The hobby of cosplaying is no longer a new phenomenon in this progressive age where everyone is allowed to freely express themselves and their interests more. Cosplayers outside of events are constantly turning heads in their interesting over the top costumes and colourful wigs as they are rarely seen in a regular public setting. As the hobby’s reputation increases, it reaches corporations and their staff, who interestingly enough, have been incorporating cosplayers into their marketing strategies.
One such example can be seen from Nippon Paint’s Pylox Spray Paint campaign, whereby they engaged a popular cosplayer who goes by her stage name, Rikka Blurhound, to star in their commercials and promote their product. Their series of video commercials, titled as “The Dream Guardian” is up on Nippon Paint’s YouTube channel, and has garnered over 180,000 organic views. The numbers of the actual paid video commercial that has been broadcasted on netizens’ screens is probably a lot higher. The advertisement was also generally well received among netizens.
“It’s very great to see so many opportunities for cosplayers to expand their hobby as more than simply just a hobby,” said Natasha Alyssa, 21.
Natasha, a final year student studying Foundation in Animation at The One Academy, and expressed that she is glad to that more chances are given to the cosplay hobby, despite the numerous false misconceptions that have been reported in mainstream media that could have given members of the public a sense of contempt towards the hobby. She was referring to the various reports on local newspapers from a few years back that accused cosplay of being a hobby for perverts.
However, there are cons to having cosplayers involved in marketing. Like how everything corporate has its ugliness, there is an ugly side to having corporations hiring cosplayers to be involved in their marketing plans.
Exploitation of cosplayers who are hired by stingy companies is a common phenomenon. Often times, companies will pay cosplayers at a lower rate for their employment at marketing events as compared to the models that they usually hire for those events. Their justifications being cosplayers are not professional models, and are not signed to any agencies, plus the argument that they should do it for the exposure since it is just a hobby anyway.
A lot of the recruiters from these companies are mostly unaware of the actual cost of costumes, wigs, props, and make up that cosplayers have to invest in order to bring their characters to life.
21-year-old Joey Sheon, a fresh graduate who studied Diploma in Mass Communication at Taylor’s University does cosplay jobs on the side.
“I usually work in costume at a rate of RM60 – RM100 per hour. Sometimes they (companies) refuse to pay that amount or ask me to work for free because they do not see the effort that goes behind a costume, and how draining it can be to work in a heavy costume for hours. So I reject those kinds of job offers because I would not want to work for a corporation that refuse to truly appreciate the efforts that we (cosplayers) put into cosplays.
“I also try to spread the message to other cosplayers to turn down jobs from companies that refuse to pay them the appropriate rates, because exposure is not enough to compensate for the money that actually goes into their efforts,” she said.
Ashley Koh, a 21-year-old cosplay ambassador at Pink Egg Project, says that cosplayers who are willing to do jobs for free are ruining the market for other cosplayers who deserve to be paid fairly.
“It makes companies think that they can continue to hire cheap labour from cosplayers, because there will always be someone out there who is willing to work for them for free in exchange for exposure.
“Costumes and wigs are expensive already, some even spend hours and days to make their own costumes from scratch with expensive high quality materials. High quality make up that stays put all day is also very pricey. Companies should take those factors into account and look into compensating cosplayers the right rates if they want truly good cosplayers to represent their companies at their marketing events. They (companies) forget that cosplayers are doing the same thing as those professional models that they hire for their events, except in a hot and heavy costume,” she emphasized.
Exploitation by companies that are unwilling to pay cosplayers higher rates for marketing event jobs are still ongoing, but with the collective effort of cosplayers of rejecting underpaid jobs, and spreading the awareness of the hard work that goes into cosplay, changing the game and the mentalities of corporate recruitment staff is still possible. All we need is some patience and persistence to push the message out.
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