Let me begin with a short anecdote. In my job, we work with many different client engagements, sometimes working late into the night. When one engagement finishes, more often than not I move straight into the next one with no breaks in between. Scarcely do I, nor my seniors, have enough time for planning work, that they have to find the time to do so outside (or even simultaneously) their current engagements.
Time is a luxury, irrespective of whatever industry you're working in, be it banking, accounting, legal, even idols. I'd love to have a bit of a break between engagements - unfortunately, that's never going to happen outside of me requesting leave. Problem is, idols don't even get to have entitlements like "annual leave" or "sabbaticals". But they're professionals; they're used to it by now. Moving from one event to the next: from four-day concerts, to filming, to another concert tour, and so on. Breaks are even more rare in this industry than others.
So any suggestion that these girls do not have enough time to rehearse for Nagoya Dome needs to consider other factors before making such a statement. Have they considered the following possibilities:
- That Nagoya Dome isn't always available during the dates you, I or management want? There are things called other baseball or sporting matches, other artists' concerts, exhibitions, and so forth. And you can't just change the dates either - contractual agreements will bite you in the ass if that happens, not to mention scheduling conflicts.
- That, if one studiously checked the theater schedules, the theater is closed four days subsequent to Request Hour, buying enough time to fully dedicate themselves to Dome rehearsals? Four days is sufficient - remember, (the first) Tokyo Dome rehearsals lasted for around a week or less before concert date.
- That the idols are professionals (otherwise they wouldn't be in SKE48) and at least for some of the seniors, they should be used to such tight scheduling by now? For the rest, it's a fact of idol life that they have to learn.
- That management isn't so unreasonable as to not hire fully qualified medics and health professionals in case some members cannot handle the intensity of it all? They need to push themselves to the limit, but they're not machines either. And I'm certain part of management's job is to look out for their well-being.
The last thing this group needs are tiger parents wanting only to spoonfeed their kids, making sure they're safe and sound in their baby pram with 10 layers of protection, having no opportunity to experience hardship and pressure and instead blaming on external factors for their kids' problems.
And on that note, might I leave you with this closing food for thought:
Here is a list of all the large public companies SKE48 (solely, with no other sister group) have had major national promotional tie-ups with that management have helped to secure:
- Microsoft Xbox - gaming console sold in the tens of millions worldwide.
- ASBee - one of the largest casual footwear brands in Japan.
- Ajinomoto - major Japanese grocery foodstuff producer, and controls 40% of all MSG product market share worldwide.
- Toyota - largest automaker in Japan, and second largest in the world, with the largest market capitalisation of any listed company domestically.
- Coco Ichibanya - largest Japanese curry franchise, with in excess of 1,200 stores worldwide.
- Samsung Electronics - world's largest electronics and smartphone manufacturer, ahead of Apple. Please also note that the Note 3 is currently the best-selling Samsung smartphone in Japan as of writing.
Can you still say, with a straight face, that management have given no opportunities for SKE48 to market themselves nationally? Can you still say that AKS is intentionally squandering SKE48 in favour of other sister groups?
No comments:
Post a Comment