Lotte belatedly signs deal with 'Team Kim'

The Korean national women’s curling team members wave to spectators at the Gangneung Curling Center in Gangwon Province, Feb. 25, after winning a silver medal at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

By Park Jae-hyuk

Lotte Foods has finally signed a sponsorship deal with the Korean national women's curling team members as models for its Uiseong Garlic Ham, the company said Thursday.

The hurriedly arranged signing came after the food business arm of Lotte Group received snowballing public criticism over its decision to parody the women’s curling team skip Kim Eun-jung, using an image of a model wearing glasses similar to the Olympian’s.

However, Lotte’s sincerity is still being questioned as the company has refused to disclose details of the contract, raising speculation the signing was aimed at dodging criticism.

“We could not reveal that we will sponsor the national women’s curling team before signing a contract with them,” a spokeswoman at Lotte Foods told The Korea Times by telephone, confirming the company took down the parody ad from company-run social media channels.

Lotte expressed regret over its parody ad on social media, but the spokeswoman added the food firm had earlier decided to hire the curling team for an endorsement deal and had been in contact with them since mid-February, before posting the exploitative ad.

This was in sharp contrast to similar cases seen from its domestic rivals. The national curling team’s other sponsors, such as Shinsegae Group and Fila, have revealed the sums of money they have donated.

Shinsegae said it has donated 10 billion won ($9.2 million) to the Korea Curling Federation since 2012 and given 240 million won to both the men’s and women’s curling teams to reward them for their Olympic achievements. Fila, which signed a sponsorship contract with the federation in 2012, said it gave 120 million won to the national curling team after the Olympics.

Some critics pointed out the food firm’s short-term contract with the curlers.

Lotte Foods said it will support the female curlers until the end of next year, but the Beijing Winter Olympics will be held in 2022 and the next Asian Winter Games are scheduled for 2021.

LG Electronics, which recently hired the national women’s curling team as spokespersons for its vacuum cleaners, has signed a four-year sponsorship deal with the curling squad.

“It is unusual for us to shoot TV commercials, and most of our deals with other spokespersons expired within months,” the Lotte Foods spokeswoman said. “The two-year sponsorship deal is regarded as a long-term contract for us.”

The national women’s curling team, comprised of coach Kim Min-jung, skip Kim Eun-jung, Kim Kyeong-ae, Kim Seon-yeong, Kim Yeong-mi and Kim Cho-hi, created worldwide sensation during the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, as they garnered Asia’s first silver medal in curling despite the event’s obscurity here.

In particular, four among the five teammates were born in Uiseong, North Gyeongsang Province, and started building their careers as curlers in the southeastern county.

The sleepy town is famous for garlic, so the curlers have often been called the “Garlic Girls.”

Given that Lotte Foods carried out a swift marketing campaign during the Olympics, distributing the garlic ham to Uiseong residents for free when they gathered at a gymnasium to root for their neighbors, fans expected the company would hire the “Garlic Girls” as the product’s spokespersons as soon as the Olympics ended.

The food firm, however, posted the controversial ad last month to promote the garlic ham made with garlic from Uiseong.

Customers criticized Lotte’s decision, saying the nation’s fifth-largest conglomerate ridiculed and exploited the athletes. They said Lotte cashed in on the nation’s curling fever through the parody ad that costs much less than shooting a commercial with the real athletes or sponsoring them.