LINE FRIENDS, one of the world’s fastest growing global character brands, released the first official episode of ‘BT21 UNIVERSE’ through its official social media channels on April 4. The video immediately went viral among millennials from all around the world, recording over 1 million views less than a day and ranking #3 most watched video at YouTube.
The ‘BT21 UNIVERSE’ consists of 9 episodes and features BTS members gathered around, using their imaginations to discuss the new characters and stories of BT21 – a new character IP created in close collaboration between LINE FRIENDS and BTS. The teaser videos released on March 27 and 29 prior to the first episode already drew massive attention, reaching almost 2 million views in total in which fans expressed high levels of affection and expectation towards the globally loved BT21. Not only that, on April 1, a few rough sketches which drop a hint about the ‘BT21 UNIVERSE’ were revealed at the official Twitter BT21 account in celebration of the April Fools’ Day and the content were rapidly shared and spread, reaching over 6,000 comments within an hour.
In the recently released first episode, BTS members disclosed the first topic, ‘friends and family of BT21’ and BTS members expressed enthusiasm when RM suggested taking the time to create the future of BT21. Then, they unfolded new stories of RJ, KOYA and SHOOKY – the characters which BTS took part in the entire process of creation. Jin disclosed RJ’s family background and the name of parents in a witty way, RM shared a story of how KOYA became a friend with a ‘leaf’ and Suga told the past story of SHOKY’s family and friends before SHOOKY met TATA.
The millennials from all over the world have expressed great interest in the first episode of the BT21 UNIVERSE that unveiled exciting stories about the past of BT21 characters, featuring the fun and creative processes of BTS members. They commented, “The BT21 UNIVERSE is amazing. I can’t stop watching amusing stories of BT21 presented by BTS”, “The BT21 UNIVERSE sparks curiosity just like Marvel Cinematic Universe. I look forward to seeing how the BT21 UNIVERSE will unfold the stories behind BT21 characters.” Not only that, the BT21 UNIVERSE has prompted a lot of interpretations and guesses of the yet-to-be released characters and stories online.
In the ‘BT21 UNIVERSE’ series, LINE FRIENDS will share the behind-the-scene clips of BTS members discussing the past, future, family, rivals and friends of the BT21 characters through the official social media channels every week until May. Following the <Family and Friends of BT21 1> that was released on April 4, Jungkook, V, J-Hope and Jimin will introduce the past stories of COOKY, TATA, MANG and CHIMMY in the next week’s episode.
“LINE FRIENDS launched BT21 in 2017 through a year-long collaboration with global artist BTS and it garnered unprecedented wave of popularity from the millennials all around the world in such a short period of time. The release of the ‘BT21 UNIVERSE’ is particularly meaningful, because it is beyond a one-time new character development process and it unfolds the universe as the characters grow and develop, breaking from the conventional characters”, said LINE FRIENDS.
LINE FRIENDS is planning to hold a special promotion via social media channels for customers in April, in which they can participate in creating characters. This is one of LINE FRIENDS’s continuous efforts to interact and engage with BT21 customers through wide range of activities.
BT21 is a new IP created as the first project of ‘FRIENDS CREATORS’, which is a creative strategy to develop a new kind of character IP based on the uniqueness of global artists and creative capabilities of LINE FRIENDS. In 2017, LINE FRIENDS released a total of eight BT21 characters after a year-long collaboration with BTS and it has grown into a globally loved character, garnering remarkable achievements of more than 28 million sticker downloads and more than 3.3 billion Twitter exposures.