According to a recent report by Ten Asia, the NewJeans group recently expressed its intention to directly sign a bilateral contract with the global luxury watch brand O, through the manager of ADOR Company, identified as A. (O is predicted to be Omega - the brand that just announced Danielle as its new ambassador).
Manager A is said to have contacted the brand and begun discussing a direct contract with NewJeans. In addition, it was also revealed that NewJeans had contacted another luxury brand through another former ADOR manager, identified as B.
At the press conference announcing the termination of their contracts with ADOR (from November 29), NewJeans announced that they will minimize the harm to advertisers by continuing to comply with existing agreements. Their intention was to ensure that the advertisements signed before they announced the termination of the contract would be carried out without any problems.
However, NewJeans' efforts to seek new contracts through ADOR employees have caused controversy. Industry insiders say that NewJeans' pursuit of a new contract with employees is still paid by ADOR, while announcing that it has terminated the contract with ADOR, which is a contradictory act.
When ADOR discovered NewJeans' actions, they immediately took control and temporarily terminated manager A's employment. In addition, the company informed O and another luxury brand that signing a two-way contract with NewJeans would violate their exclusive contract.
According to Ten Asia, this situation has further destabilized the advertising industry, as brands fear potential lawsuits from ADOR if they follow NewJeans' unilateral actions.
The current standard exclusive contract of the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism requires all entertainment activities of artists to be carried out through their agency.
During the contract period, artists cannot negotiate agreements on their own without the approval of their agency.
If a third party actively participates in the artist's breach of contract, they may also face legal liability.
An industry insider pointed out: "I don't understand why they are rushing to make promotional deals or create individual accounts, when they can wait calmly, in the situation of lawsuits going on.
Advertising is the most sensitive issue in the industry and they seem to be acting too hastily."
Previously, 5 NewJeans members (Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin, Hyein) created a new Instagram account called jeanzforfree, to interact with fans, replacing the private platform Phoning that they used to use (owned by ADOR and HYBE).
However, ADOR responded that the 5 female idols had arbitrarily created new accounts and did not discuss them with the company. ADOR asked NewJeans to resume operations on the pre-existing application and account.
