How the viral ‘Baby Shark’ video created a $400 million business

When Kim Min-seok approved the release of a 90-second clip of a children’s song in June 2016, he had no idea what he was releasing.

It became a global phenomenon with over 16 billion views – YouTube’s most viewed video of all time.

That song was the incredible “Baby Shark.”

not only it Children around the world are fascinated and adults are horrified, It laid the groundwork for Pinkfong’s creators to become a media enterprise worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

“We didn’t expect it to stand out from our other content,” Mr Kim, Pinkfong’s chief executive, told the BBC at the company’s headquarters in Seoul.

“But looking back, it was a major turning point that set the stage for our global journey.”

Pinkfong debuted on the South Korean stock market on Tuesday, with its shares rising more than 9% on its debut, valuing it at more than $400 million (£304 million).

The company was founded in 2010 as SmartStudy to produce digital content for children under 12 years old.

The company has just three employees, including Mr. Kim and Dongwoo Son, the company’s chief technology officer.

“The office was small — even smaller than this,” Mr. King recalled, pointing to the conference room from which he made the call.

The money was so small that “we didn’t even think about wages at the time,” he said through an interpreter.

Pinkfong has gone through several major overhauls, including a shift in focus toward young children.

The company grew to about 100 employees and prioritized simpler, learning-based games and content. “That’s when the baby sharks show up,” Mr. King said.

The company has been called Pinkfong since 2022, a name inspired by a happy and curious fox from its early cartoons.

The company currently has approximately 340 employees and offices in Tokyo, Shanghai and Los Angeles.

“Baby Shark” is believed to have originated in the United States in the 1970s, where it was often sung at children’s summer camps.

Kevin Chew, a media analyst at Nanyang Technological University, said the song, which repeats the phrase “baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo”, is “appealing to children but can be annoying to adults”.

Mr. King is also very aware of how attractive it is.

“It’s like a K-pop song. It’s very fast-paced, very rhythmic and very addictive,” he said, adding that the song has a “chant” effect that makes it easy for children to remember.

But it became an instant hit and only received attention when its dance was featured at children’s events in Southeast Asia.

Videos of children and adults dancing to the song began circulating online, and the video quickly went viral.

Mr King said there was a “festival-like feeling” in the Pinkfong offices when the team saw viewership numbers soar.

In November 2020, the video “Baby Shark” became the most viewed video on YouTube.

In the years after the video was released, it generated about half of the company’s revenue and served as a springboard for new content and merchandise, he said.

But Pinkfong faced a legal challenge in 2019, being accused Plagiarizing works of American composers.

South Korea’s top court dismissed the case as the company argued that its version was derived from a folk song in the public domain.

Mr King said the win gave the company a boost as it listed its shares. He added that the stock market application had been submitted before the verdict was announced.

Min Jung Kim, a business lecturer at Korea University, said Pinkfong’s other franchises, such as Bebefinn and Sealook, are growing rapidly, but the company must prove that its success relies on more than just Baby Shark.

The company’s target audience is a major advantage, she said, because young children tend to watch the same content over and over again.

Kim Min-seok insists his business can surpass Baby Shark, which currently accounts for about a quarter of Pinkfong’s revenue. Meanwhile, Bebefinn has jumped into the lead, generating about 40% of the company’s profits.

One parent told the BBC his family had mixed feelings about the Pinkfong video.

Saleem Nashef, a father of two, said he appreciated the educational quality of the company’s content, but his wife thought “Baby Shark” was “too exciting for kids.”

Still, the viral video was apparently inevitable as his soon-to-be three-year-old daughter was having a Baby Shark-themed birthday party.

Professor Kim said it was still unclear whether Pinkfong could create other characters to match Baby Shark’s commercial appeal.

Mr. King said the company raised nearly $52 million in its initial public offering and plans to use the money to expand its lineup of movies and characters.

The company also aims to become a “technology-driven” content creator, using viewing patterns and other data to shape its new projects.

King said Pinkfong has achieved “what many creators have always dreamed of.”

But now it must show investors that this isn’t just a one-time miracle.