Johnny & Associates announced at its October 2 press conference that the company would rebrand, with the management company Johnny & Associates becoming the victim compensation company SMILE-UP., and the talents moving to a new management company that will be named by members of the company’s fan clubs.
The rebranding process has already started on Instagram. A relatively new venture for the company as it opens up to the online world, many of the company’s talents debuted on Instagram with a “J” as part of their username. That is now coming to an end.
So far, NEWS‘ Keiichiro Koyama, Kis-My-Ft2‘s Yuta Tamamori, and Hey! Say! JUMP‘s Ryosuke Yamada, Yuto Nakajima, and Hikaru Yaotome have dropped the “J” from their usernames.
At the time of this writing, the Johnny’s who still have the “J” as part of their Instagram username are KinKi Kids‘ Koichi Domoto & Tsuyoshi Domoto, KAT-TUN‘s Yuichi Nakamaru & Tatsuya Ueda, NEWS’ Shigeaki Kato, Sexy Zone‘s Kento Nakajima, and Snow Man‘s Raul.
