Tik Tok： Online Movie Announces ＂New Battlefield＂

Editor’s Note: This article comes from WeChat WeChat official account Guduo Network Film and Television, written by Xia.

At the end of 2018, "The serpent", which set a new record for online movie box office, was released. In an interview with Guduo, Huang Yuting, marketing director of Taomeng Galaxy, a subsidiary of Taomeng, revealed that the film announcement cost has reached 30%-50% of the total investment, and the scale is close to cinema movies.

Combined with the theme of alien creatures and visual impact, the "serpent" without IP and stars focuses on online publicity. At that time, she said that Tik Tok was not the core channel in marketing strategy, but an experimental attempt. Half a year later, she was interviewed by Gu Duo again. In the past six months, the marketing promotional materials originally put on Tik Tok have continued to play a long tail effect, especially the short video of explanation that was put on at the beginning has increased obviously, and there are many viewers on the film barrage who said that they came from Tik Tok, which has inspired her.

Since this year, Taomeng Galaxy has begun to focus on Tik Tok, increasing its delivery. "The effect it brings is very direct." Huang Yuting said that the new film "The Monster", which was just released last week, promoted a short video, with 500,000 praises a day and over 10 million backstage broadcasts. Many people asked about the movie name in the comments, and more directly, the online booking volume of the movie has been significantly improved. From short video to long video, "conversion is easier". She revealed that "most of our films this year account for a considerable proportion" in the future Tik Tok publicity.

Not only Taomeng, but also the head online film companies such as New Studio, Yingmei Media and Qishu Youyu, have shown different degrees of attention to this platform. At the same time, a new studio with two business lines, short video and film, has achieved a mature marketing linkage between short video and film on this platform.

As a new form of entertainment with the widest coverage on the mobile terminal, with the help of the technology of accurately reaching the core users, short video has become an important town for film and television publicity. According to the Research Report on China Short Video Marketing Market in 2018 released by iResearch, the short video marketing market has reached 14.01 billion yuan in 2018, with a year-on-year growth rate of 520.7%. Tik Tok is undoubtedly one of the most important platforms for short video.

On July 9, the general manager of Tik Tok Market disclosed at a press conference in Tik Tok that as of July 2019, the daily activity of APP in Tik Tok exceeded 320 million. This is an amazing number.

As a traffic distribution center, the user base is large, covering all age groups. Intelligent distribution enables short videos of each category to find the corresponding vertical user groups. The marketing of cinema films in Tik Tok has flourished, from Ex-3: Goodbye to Ex-3 to The Richest Man in Xihong City, The Last Night of the Earth, A Sader Story than Sadness. Since 2018, many cinema films have been carefully managed in Tik Tok, and achieved unexpected results. Now, online movies are more closely related to short videos represented by Tik Tok.

More direct conversion from short video to long video

Whether it is content or marketing method, online movies have been on the way to catch up with cinema movies.

Compared with cinema movies, in the view of Mou Xue, president of the new studio film industry, online movies with Internet genes actually have more innate advantages in short video marketing. The marketing of cinema films needs to stimulate the audience’s behavior of buying tickets. After online publicity, there is still a huge "funnel" between the audience and actually buying tickets to watch movies. And "Tik Tok marketing of online movies is more direct from online to online (transformation)." Short video goes directly to users, which makes it easier to guide the audience to the port of long video.

Shorter marketing links and more direct marketing effects can directly trigger the transformation of actions after the announcement. Huang Yuting also valued this advantage of Tik Tok. In her view, Mingxing Cass and online movies with limited investment seek the highest cost performance as possible, and are more willing to invest money in the most important elements of the film. In Tik Tok’s 60-second short video, the advantages of online movies can be maximized, and the disadvantages can also be effectively avoided. For example, the film "The Monster" put the most energy into the image design, motion capture and other special effects of the water monkey, which has a strong visual impact. "This core highlight will be focused on marketing" instead of deliberately highlighting the lineup of the star card company.

In addition, the short video of vibrato takes the route of mass, grassroots and grounding gas, and the production threshold is low. Ordinary people do ordinary things to successfully trigger public emotions, and they can suddenly become popular. These small and broad cases have inspired the enthusiasm of the propaganda party. "Users like to watch’ new’,’ strange’ and’ special’ content, such as special effects, how to shoot special shots at high altitude, and so on." Ding Yunyan, director of film publicity at the new studio, said that these behind-the-scenes tidbits are generally welcomed by users in Tik Tok.

Compared with cinema movies and film and television dramas, online movies also have many special shots. And in marketing, online movies will also combine the current popular elements to make comedy short videos and commentary short videos. The marketing content that can be provided by these large-scale and large-scale film and television works can also be fully provided by online filmmakers, and their disadvantages have been reduced.

As for the platform, Weibo has become a gathering place for entertainment news after years of accumulation. Marketing pays more attention to the combination of star card company and topic degree, which is more suitable for topic marketing, conflict marketing and star marketing. These marketing methods often need to be spread by star card company. On this port, online movies lacking star lineup are obviously not dominant.

Simply putting online movie publicity materials on Weibo, the effect is often not obvious. Unless there is a marketing event, the successful hot search has attracted the attention of the whole people, and the successful circle has brought marketing effects, but this is not the normal state of online movies. Undeniably, Weibo is an important channel in marketing. "Online dramas and movies with strong emotions pay more attention to Weibo, while online movies with more male audiences pay more attention to Tik Tok."

Although bilibili’s short video traffic is equally prominent in the segmentation field, its secondary nature naturally does not match the popular curiosity and fantasy temperament of online movies, and it is not the main position of online movie marketing at present. "bilibili has its own unique algorithm mechanism." C.Y.Chen, director of Mermaid Rivers and Lakes, said that she is an UP owner in bilibili and a heavy user in bilibili. "bilibili is more like a cumulative process, which requires UP owners to work very hard in bilibili and accumulate fans bit by bit." However, a case of a short video traffic explosion like Tik Tok is rare.

Aauto Quicker, who is also deeply involved in the field of short video and has many similarities with Tik Tok, prefers online celebrities and live broadcasts. Compared with Tik Tok, the atmosphere for fast-paced users to watch short videos related to movies is weak. At the same time, there are not many successful cases of movie marketing, and there are few online movie marketing projects at present. However, this can’t be generalized. Previously, the online comedy movies in Northeast China achieved good marketing results on this platform.

Algorithm to guide marketing content

Lao Li, I will be your son in the next life.

In the online movie "Where is the new deity?", Nezha smiled at his father, Excavate, before committing suicide. The emotional tension between father and son in the film was edited into a one-minute short video, accompanied by emotional music, which won 449,000 likes on Tik Tok. In the comments, some netizens warned, "Don’t row down, stranger. This is the movie" What’s wrong with the new gods? ". This is the most successful short marketing video of the film, and it is also one of the online films with relatively good marketing effect in Tik Tok recently.

When the project was resumed, Ding Yunyan, the director of film publicity of the new studio, attributed the success of this video to the marketing of "Father-Son Love". Although the film and television industry has not been able to find a set of replicable methodology on Tik Tok, these successful cases have proved that the success of films on Tik Tok still has something in common. Playing emotional cards, especially can win a good publicity effect.

"But in fact, every film can play emotional cards," Ding Yunyan told Gu Duo. "There are different ways to play emotional cards in Tik Tok, Aauto Quicker and Weibo. Tik Tok needs to be more direct. " Therefore, it is necessary to highlight the lines with communication effect and the fragments that arouse emotional resonance in short videos, and music rendering is also particularly important. The released marketing materials need to be interesting, sinking, emotional and easy to spread.

According to the algorithm, Tik Tok pushes personalized content to users. Marketing logic is similar to other platforms, and it is a process of combining the characteristics of the platform, mining the highlights of the film, and then finding the target users. At present, short video marketing on the vibrato platform is mainly in three ways. The first way is to open an official account to release film-related marketing materials. This method has low cost, but it needs to accumulate fans from scratch, and the marketing purpose is obvious, and the materials are easily filtered in the algorithm.

The second kind is that the filmmakers cooperate with the vertical Tik Tok Red Man and Large Size to conduct marketing implantation and tailor-made film marketing materials. In order to avoid excessive marketing traces, short videos are used to drive the enthusiasm of watching movies, and publicity information is released in the comments as passers-by. This is the way that the filmmakers choose the most at present. These Tik Tok celebrities and tubas are mature in operation, closely related to the platform, reaching users more directly, and having the opportunity to gain a larger traffic pool.

However, it is worth noting that although in this way, "comedy, emotion and stars can achieve good communication effects to movies, but special themes are still easily restricted." Huang Yuting said. The third is to cooperate with Tik Tok officials to jointly promote publicity, which is the most direct and remarkable way of cooperation. Many successful cinema films and Tik Tok celebrities are marketed in this way.

And it is worth mentioning that the marketing effect is also related to the delivery time. According to statistics, 62% of users will brush Tik Tok before meals and before going to bed, while only 10.9% will brush Tik Tok at fragmented time such as company road and toilet. Chicken soup and emotional food are most suitable from 21: 00 to 23: 00 in the evening, which is the golden period of lonely emotional experience for urban men and women, just to cater to it.

In 2017, a new studio with a short video matrix was set up in Tik Tok, which was still in its early stage. In the Spring Festival of 2018, before the "Previous Raiders 3" burst into flames, the trend of Tik Tok’s sharp increase in traffic was already noticed. Online movie marketing entered the market earlier, and a large number of celebrity resources were reserved. As an MCN institutional partner of short video platform, the new studio has a deep understanding of the strategy of short video. "These methodologies can also be used for reference by the film industry." Yan Xue said.

After the video is released, it will enter the cold start link of account fans and the first batch of traffic pools. In this link, four indicators, such as likes, comments, forwarding and broadcast completion rate, will be mainly watched. Short videos with good completion will enter the next round of traffic pools, and high-quality content will cooperate with fans to spread by pounds. Among them, how to improve the "hit rate" is a science.

Mou Xue summarized the use of vibrato short videos for online movie marketing as a process of "algorithm guiding content". That is, in addition to the marketing team’s research on users’ preferences at the content level, it is also necessary to study the technology, and the methodology studied is the core competitiveness that the marketing team is inconvenient to disclose. A video put on Tik Tok should consider three angles, "KOL angle, observation of platform data and user angle, and the success rate will be relatively improved when the three are combined to create marketing materials." Ding Yunyan said.

Absolute discourse right of platform under technology empowerment

The online movie "Mermaid Rivers and Lakes" launched by Cabbage Film and Television, which gained popularity in Tik Tok, was a bit unexpected for director C.Y.Chen.

The official account is established, and the fragments of sadomasochism elements in the film are edited twice. Combining with the characteristics of the film, the film focuses on three directions: ancient style, emotion and music. The propaganda strategy of the film in Tik Tok is more conventional. In the end, it was the imitation video made by the audience spontaneously that gained a good popularity. On this platform with the most musical genes, especially the climax segment of the theme song of the film, the snowball effect is triggered, which has been used for 28,000 times. "This song was made with communication considerations in mind, and it was made in a direction that can better arouse emotions," C.Y.Chen said.

In spite of this, in C.Y.Chen’s view, the announcement of the film in Tik Tok was full of contingency. "In the general direction, I can predict the users’ hi points, and I know that Tik Tok users will like the film picture, music tone and emotional rendering. But we put so many videos, which one will explode and which one won’t, which I can’t predict at all. You can only try it with a lot of materials, and the chance is very great. " C.Y.Chen said that as the upmaster of bilibili, she can predict the approximate broadcast volume of short films, while Tik Tok is still unpredictable.

"It often happens. The video is cast for the first time, and the amount of play is average. The second time is cast, the amount is particularly large." Huang Yuting also encountered a similar situation. This unpredictability allowed the team to fully develop ideas without restrictions. "Make every video interesting, maximize the probability, and do more, and the effect will be good." The final conversion effect from short video to long video can only be judged by the barrage and comments on online movies, and there is no accurate monitoring data of marketing effect at present.

It is also in the marketing of "Mermaid Rivers and Lakes" that Kit, the marketing director of cabbage film and television, found that many short videos with marketing traces and seemingly exquisite effects are not as good as those taken by hand.

"This is the platform’s control over the traffic pool, and videos with marketing nature are difficult to get recommendations. Tik Tok likes to push things that look like personal behavior. " Kit said. This is related to Tik Tok’s strategy of using personalized content to gather the target users and increase the stickiness of fans. The content containing suspected advertisements, after several recommendations, is not effective, which will reduce the account weight and gradually become a "zombie number".

Although the operation logic is similar to other platforms, in the position of Tik Tok, short videos reach users directly, which is highly dependent on algorithms, and the platform has absolute right to speak. Behind many Tik Tok reds and tuba, there is platform operation or cooperation. Kit revealed that in fact, Tik Tok celebrities who became popular in Tik Tok and successfully entered the film and television industry all signed contracts with Tik Tok in advance.

If the number of people living today is as high as 320 million, Tik Tok has already ushered in the harvest period. Although the person in charge of Tik Tok products said in public that Tik Tok will not deliberately control traffic distribution, it will distribute some traffic to videos or challenges that conform to Tik Tok’s values through operation and recommendation. However, many MCN organizations that have been operating for many years also understand that cooperation depends very much on the platform.

In the second half of 2018, Tik Tok launched the DOU+ function. After paid purchase, the video will be recommended to more interested users, thus increasing the amount of video playback and interaction. Aiming at the cake of film and television announcement, in April 2019, Tik Tok and six major film and television companies jointly launched the "Vision Plan", which covers the continuous fission topic fermentation and communication from pre-screening to in-screening and after-screening, claiming to help the film announcement "directional blasting" and occupying the highland of announcement.

Traffic brings profits, and it also breeds the behavior of brushing. Some media have experimented on Taobao, and they can buy Tik Tok’s 10,000 likes+200,000 plays+1,000 reposts+hundreds of comments at a cost of tens of yuan, but whether it can actually drive the algorithm and bring real enthusiasm is also unknown.

Although Tik Tok’s daily work surprised Mou Xue, in her view, "publicity always pays attention to innovation and always needs to explore new content, which is the difficulty of publicity". Now more and more people have targeted Tik Tok for publicity, and the prices of Tik Tok Red Man and large size have also risen, and the cost performance has begun to decline. Tik Tok is an important position in the announcement strategy of new studios, but other platforms also occupy an equally high proportion.

The platform has the demand for realizing traffic, and in contrast, the current limit follows. "We also got some feedback that the traffic of a single large size is not as high as before." Huang Yuting said. At present, as a platform, Tik Tok’s marketing cooperation is still mainly focused on cinema movies and head dramas, and online movies are still difficult to become an important branch.

"We hope to have in-depth cooperation with the Tik Tok authorities and get the recommendation of the Tik Tok platform, including being able to enter the hot search list of Tik Tok, launching activities with the participation of the whole people, developing various new Tik Tok games, and obtaining a wider marketing effect, without stopping at the birth of some videos with high likes and broadcasts." Huang Yuting said that for the platform, she has a high degree of willingness to cooperate, hoping to have the opportunity to launch a nationwide online movie like a cinema movie.

With the increasing popularity of 5G, the continuous development of science and technology, and the rapid empowerment of all walks of life, the upgrading and transformation of short video industry will inevitably lead to more ways of playing, and how to make good use of Tik Tok, a new marketing species, is still a difficult problem for online movie marketers.

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