It takes more than average to do marketing in Korea. Korean marketers don't miss — ever. These three campaigns turned a fake account swap, a beauty collab's behind-the-scenes footage, and an unlikely brand pairing into moments people actually stopped to watch.
Cosmax is a B2B cosmetics ODM company — it manufactures products for other brands. Skinfood, on the other hand, is a consumer-facing beauty brand. On April 1st, the two swapped Instagram accounts, each posting content on the other's page.
On Skinfood's account, a Cosmax marketer launched a "Carrot Pad" giveaway with the caption "My account now, I do what I want." The comment sections filled up with mock outrage and inside jokes — "Nobody even knows Cosmax lol," "Don't care 쓰," "Take off those sunglasses" — the kind of public back-and-forth that's impossible to scroll past.
Memes and roasts all day — but beneath the chaos, there's a clear strategy at work: capture attention with two brands publicly clashing, cross-pollinate audiences so each brand's followers get exposed to the other, reinforce brand identity by playfully roasting each other's products until people remember what each one actually does, and then make the real move — after all the chaos, reveal a genuine product collaboration. The entertainment was the funnel. The collab was the conversion.
Duolingo x CJ CheilJedang — a language app meets a Korean food brand. Duolingo is known for its fast, trendy marketing that always stays culturally relevant. CJ CheilJedang is one of Korea's biggest food and consumer goods companies. A language-learning app and a food brand aren't an obvious pairing, but on April 1st, Duolingo's iconic owl character showed up to "introduce" fake food products — blending both brands into one absurd, perfectly on-brand moment.
When two beauty brands collaborate, even the behind-the-scenes becomes content. Centellian24 and Clio dropped a vlog, "How Beauty Brands Collaborate," using a time-stamped format where each team documents their day.
The collaboration itself is interesting, but what stands out is how the process becomes the content. When marketers come together, even the making-of becomes marketing.
Three brands, three different tactics — a fake account takeover, a culturally sharp mashup, and a documented collaboration — but the same underlying instinct. Korean marketers don't treat a campaign as a single post. They treat it as a moment, and they make sure nobody misses it.