CU to Recruit Comedians through Convenience Store Special Hiring 'Gag Survival' Program

CU's Comedy Survival Concert Poster. (Photo by BGF Retail)

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeon Jinyoung] CU announced on the 29th that it will hold the industry's first YouTube Shorts comedy survival show, 'CU Concert,' to recruit convenience store special hire comedians.

CU Concert is a comedy survival program where eight former comedian YouTubers compete in a standing comedy battle to determine the last person standing. The winner is decided based on viewer reactions to short-form videos of about one minute, where the comedians make the audience laugh using only words.

The concert winner will receive a prize of 10 million KRW and be specially hired as a comedian at BGF Retail. They will be given priority for company events and new programs, and in season 2, they will host the program and defend their champion title against the next winner.

Eight rookie comedians with a combined total of 3 million YouTube subscribers, including An Jin-ho, Lee Jae-hoon, and Jung Seung-bin, are participating in this survival. They will compete in a tournament format where two contestants are randomly paired, and the winner advances to the next round.

After two months of survival, the finalists will face off in a standing comedy battle in front of a live audience. The final winner will be determined by adding viewer reactions and bonus points from the live audience.

Through this comedy survival, CU plans to expand its content genres and approach more customers in a friendly way using short-form videos popular among people in their teens to thirties.

So far, CU has continuously presented various genres of content on YouTube, such as the web novel and audio drama 'Convenient Suragan Life,' the web entertainment show 'Ssuperman,' and the web drama 'Sweet and Salty Fairy,' building a subscriber base of over 820,000.

Yeon Jeong-wook, head of marketing at BGF Retail, said, "We planned the comedy survival considering the viewing patterns of the MZ generation (Millennials + Generation Z) through short-form content to bring pure laughter to customers and allow them to naturally encounter CU in their daily lives. Going forward, CU will continue to lead industry trends with high-quality content and make YouTube a channel where CU and customers communicate and empathize."