his current project, OFM.
'Live commerce' is typically built around show hosts and aimed at specific time slots.
LF Mall's live commerce, OFM, runs instead on the concept of a 'docent' rather than a show host.
Put simply, influencers in a particular theme talk with their fans about their own stories and products.
He said this started at the planning stage with the mindset of letting go of the obsession with selling and approaching it on the basis of trust.
Do we really have to sell?
Where conventional live commerce was designed strictly from a revenue and profit perspective, OFM rethought the essence of the problem. That stayed with me.
And that became the weapon only OFM has, its point of differentiation.
And yet it sold extremely well.
Sounds too sentimental? Yang added this.
I said we questioned whether we had to sell. I never said we don't sell.
Within LF Mall, whose core customers are in their 50s, OFM is the only part where customers in their 30s account for the largest share of sales.
With 'fashion / wellness / art' as its main themes, topics that people in their 30s care about, each docent used their own personality and storytelling to draw their fans onto the platform.
If a show host exists to maximize sales,
a docent offers fans trust and a story.
And people spend money where they spend their time.
Fans gladly share what they have with the docents they want to be like.
OFM is now recording an average of more than 50 million won in sales per one-hour live session, delivering consistent results in terms of ROI, too. 👍
A marketer's 'have to do' and 'want to do'
I used to think a marketer's goal should be revenue and operating profit. I still believe that's the territory we have to deliver on as professionals (have to do).
But what the marketers around me, myself included, really wanted to do, the reason we chose this profession, didn't seem to be improving 'traffic, click-through rate, conversion rate, and ROI.'
I recently learned that quite a few people actually feel fatigued by those messages.
Talking with Yang reminded me that 'moving people's hearts' is what many people in marketing really want to do (want to do).
That's why OFM's story felt even more remarkable to me.
It's achieving both 👍
I found a target to aim for as a B2B marketer.
(Heads up!) From here on it's about me, so you may not be interested.
To be honest, my original purpose in asking Yang for a coffee chat was 'selling the VREVIEW solution.'
But in practice, we didn't have a single sales-type conversation during the entire chat.
Rather than introducing our technology or pitching right away, I wanted to explore who he is as a person and earn his trust.
Of course, I was also afraid I might be throwing away an important sales opportunity.
Thankfully, my company supported my approach and told me to go and enjoy it.
That let me calm my nerves on the way to work by picking out a gift for him and writing a postcard.
Very graciously, he told me 'I was expecting an introduction to the solution, so I'm a little disappointed I didn't get one,' and we agreed to meet again. 😄
No service deck or quote changed hands, but it was a heart-pounding, wonderful meeting that I'll remember for the rest of my life.
I want to hold on to this feeling for as long as I'm doing marketing. 👍
