I recently read a book titled This is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See by Seth Godin, and I'd like to recommend it to you. Fandom starts with a story. Put a story into the products and services. Find those who support our products and take action, no matter how small it may seem. Every little action counts, and they all add up to a new market opportunity. The number does not matter. Whether it is 50 or 100, fandom can start with a small number of people. The success of the famous BTS is greatly attributed to its fandom, ARMY. The story of how it became a global pop sensation enchanted many individuals, and together, they grew into a big fandom. We can also do the same – fascinate customers with our products and story and build a fandom of our own.

 Fandom is not only for young brands. Recently, KFC started selling off fried chicken skin, and it has hit the big time. No matter what the brand's history has been or what industry it is engaged in, fandom can come into being as long as a brand knows its customers. JCPenney is an example of how a brand failed because of the misunderstanding of its fandom. JCPenney used to be known for its generous discount offers. It issued coupons through weekend papers, and customers enjoyed cutting out coupons and keeping them in their wallet. They proudly told their own tale of making good purchases using coupons, and by doing so, they created a fun and unique customer experience for themselves. In other words, these bargain hunters together formed a fandom. However, a former Apple retail chief arrived as the new CEO and declared a new fair and square pricing strategy. He ended coupons and sales, and instead proposed to offer products at reasonable prices. He had good intentions, but JCPenney fans were completely different from Apple fans. Customers loved coupon collecting, and once the coupons were gone, they left the brand in droves, and eventually, JCPenney was thrown into crisis. That company's story reminds us that creating fandom starts with the understanding of one's customers.

 Let's look deeper into our fans to understand how our products are appealing to them. Because all brands are different, and so are their fans, we must not push the same view or take the same approach. There are many things that we can use to attract our fans. We can appeal to those who love architecture and perhaps deliver an almost inexhaustible story of the plants we use. This month, we will open Amorepacific Botanic Garden to share the stories of the plants we have collected and cultivated for decades. Our Pink Run campaign could help find an answer to concerns we have had in relation with women, and through the Mise-en-scène Short Film Festival that we have sponsored for over 20 years, we can deliver our story.

 Modernist painter Park Su-geun once contributed artwork to our beauty magazine Hwajanggye in the 1950s. There is also the ongoing Barbara Kruger exhibition and many other stories about arts. Likewise, we already have in hand all the stories and materials that can fascinate customers. All that we have to do is be honest and transparent with customers, and in that way, we will be able to create our fandom. Let's take this opportunity and knock it over.

 The second point to consider is that less is more. This literally means that doing less of something is more effective than doing too much of it. Talk about things that stop us from being creative and figure out what we should or what we could do to do away with such hindrances. Think about ways to break free of bureaucracy. Find and uproot any redundant bureaucratic chain of command whether it is involved with evaluation, management or administration. This is what I would particularly like to ask of our team leaders. Keep your eyes open to the younger generation and get bureaucratic obstacles out of your way. If you have any opinions or ideas, please don't hesitate to come forward.

 Keep SKUs to a minimum. It will help brands show their true identity and win over customers. To truly do less and achieve more, draw up a list of our problems and cut them down one by one. It will buy us enough time to interact with our customers, build up our fandom and turn our HQ into a cradle of creativity.

 The third is dynamic capability, or perhaps it can be referred to as change capability. This is the capability of an organization to optimally and purposefully address changing environments. Japan had been in a long recession that is well known as the "lost two decades." It took an astronomical amount of money to break through the recession, but even still, the end result was not good. However, through its dynamic capability, Japan's economy has recently bounced back. Japan plunged into crisis because it stayed old, with outdated views against the decline of the birth rate and subsequent aging population. It has since, however, shed this old way of thinking and taken on a whole new perspective regarding changes around the world. It has changed the way people work through the Act on Work Style Reform and the system for supporting the settlement of immigrants. It has adopted a new way of addressing changes in society, and the results are now coming to fruition.

 A few weeks ago, I read a book titled Childlessness around the World by Cho Young-tae, which discussed the low birth rate. The total fertility rate of South Korea has fallen to a record low of 0.98, which means that less than one baby is likely to be born from a married couple. The government has put significant financial resources to raise the birth rate but apparently with little success. The reason behind this is that even though the entire society is shrinking, the family and birth rate policy hangs onto the past.

 Of course, we should learn from the past, but we must also adopt a more creative way of thinking and use our dynamic capability to adequately and purposefully go with the flow of the world. Senses change around the world, and we need to put ourselves in the shoes of our customers and fully use the inherent dynamic capability to boost our evolution.