“Chex Green Onion Flavor” is one of the examples of advertising with a unique background story made by funsumers.  Do you know the presidential election in the Chex Land where chocolate flavor “Checky” and green onion flavor “Chaka” ran for? Kellogg, who said he would put out a new product as the president-elect, openly made Chaka (green onion flavor) a bad image, directing Checky (chocolate flavor) to win the election. Netizens who saw this unfairness voted for Chaka. In a flurry, Kellogg made Chaka’s votes invalid so that Checky won. Netizens began to call this election “Chex Land rigged election,” and on the 16th anniversary of the rigged election, it became a hot topic again as netizens shared pictures that parodied the situation at that time. As Chaka was receiving attention again, Kellogg reintroduced green onions flavor in response to the netizens’ attention.

 Although funsumers felt the background of the release of welsh onion flavor was also fun, Kellogg made consumers laugh once more by inserting various fun memes in the advertisement. Another example is Rain’s song “GGANG.” In the early days of its release, “GGANG (2017.12.)” was not as successful as his previous songs because of its esoteric dance and lyrics. However, from the first half of 2019, satirical comments in the official music video were consumed in Graphic Interchange Formats (GIFs), and the “GGANG Challenge,” which mimics his dance, began popular again. Also, Rain’s flexible handling of the situation caught the attention of netizens. He said “Three GGANG a day is basic.” and “I can’t give up fancy light.” on the public TV. His song climbed back in the music charts due to his self-deprecating humor. His joke was a fun marketing element, too. “GGANG” made us laugh by going into the advertisement of shrimp-ggang which fits well with its name. 

 Famous lines such as “Go Double.” (Tazza) and “Saddala.” (Yain Era) have also become popular again over time as netizens actively consume memes and GIFs. From these examples, we could see the factor that makes consumers laugh is “Familiarity × familiarity,” a collaboration between things that are already familiar to us. In fact, 43% of the respondents in a survey conducted on our campus answered “Familiar” and “Something used often.” for the question, “If you are willing to consume anything among fun products, what is the reason?” Binggrae’s “The Duke of Onte Melona Bour-jean” is the character that is inspired from the lines, “Melona when coming,” which we often use, and this can be seen as such an example.

 The origin of the phrase, "Melona when coming," appreaed In 2014. A woman accidentally sent a message to a delivery man, saying, "Buy Melona when you come," which should have been ssent to her sister. But It was actually delivered to the woman as theh delivery man really bought Melona to her. Afterward it used to mean 'getting something for me on the way home."

 As funsumers are willing to spend money for fun, companies also react to this attention by providing secondary contents with fun elements. There are a lot of reviews for those who are still hesitant to spend for fun. In the survey, 88% of the respondents answered “Yes” to the question, “Have you ever seen secondary contents (e.g. YouTube videos, GIFs, etc.) of funny products?” Companies can get promotional effects from these contents, and it’s like killing two birds with one stone. Fun marketing presented us with a new consumption indicator, the cost-to-fun ratio (in Korean, gajaembi).

 In the survey, we also asked “Do you think ‘gajaembi’ is a reasonable consumption standard?” 45% said “No” and 55% said “Yes.” This new indicator may seem to be an unreasonable consumption standard for people who still feel strange about consumption like this. However, there is another view that consumers are wise because they have a great sense of satisfaction and happiness from their consumption.