The strategy behind the breakthrough.
By Eshy Gazit
People still ask me the same question RM once asked at the 2017 American Music Awards: how did it happen? How did seven artists from Korea, on a small label most of America had never heard of, end up on the same stage as the biggest names in pop?
The honest answer is that it wasn't luck, and it wasn't a single moment. It was a strategy — built deliberately, executed relentlessly, and pointed at one goal: bringing East and West together through music.
Reading the battlefield first
When I started working with BTS and Big Hit Entertainment in 2016, the average American perception of K-pop wasn't good. Many people dismissed Korean acts as manufactured, and a lot of doors were closed before I ever knocked. So the first thing I did was assess the real situation honestly. You can't run a campaign against a problem you refuse to name. The wall was perception, and perception is something you change by making it impossible to sustain — not by arguing with it.
Seven individuals, not a product
The antidote to "manufactured" is humanity. I pushed hard, from day one, to let America get to know each member individually — their personalities, their humor, their distinct worlds — alongside the magic of all seven together. Every reader who came to know one of them as a real person was one less person who could believe the myth.
Talking points that travel
Never underestimate a single sentence. "Music is the international language." "It's like The Beatles coming to America." A great talking point does the work of a thousand pitches, because journalists, hosts, and fans repeat it for you. We built the message carefully and made sure it landed in every conversation.
The ground game: press, radio, TV
The breakthrough came from old-fashioned, relentless work. We ran a guerrilla campaign across press, radio, and television — outlet by outlet, region by region, follow-up after follow-up. By the time the Wings Tour reached the U.S., we'd spoken to nearly everyone in American media about BTS. The radio campaign behind "DNA" put the group on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time, and the "Mic Drop" remix with Steve Aoki and Desiigner became the first song by a K-pop group to crack the Top 40 of the Hot 100.
ARMY: the engine we didn't build
BTS already had one of the most passionate fanbases in the world, and that energy was an asset I could carry into rooms where the band wasn't yet known. The fans amplified every piece of news a million times louder. The job wasn't to manufacture that energy — it was to capture it, document it, and convert it into undeniable proof.
The pinnacle
Everything pointed at the American Music Awards. I fought to get BTS on that show, and turned one TV booking into a single historic week: Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Late Late Show with James Corden, Ellen, New Year's Rockin' Eve, and a wall of press. When you appear everywhere at once, you stop being an event and become a phenomenon. The night BTS performed "DNA" — in Korean — on the American Music Awards, I broke down crying. I knew history was being made in front of me.
The lesson underneath it all
The strategy worked because it was built on something bigger than a band. For me, this was always about connecting people from East and West so that peace is possible — my life's mission walking around in the world. That conviction is what made me and my team work in ways we didn't know we had in us.
I left BTS in 2018 with enormous gratitude, and carried the same method forward — to EG Management, to Intertwine Records, and to every artist I've worked with since. The bridge between Korean and Asian music and the American audience is still my life's work.
Eshy Gazit is a 2× Billboard International Power Player, founder of EG Management and Intertwine Records, and a partner at Maverick Management (Live Nation). He served as the U.S. managing partner for BTS during their American breakthrough (2016–2018) and manages Monsta X, Wonho, IVE, KiiiKiii, DaYoung, and Paul Kim.
Bridging Korea and America — Inside EG Management and Intertwine Records.
Why the bridge needed to become a business — and how a 360-degree manager builds an institution out of one phone and a mission.
My work with BTS — Part 1: TV.
Three major TV bookings in one week, an AMA performance for the ages, and the call from Korea that almost stopped it all.