It doesn’t matter if you are a fan of K-pop or not. This weekend it was almost impossible not to hear about the return concert BTS held in Seoul. The city was practically taken over. Streets closed, hotels full, thousands of people gathering around one single event.
What caught my attention was not only the size of the concert, but the context. The show took place at Gwanghwamun Square, one of the most symbolic locations in South Korea, a place connected to history, identity, and national pride. This was not just a music event. It felt like a cultural moment. And that made me curious.
I wouldn’t call myself a fan, but whenever something moves people at that scale, I want to understand why. Not from the perspective of entertainment, but from the perspective of connection. So I started listening more carefully to the songs, reading the lyrics in English so I could understand what they say, and looking at the references behind them.
BTS is usually put in the box of “K-pop”, but if you actually pay attention, what they do is a mix of styles, personal stories, and cultural references. Their latest album carries the name Arirang, one of the most well-known Korean folk songs, and some of the tracks include references to Korean history and identity. One song even mentions Kim Gu, a Korean independence activist.
You don’t need to understand every reference to notice something important. There is intention behind it, a story and a strong sense of identity. And that is why it connects.
When something comes from a real place like culture, values and personal experience, people feel it. Even if they cannot explain why, they feel that there is depth there and that creates a different kind of connection: stronger, more loyal and more emotional.
And this doesn’t happen only with BTS. It happens with the music we keep coming back to in every culture. Think about the songs that stay with you for years. Very often, they are not the ones that followed a trend but the ones that carry a story, a moment in time, a feeling that people recognize as real because they can relate to it.
Every culture has this kind of music: songs that come from lived experience, that shape your identity, that bring people together around something they feel belongs to them. That’s the role of culture.
Culture is the foundation that influences everything: how we see the world, how we connect with each other, what we believe in, what we trust, and what feels meaningful to us. And when something is built from that place, the connection goes far beyond entertainment.
This is where this becomes interesting from a marketing perspective.
Because what we call marketing today is very often disconnected from culture, disconnected from identity, disconnected from lived experience. Most of it is built on copying. Copying formats, trends, copying what seems to work for someone else. Or simply asking AI to create a website, write the content, design the strategy, generate the posts. And there is nothing wrong with using tools. I use them too. But tools work with what already exists. They take what has been done before, what has worked before, what has been written before, and they rearrange it.
So what you get often looks correct, clean, professional and well structured. However, very often, it feels empty. Because there is no story behind it, no roots or reason why this exists, other than the fact that it should exist. And people feel that, even if they don’t say it. It lacks the connecting "feeling".
When I look at something like the BTS comeback, what I see is not only a successful concert, but a very strong marketing lesson.
They are not trying to fit into a format, to look like everyone else, or even like the old version of themselves.They keep going back to who they are, to their roots, and from there they keep adding the new version of themselves as they grow and evolve.
And that is why their fans keep coming back and grow, because they grow with them, building a strong and lasting connection.
And this is something every entrepreneur can learn from. Marketing becomes powerful when it is not only about visibility, but about identity. When it reflects what matters to you, shows your perspective, shares your story and not just your offer.
Not everyone will like it or understand it, and that is not the goal. However, the people who do will "get it", they are your audience. So maybe the real question is not “What should I post next?” Maybe the real question is
What matters to me at this moment? What am I learning, building, questioning, changing? What story am I living that my work can reflect?
Because the things that last — in music, in business, in communities — are often created by people who don’t have everything figured out, but who are willing to communicate who they are as they grow, as they change, as they become. And that is something no format, no trend, and no tool can do for you.