aespa's Winter overthrows K-pop queens BLACKPINK in October Brand Reputation Rankings

aespa's Winter SYNK DIVE concept photo (Image via Twitter/@aespa_official)
aespa's Winter SYNK DIVE concept photo (Image via Twitter/@aespa_official)

Monster rookie group aespa's Winter has overthrown BLACKPINK members to take the crown for October 2021’s individual girl group member Brand Reputation Rankings. The Korean Business Research Institute released the rankings on October 17.

October’s rankings are surprising as aespa, who hasn’t even completed a year as an idol group, overthrew BLACKPINK in the ratings. Out of the top six ranks, aespa claims four seats, including the No. 1 rank.


aespa's Winter tops October 2021 Individual K-pop Girl Group Member Brand Reputation Rankings

The Research Institute releases monthly reputation rankings that show an idol’s popularity in the South Korean entertainment industry. It also lists phrases that have been searched the most by the member's names, along with a positive-negative analysis.

The Korea Business Research Institute calculates rankings based on various factors such as media interest (news, marketing), consumer (brands/product consumption) participation, communication (fan/public communication) and community awareness (how much they’re spoken about on social media).

The Brand Reputation Rankings are based on big data collected from September 17 to October 16. Based on multiple aspects, aespa’s Winter topped the list with 600k more index points than BLACKPINK Jennie, who stood firm in her second spot.

In October’s ranking, aespa’s Winter took the first spot, jumping six ranks for a 72.21% rise. Her Brand Reputation Index for the month is 3,889,780. ‘Youtube’, ‘Kwangya’s daughter’ and ‘Savage’ are the high-ranking phrases related to her, whereas her high-ranking keywords are ‘chic, ‘powerful’ and ‘appear’. She even scored incredibly well in the positivity-negativity index, scoring 81.98% positive reactions.

Second and third in line are BLACKPINK’s Jennie and Lisa with 3,273,660 and 3,212,231 index points respectively. Jennie’s Brand Reputation Ranking fell by 26.25% compared to September's rankings, and Lisa’s fell 40.13%.

On fourth, fifth and sixth ranks are aespa’s Karina, Giselle and Ningning. Karina came pretty close to Lisa, with her index of 3,212,053. Giselle followed with a reputation index of 2,185,354 and Nigning with an index of 1,702,907.

BLACKPINK’s Jisoo took the seventh rank, while Red Velvet’s Joy, MAMAMOO’s Hwasa and LOONA’s Chuu took up the eighth, ninth and tenth ranks respectively.

Winter is now the third 4th generation K-pop idol to rank No. 1 on the individual girl group member reputation rankings, after aespa's Karina and ITZY's Yeji.

In other news, SM Entertainment’s aespa has been taking over the world with their first mini-album Savage. There are already multiple discussions online about the group being the ‘new BLACKPINK’.