This article first appeared in Capital, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on June 14, 2021 - June 20, 2021

It’s hard not to have heard of Baby Shark Dance, even if one does not have a child around. Even people whom I thought would most likely have been insulated from the insanely catchy kid song would tell me: “Heard many versions, and in panto in the UK.” “Yaaaa … Baby Shark is Korean too?” exclaimed another friend, who found solace in Korean dramas amid the lockdown.

The “Baby Shark” sphere of influence even reached those trolling social media for so-called “meme stock” trading ideas on June 2, after Tesla’s “Technoking” CEO Elon Musk tweeted during Asian trading hours, “Baby Shark crushes all! More views than humans”, with a link to the song that became the most viewed YouTube video of all time seven months ago on Nov 2, 2020. Shares in Samsung Publishing Co Ltd (Seoul-based but no relation to the Samsung Group), which had refuted rumours of an impending Nasdaq listing since last year, surged about 10% to its highest in six weeks on June 2.

Samsung Publishing is the second-largest shareholder (18.5%) of educational entertainment content company SmartStudy, set up in 2010, whose unit Pinkfong created the version of the song that became a YouTube phenomenon, with 8.7 billion YouTube views at the time of writing. That is six times the population of China, which accounts for just over 18% of the world’s 7.9 billion people. Baby Shark’s 8.7 billion views is also more than twice the four billion views garnered by Psy’s Gangnam Style, which passed one billion views on Dec 21, 2012, and remains among the top five most-viewed YouTube’s music videos today. Pinkfong’s Baby Shark Dance, which, according to Wikipedia, was uploaded in late 2015 but went viral in Indonesia and Southeast Asia in 2017, had chalked up 7.5 billion views by Dec 21, 2020.

SmartStudy is also South Korea’s 13th unicorn (defined as a start-up worth more than US$1 billion [RM4.12 billion]) and the first in the global content business, having signed more than 2,000 licensing contracts with some 500 major companies in and outside the country, according to a June 8 report in The Korea Times.

Malaysia — where Grab started out before moving across the Causeway in 2014, becoming Southeast Asia’s first decacorn (company worth more than US$10 billion) in 2018 — has yet to have its first flag bearer on this front.

There is, however, commendable success in the local content and animation scene.

In June 2020, the creators of the Upin & Ipin animated series, Les’ Copaque Production, became the first Malaysia-hosted channel to earn a YouTube Diamond Play Button after gaining 10 million subscribers, reportedly getting more than four billion views. A YouTuber since 2009, Les’ Copaque had 14.5 million subscribers at the time of writing, with more than 6.9 billion views across 1,298 videos. Popular clips such as “Upin & Ipin — New Toys” has over 292 million views.

Youtubers.me, which tracks trends, puts Les’ Copaque channel’s net worth at between US$2.57 million and US$15.4 million. That’s some distance to unicorn status but definitely an area with rich potential.

Upin & Ipin, after all, was created in 2007 as a TV series and made its international debut via Disney Channel Asia in 2014. In 2019, Upin & Ipin: Keris Siamang Tunggal scored more than RM26.2 million at the local box office. Other animation series that have seen strong box office receipts include Ejen Ali: The Movie (Primeworks Studios and Wau Animation) and BoBoiBoi: The Movie 1 & 2 (Animonsta Studios).

Could Malaysia see a unicorn on the content front?

It is not an impossible dream. The world’s second most-viewed YouTube channel is currently CoComelon, a channel with animation and nursery rhymes for pre-school kids that gets over one billion views a week,  which reportedly started out as a hobby for a couple in California with experience as a filmmaker and children’s book illustrator to entertain their own sons. Some pundits reckon CoComelon could become the first billion-dollar YouTube business plus the next Peppa Pig. Toy-maker Hasbro — which Disney bought — paid US$3.8 billion for eOne, the owner of Peppa Pig,which has its own theme park in the UK.

There are many creative Malaysians with good pantun (poems) and stories, an underappreciated talent pool with potential “baby sharks” who are not considered “high-skilled” as the world chases after sexier skills deemed more relevant in the fourth industrial revolution. As Malaysians upskill to remain relevant, there should be enough support for creative souls who dare to dream of showcasing their work to the world to put thoughts into action. The Korean wave, for instance, proves that it won’t be just flag bearers that a country stands to gain when enough parties succeed on a global scale.

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