Mai Nguyen NewJeans has proven to be an unstoppable force. Less than a year into their debut, the quintet has infiltrated the minds of pop lovers worldwide with earworm after earworm like “Hype Boy,” “Ditto,” and “OMG,” each accompanied by viral dance routines. Their popularity will take them stateside in August to become the first K-pop girl group to perform at Chicago music festival, Lollapalooza. Making good on their meteoric rise, the group has also effectively translated this success into brand deals including ambassadorships for McDonald’s Korea and luxury brands like Burberry, Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vuitton.
In their latest brand collaboration, NewJeans teams up with Coca-Cola to release their first ever promotional single, “Zero.” The song has NewJeans’ signature R&B pop sound all over it that one might not realize it’s a brand song until the chorus hits, making it everything a promotional single could hope to be. With that being said, the chorus is incredibly straightforward: “Coca-Cola is tasty, Coca-Cola is tasty / See you lookin’, catch it / Here’s your Cola / See you lookin’, catch it / Here’s your Cola.” But combine that with the pop group delivering those lines to a catchy and highly recognizable tune in Korea, and it won’t be easy for a Korean listener to forget the song. For those who didn’t catch it, the chorus melody is reminiscent of a phrase spoken in Korea’s version of the game, Red Light, Green Light, which had its own time in the global spotlight in Netflix’s Squid Game. (Some people have even made a one-hour loop of the phrase on YouTube.) Only a day after release, the music video has over 6.7 million views and is #23 on Trending for Music on YouTube as of press.
