With the list of over thirty collaborations and endorsement contracts with reputable brands
in various fields, it’s not an exaggeration at all to say NewJeans is the new phenomenon
of Kpop.
However, it is also for this lightning-speed development that the group, and ADOR to be
more exact, starts to raise speculation about using money to buy their way up rather than
using real talents.
First is the allegation regarding NewJeans’ members respectively becoming ambassadors
of different luxury brands.
While the accusation of ADOR’s using their money to get NewJeans the ambassador titles
has been circulating the Internet for months, it has only peaked when Danielle was chosen
as the dubbing voice for Ariel in the live-action of The Little Mermaid.
According to netizens, there are two main reasons making Danielle the total unfit for
the role: her odd pronunciation and vocal capability and her noticeable lacking competence
compared to LAPILLUS’s Chanty, who has long proven herself a perfect fit for this role.
Since the crucial criteria of being a qualified dubber for The Little Mermaid, a movie placing
a huge emphasis on the main character’s singing capability, are having standard pronunciation
and professionally-trained vocals, many believed Danielle shouldn’t have been chosen because
she failed at both criteria.
Born and brought up in Australia, Danille’s pronunciation has a strong “r” and a frequent
inflection at the end of sentences, which frequently makes them all sound like questions.
As this way of pronuncing has been part of Danielle, it later gets transferred to the
way she speaks Korean, making her voice oddly high-pitched and badly out of sync with the
standard Korean pronunciation.
The criticism was so heavy that on theqoo, there is an extremely long thread dedicated
only to bashing Danielle’s being the dubber for The Little Mermaid.
The more netizens looked at her, the more they felt like the whole thing was a total
rip-off for professional dubbers.
The credibility of Disney Korea was also brought into question as never once have netizens
thought they would join hands with ADOR to choose Danielle solely for her great influence
on young audiences and overlooked her questionable capabilities.
If Disney had really needed a gen4 idol for this role rather than a professionally trained
voice actor, many believed they could have gone for LAPILLUS’s Chanty, who not only
has proven her powerful vocal capability through the cover Part Of Your World but also has
a Disney-esque visual.
Vocal-wise, Chanty was said to have a powerful and crystal-clear tone and in the cover for
Part Of Your World, her belting and high-note techniques were also highly regarded as they
sounded natural and hypnotic.
Appearance-wise, the biracial beauty harmoniously blending the best features of the West and
the East made her even more of a perfect fit for a Western-based movie entering the Asian
market.
Putting Danielle’s performance on the scale with Chanty’s, her lack stood out even more
as her vocal was too thin and high notes were too strained.
Her techniques in processing the song were also said to be on the amateur level, altogether
consolidating the accusation of ADOR’s using the backdoor to get her this position.
Especially when listening to the last high part where Danielle had to belt for the high
notes, some believed Disney must have used software to extend her vibration and breath
control as they were too weak.
The accusation about ADOR’s using money to seal the deal with Disney and steal the
spot that was supposed to belong to Chanty was so severe that Disney had to step in and
speak up on the same announcement day, explaining that the company completely based their decision
on fair judgment.
After rounds of random testing for Danielle’s vocal, they believed she was the perfect fit
for Ariel.
Personally, I take side with Disney this time and also think netizens are wrongly bashing
Danielle because one, she has proven herself a competent vocalist through the fact that
she was chosen to cover Into The New World cover with recognized Kpop vocalists: VIVIZ’s
Eunha, Yena, and WJSN’s Yeon-jung.
Besides, she is seemingly only caught up in this allegation as people have already held
unfavorable impressions toward NewJeans regarding their ambassador titles and their record achievements
on Spotify.
So what’s with their previous collaboration that got on people’s nerves so much?
According to netizens, Danielle’s latest contract with Disney Korean was just the last
straw leading to explosively negative reactions toward ADOR.
Actually, their calling the company the Dealer Goddess had more to do with the NewJeans’
ambassador title incidents as well as their performances on Spotify.
Regarding the ambassador tiles of the members, many believed this was just a result of ADOR’s
money to give their artists unfair advantages because NewJeans' mismatched energy with the
brands they ambassador was too apparent.
For example, when Haerin was assigned to be the Global Ambassador for Dior, she clashed
with backlash since netizens believed she didn’t give off the signature elegant DIOR
vibe.
She was even said to look unbearably try-hard as her naive teenage face gave off the feeling
of a kid putting on her mother’s clothes to attend an event also exclusive to adults.
However, the biggest reason making netizens believe Haerin’s title was the result of
ADOR’s masterful dealing skills still came down to how DIOR briefly took down the tweet
announcing her House Ambassador title after one-day of posting.
That was not to mention how she was only referred to as the “Dior House ambassador” but
on NewJeans’ Instagram, ADOR straight up called Haerin the brand’s Global Ambassador,
ironically turning their own artist into the bullseye of criticism.
Under their post on Instagram, tons of people flocked in just to demand clarification on
why there was a difference between ADOR and DIOR’s announcements.
Those who had had enough of ADOR’s alleged manipulative acts even asked the company to
stop attaching the “global” designation in Haerin’s title because it denoted the
significance of the real title as well as the values of those who held it.
On Haerin’s birthday, the fact that she only received a bouquet with no hand-written
letter from DIOR also consolidated the alleged attempt of ADOR to buy the title for Haerin.
This is ironically also the case the other three members have been facing and according
to netizens, if that didn’t perfectly justify the reason ADOR was dubbed the Dealer Goddess
of Kpop then they wouldn't know what would.
For example, when ADOR shared that Minji had become the Newest Brand Ambassador of Chanel
for three categories: fashion, beauty and jewelry, it turned out that she only held
this title for CHANEL KOREA, which explained why CHANEL made no official announcements
about this on their social platforms.
Similar to the poor treatment of DIOR to Haerin on her birthday, the way Minji was treated
by CHANEL on this special occasion also made people confused.
The bunny balloons the brand sent to Minji were also deflating and regarding the cakes,
many said they looked like being randomly bought at the last minute.
Danielle’s relationship with BURBERRY was even more confusing as despite ADOR’s announcement
on Instagram that she was the newest Global Ambassador, BURBERRY didn’t say a word about
this.
When the brand held their Autumn/Winter 2023 show at London Fashion Week, Danielle was
not only absent but also remained silent about this important event.The meager bouquet sent
to Danielle on her birthday was believed to be another sign of BURBERRY’s not bothering
to recognize her as part of their family.
The treatments of GUCCI for Hanni and LOUIS VUITTON for Hyein were a little better but
it’s still hard to deny they were too young to take on such important titles.
That’s why whenever the girls put on designer items, netizens said they would always look
like forcing on their mothers’ clothes just to satisfy the obsession with luxurious items.
NewJeans’ achievements music-wise have also gained bad attention after netizens gathered
evidence pointing at ADOR’s manipulative acts in promoting the act.
Things all started after people noticed that on Music Bank, NewJeans, an act whose album
sales amounted to over 700k, had one thousand times lower fan-vote points than a group that
only sold 120k copies.
On MuBeat, the number of votes for NewJeans when it came to reputation coverage of Kpop
female acts was also unusually low, making them have even lower ranks than KEP1ER, ITZY,
and NMIXX.
However, in Spotify, their release DITTO was said to break records here and there, hitting
over 1.9 million accumulated streams on the debut day, quickly rocketing to over 300 million
streams just after the fourth month and even beating BLACKPINK’s Ice Cream to become
the most listened song of Kpop girl group in US Spotify.
This prompted eagle-eyed netizens to roll up their sleeves to find out the truth and
in no time, it was revealed that to push DITTO, ADOR had bought over 500 playlists to increase
the playlist reach of DITTO, helping it reach 76 million discoveries within fifteen days
only.
FYI, Playlist Reach is the total number of followers of all playlists featuring a song
from that artist.
So for example, if an artist was added to 10 playlists and each playlist had 100,000
followers then the total playlist reach would be 1 million.
There was also solid evidence about ADOR’s manipulative act as whenever a song finished
playing, the next would somehow be NewJeans’s DITTO.
Since this marketing technique was rather new, it was first said to only be a malicious
rumor by antifans.
However, as Spotify later confirmed artists could pay to leverage their Discovery Mode,
which was exactly what ADOR used for DITTO, it turns out that the rumor was true.
After doing tons of research for this video, I’ve realized that while netizens had their
valid points to say ADOR and NewJeans are the Dealer Goddesses of Kpop, I personally
don’t think the group’s reputation is that big of a bubble and in both domestic
and foreign markets, they are still the publics’ pinks regardless of what antifans say.
Sure thing that there must have been something fishy about the ambassador titles because
most of the time, only ADOR made the announcements while the partnered brands remained silent
from start to finish.
However, it was extremely nonsense to use this as the main reason for saying NewJeans’
reputation was the result of manipulation as in the largest streaming platform of China,
QQ Music, NewJeans was also the only Kpop act to enter the Top 10 most famous artists
in 2023’s first quarter.
While DITTO managed to have such great streamings thanks to Playlist Reach purchased by ADOR,
there was no proof about the company doing the same for Hype Boy.
However, this song still secured its spot on Global 200 of Billboard in 36 consecutive
weeks and if this wasn’t the obvious sign of NewJeans’ massive influence then I don’t
know what would.
On all big social platforms: Spotify, Youtube, Instagram and TikTok, the most followed accounts
are all those of NewJeans and even on MelOn Weekly, NewJeans is also the only gen4 act
to enter the Top 5.
Even ZERO, their song to promote Coke Zero, also struck impressive achievements: a song
with the highest number of unique listeners in the first 24 hours on MelOn 2023, a song
with the highest debut rank on MelOn Daily Chart until now and on Spotify, Zero also
debuted sixth on the daily music chart of Korean Spotify, altogether proving how NewJeans
is the legit public’s pick.
Besides, while I admit that the Ambassador titles controversy was something worth the
discussion, it still makes no sense to accuse NewJeans of faking their entire reputation
solely based on this incident.
Still, I’m curious as to what you think so let’s share your thoughts in the comment
section below.