Rookie girl group izna has been accused of using noise marketing and intentionally plagiarizing NewJeans’ album design.
On November 14, izna’s agency WakeOne spoke of the latest controversy saying, “We are aware of the design-related issue that has been raised and have decided to completely replace the design.” The label further stated, “We will take careful measures to prevent this from happening again in the future.”
Following the statement, WakeOne promptly unveiled the revised design for IZNA’s first mini-album. However, the changes appear minimal; while the color and illustration on the front cover have been removed, they were simply replaced with a black border, leaving much of the original look intact.
After seeing the new design, Korean netizens pointed out that the revision did not resolve the plagiarism issue and criticized that the album became more bland. Some went further, suggesting that the minimal updates confirmed suspicions that WakeOne had intentionally copied NewJeans.
Korean netizens commented:
“The album became really dull.”
“After seeing this, it made me think more that they copied NewJeans.”
“They are such scumbags.”
“This was really noisemarketing. I only found out about them because of them copying NewJeans’ album.”
“It’s definitely noise marketing, lol. They even changed the color on the back of the photocard while redoing the album cover. Was that really necessary..? They probably never even intended to release that NewJeans-inspired design in the first place.”
“The revised album is better.”
“I think this is the best they can do at this point. But the album design did become too dull. If they were envious of NewJeans’ art design, then invest in the creative aspect.”
“This didn’t fix the plagiarism issue.”