WEBTOON: Unveiling its Tenacity as the Leading Webcomics Platform in France
WEBTOON: Unveiling its Tenacity as the Leading Webcomics Platform in France
- WEBTOON, France's No. 1 webcomics platform, participated for the second year in a row in the "Japan Expo" held in Paris, France from the 13th to the 16th of this month, captivating the interest of visitors with various interactive events and a colorful large booth utilizing digital signage.
- “Toon Filter” that enables users to transforms into a webcomics character was popular, and WEBTOON also showed off its technology as a storytech platform.
- The autograph session of a local French webcomics artist drew a large crowd. WEBTOON plans to continue to invest in expanding the French webcomics ecosystem.
- Collaborating with a French publisher on a webcomic book publishing as part of a localization strategy
(WEBTOON – July 17, 2023) WEBTOON, the global leader in storytech platforms, proved its presence as the most prominent webcomics platform in France at the largest pop culture festival in Paris, France.
WEBTOON, the leading webcomics platform in France, participated in the "Japan Expo" held in Paris, France from the 13th to the 16th of this month. For the second year in a row, WEBTOON participated in the festival with a variety of experiential events utilizing its famous titles and a colorful large booth with digital signage, grabbing the attention of visitors to the event.
WEBTOON has been operating the French-language service since December 2019. According to the mobile app market data analysis platform [data.ai] (http://data.ai), WEBTOON’s French service ranks first among French webcomics apps in terms of both revenue and monthly active users as of July.
Japan Expo is a large cultural festival held annually in Paris since 1999. Since last year, the festival has changed its format from introducing only Japanese pop culture, such as Japanese manga, Japanese anime, Japanese games, and Japanese music, to include pop culture from countries other than Japan, such as Korea, the United States, Europe, and Africa. WEBTOON was the only webcomics platform in the world to have a booth at last year's Expo and actively promoted webcomics to the French locals.
Unlike last year's event, which focused on promoting the WEBTOON brand and digital comics format that were unfamiliar to Europeans, this year's event featured a variety of attractions and experiences for visitors to experience the various webcomic titles from Korea and France.
In particular, the “Tear-off Poster” and “Toon Filter” were very popular. About 15,000 freebies, including tarpaulin bags with characters from popular webcomics and tote bags with the official WEBTOON logo, were also snapped up quickly.
“Tear Off Poster” is an event where visitors can tear off large posters featuring webcomics and take them home. WEBTOON provided posters for seven titles, including five Korean titles popular in France: <The Boy of Death>, <I'm the Queen in This Life>, <Teenage Mercenary>, <Doom Breaker>, and <The Return of Blossoming Blade>, as well as English original webtoon <Lore Olympus> and French original webtoon <Because I can't love you>.
"Toon Filter", which allows users to transform into a character from a webcomic, was also very popular. Developed by WEBTOON, Toon Filter is a technology that uses deep learning technology to transform a user’s image into a webcomic character in real-time. Toon Filter at this event featured characters from four titles, including <The Boy of Death>, <Doom Breaker>, <The Return of Blossoming Blade>, and <Because I can’t love you>.
The autograph session with a total of 12 local French webcomics artists over three days also drew a large crowd. These creators were discovered through WEBTOON's amateur creation space "CANVAS" and local contests. WEBTOON has been steadily cultivating local creators to expand the French webcomics ecosystem. As a result, more than 70 original French titles have been created to date.
French artist "Art-of-K", who has been releasing webcomics on the WEBTOON platform since 2020, said, "WEBTOON has made it easier for me to tell my stories to a wider audience than the traditional publishing market, and I'm happy to have met so many fans at this event."
On the 14th, WEBTOON and Michel Lafon Publishing, a leading French publisher, hosted the program "Michel Lafon and WEBTOON: a unique partnership" and spoke to the audience about the history of webcomics that began in Korea, the introduction of webcomics as digital content, the characteristics of the French comic book market, and the publication of the upcoming WEBTOON book.
WEBTOON announced a partnership with Michel Lafon Publishing on the 26th of last month. It is part of a localization strategy that takes into account the characteristics of the French market, which is traditionally strong in published comics. By 2024, eight popular Korean titles, including <Marry My Husband> and <Teenage Mercenary>, will be published in paperback through Michel Lafon Publishing.
"At this year's event, we were able to showcase not only titles with strong fanbases, but also WEBTOON's technological capabilities, such as Toon Filter, to reaffirm our status as the number one platform for webcomics in France," said Hana Cha, Director of Global WEBTOON Eurasia Service & Marketing. "As the industry's expectations for webcomics in Europe are rising, especially in France, we will continue to strengthen our leadership through various collaborations with local creators and publishers." (End)