Kakao Entertainment announced on the 8th that it successfully concluded the ‘Story Creators Day’ (SCD) event targeting webtoon writers at the DoubleTree by Hilton Seoul Pangyo on the 3rd.
The Story Creators Day was an event for webtoon writers following the ‘Kakao Entertainment Story Business Day 2024’ (SBD 2024) held in April for webtoon and web novel content providers (CP companies). Kakao Entertainment has consistently held offline events for writers starting from the next webtoon, and this event, held about 4 years after COVID-19, recorded even higher attendance rates. An event called ‘Story Creators Day’ will also be held in Busan on the 12th for writers residing in local areas.
On that day, about 250 writers, including Kang Full of ‘Muvning,’ Jangi of ‘Gyeong-iro-un So-mun,’ and Hong of ‘Seungriho,’ participated. The event started with opening remarks from Park Jong-chul, head of the story business division, and Park Jung-seo, executive vice president, and featured presentation sessions on webtoon business strategy, intellectual property (IP) secondary creation business, IP marketing strategy, and legal lectures, as well as time for communication between PDs and writers and lucky draw events.
Kakao Entertainment received high responses from the writers by sharing its distinctive competitiveness and possibilities, newly revamped story business strategies, and providing substantive legal knowledge helpful for activities such as copyright infringement and plagiarism during the event. Park Jong-chul, the representative, emphasized the strengthening of original webtoon competitiveness for synergy between Kakao Page and Kakao Webtoon platforms, active support for the global supply of IPs and secondary creations, and the enhancement of platform operation strategy through the expansion of the application of the ‘Helix’ artificial intelligence (AI). He stated, “Kakao Entertainment’s story division, which has returned to a growth trend as of the fourth quarter of last year, is integrating IPs, platforms, and operations this year to increase momentum, based on the high-quality content created with long-standing writers since the era of Next Webtoon.”
Detailed explanations of the story business direction disclosed by Park, the head, were provided during the presentation session. At the lucky draw event, which was the highlight of the event, author Kang Full participated directly and received a warm response. Kang Full said, “Since writers are ultimately close to individual work, today’s event was an important opportunity to deliver various important tips, including what the serialization sites do, and to communicate with PDs. The high participation rate and attentive attitude of the writers were very impressive.”
Kakao Entertainment plans to continue unveiling a substantial lineup from the second half of the year to enhance its original webtoon competitiveness. Prior to this, on the 2nd, Kakao Webtoon announced a large number of works in the initial lineup for the first half of the year.