The author | Shiqing
Unexpectedly, the weChat video number, which has always been low-key, entered the competition for partners in the 2022 Spring Festival Gala.
Chinese New Year's Eve night, when the melody of "Unforgettable Tonight" sounded, the cumulative number of viewers in the live broadcast room of the Spring Festival Gala of the video number reached 120 million, and the number of likes was 350 million.
This is the first time that the video number has cooperated with the Spring Festival Gala, and it is also the first time that the Spring Festival Gala has tried to broadcast the whole process in the video number in a "vertical screen" manner.
In order to allow users to get a more comfortable and immersive viewing experience, the Spring Festival Gala has spent a lot of effort on taking into account the communication of mobile terminals, from shooting, production to communication, which is responsible for the vertical screen director team.
The end credits of the Spring Festival Gala show that about 50 people are divided into multiple groups to provide technical support such as directing, broadcasting and production for the director group of the vertical Spring Festival Gala. In addition to the realization of the vertical screen version of the live broadcast, all the vertical version videos of the Spring Festival Gala program have been replayed in a single article with cut strips.
Why did the video number suddenly make a spring festival gala?
In the past two years, as an embedded product of WeChat ecology, the video account has been revised many times, and has successively opened up with mini programs, public accounts, personal business card pages, circle of friends advertisements, enterprise WeChat and other sections, seamlessly integrating into the WeChat social system.
Industry insiders speculate that the current monthly active number of video numbers is about 350 million. Although the official has not confirmed, from this cooperation with the Spring Festival Gala, it is not difficult to infer the basic data of the video number.
It should be known that the Spring Festival Gala, as a domestic ratings ace program, has certain requirements for the new media of cooperation in terms of daily and monthly active data. At the beginning, when Kuaishou first made exclusive cooperation with the Spring Festival Gala, the daily life had reached 300 million.
When the volume of platform users and content accumulates to a certain scale, commercialization is the inevitable result of the maturity of the platform.
In recent months, the video number is also constantly improving the commercialization foundation, on the operation side, increasing investment in the fields of eight o'clock columns, live streaming with goods festivals, online concerts, entertainment rookie competitions and other fields; on the functional side, grayscale tests the "short video shopping cart" function, adds the "order" function on the personal homepage, and also launches the paid live broadcast function; on the content side, the "creator incentive plan" and "business incentive plan" and other incentive policies are launched, so that a new traffic closed loop is formed between the various sectors.
WeChat wants to play the video number card well, everything is ready, and it also needs a "east wind" that pushes the video number in front of the people of the whole country, and this "east wind" is the Spring Festival Gala.
The "Vertical Screen Spring Festival Gala" uses a team of 50 people on CCTV
As a national top-notch big IP, the Spring Festival Gala has the traffic magic to make a certain thing get strong exposure in a short period of time, and is an important "battlefield" for Internet companies to grab users' attention. This year, this battlefield ushered in a heavy novice - video number.
Compared with several other platforms, the video number has quite an advantage in cooperation with the Spring Festival Gala. Because the video number is backed by WeChat, it has 1.2 billion users, which can reach people in class, region, age and other dimensions, which is quite compatible with the national attributes of the Spring Festival Gala.
Moreover, many online concerts held by the video number in the live broadcast room are very out of the circle. Previously, Westlife attracted more than 27 million views, 5.12 million likes, 170 million video views, and up to 1.5 million people online (equivalent to 15 bird's nest viewers). The 3-hour live broadcast of Mayday was viewed by 16.76 million people and 32.01 million likes.
In addition to the number of viewers and likes, the PCU (the highest online at the same time) is also an important criterion for assessing the ability to attract short video platforms. Westlife's online concert has allowed the video number to win 1.5 million PCU, which shows that the video number relies on the social advantages of the WeChat ecosystem and is becoming a platform for incubating phenomenal content and large-scale marketing events.
The combination of the Spring Festival Gala, vertical screen and video number is on the one hand to follow the mainstream direction of social networking and reawaken the public's interest in the Spring Festival Gala; on the other hand, the video number penetrates into a wider circle than the concert coverage with the help of the Spring Festival Gala.
When more and more people are accustomed to obtaining daily information and entertainment through mobile phones, Sun Bin, director of the Spring Festival Gala on the vertical screen, believes that the vertical screen is closer to the viewing experience of mobile phone users and more convenient for everyone to share. However, in addition to the vertical screen live broadcast, more fresh interactive experiences are needed to let users develop the habit of watching videos in WeChat.
Therefore, the video number has prepared 4 ways to play in terms of operation.
Gameplay 1: Strong drainage.
Spring Festival Gala is an important opportunity for the "interconnection" application scenario of each section of the video number to be tested by the whole people, before 8 o'clock last night, WeChat's discovery, live broadcast, search, watch, service notification, etc., almost all the first and second level traffic entrances are recommending "Spring Festival Gala", users can notice this live party as long as they open WeChat.
Gameplay 2: Red packet cover.
The live broadcast room sets the cover of the red envelope for a limited time on the hour, and when the user sends the red packet in the WeChat community, it can also be used with the "live red packet" function, and the red packet is sent by relatives and friends in the live broadcast room, bringing a fission effect.
Gameplay three: The Circle of Friends in the Year of the Tiger.
"It's so cool, it's very creative", last night, many people's circle of friends was brushed by the exclusive New Year blessings of the Year of the Tiger. Users entering the live broadcast room will receive a pop-up prompt to publish the exclusive circle of friends in the Year of the Tiger, which will be displayed in the appearance of a golden tiger after the release of this circle of friends, and the video number and the circle of friends will be seamlessly connected to create an atmosphere of watching the Spring Festival Gala while visiting the New Year.
Gameplay 4: Exclusive comment area.
For the first time, the exclusive "discussion area" function was launched in the live broadcast room, and users can share the live broadcast room to the group chat, which can create a group exclusive discussion area in the live broadcast room, and the chat content is only visible to the members of the group. This is a new interactive gameplay, users can share the live chat room to the group chat, or you can migrate the group chat scene to the live broadcast room.
According to preliminary statistics, as of 24:00 on January 31, the average rating of the 2022 Spring Festival Gala live broadcast on the TV end reached 21.93%. New media on-demand users reached 4.932 billion times, which is a significant increase compared with last year's data.
For the Spring Festival Gala, trying vertical screen live broadcast not only enriches the form of communication, but also integrates into the social context of mobile users, and glows with new content vitality. For the video number, with the help of the Spring Festival Gala to connect and reach more users, this goal has been achieved.
Grab the head IP and emphasize the long tail traffic
After two years of iteration, the entire content strategy has undergone obvious changes, in the early days, the video number emphasized more long-tail traffic, will not deliberately invite celebrities to settle in, tending to users self-fermentation, self-propagation; now, from the video number cooperation Westlife (Westlife Boys), Mayday, and the Spring Festival Gala such a high degree of attention of the big IP can be seen, the video number is grasping the head IP with one hand, the long tail traffic with the other hand.
The video number cooperated with the online concerts of modern sky's series of artists, and more and more frequently made copyright content
In the 2022 WeChat Open Class PRO, the official definition of the video number is "atomized content components, which produce various chemical reactions with other components within WeChat and become the best bearer form for video and live streaming." In other words, the video number carries part of the mission of improving the WeChat ecology and increasing the user's use time.
As a hub for revitalizing the global traffic of WeChat ecology, the ability to create phenomenal topics and detonate events determines the breadth and depth of its content supply.
What impact does the adjustment of the video number content strategy have on the big IP in the entertainment field? Can the model of superstar influencer cooperation be replicated?
On January 30th, TVB joined hands with 28 Hong Kong stars, including Wang Mingquan, Li Keqin, Miriam Yang, Zhang Zhilin and Wang Zulan, to hold the "I Hang You (I Miss You)- Hong Kong Stars New Year Interactive Live Concert", which was TVB's first event on the WeChat video account, with less than 6 hours of live broadcast, attracting more than 34.6 million viewers.
Video number is "algorithm recommendation + social recommendation + public account mutual private domain recommendation" content distribution mechanism, in the acquaintance social relationship chain, communication between different circles can be repeatedly reached, people are the carrier of sustainable content dissemination, with the "people" to pry the content to break the circle, the content presentation and expression of the video number is easier to make the brand break the circle. This means that the commercial opportunities of the video number live concert model can be replicated.
The vertical screen to see the Spring Festival Gala case also allows some big IP or big brands to see the video number in the rich live broadcast scene and growth space.
Behind the Spring Festival Gala cooperation, the video number accelerated commercialization
Is it the best time to enter the video number?
Industry insiders predict that 2022 will be the first year of video number commercialization. To be sure, video accounts in the rising period will emerge a wave of new opportunities to attract more brands to "dig for gold".
Influencers, blockbusters, and traffic are the three elements for brands to seek business growth. At present, although the video number has not yet hatched a native Internet celebrity, a talent or a streamer with a full network of popularity, the potential for commercial monetization is emerging.
First, paid live streaming provides a monetization channel for premium content. Taking the Jazz VS Warrior NBA regular season broadcast by "Tencent NBA" as an example, users can enter the live broadcast room for free for 3 minutes, and continue to watch need to pay 7 to 9 yuan. In addition to the single-game payment model, there are also a variety of functions such as live rewards and live lottery, which can form a complete commercial closed loop.
Secondly, live streaming has become an important position for brand self-broadcasting. The video number can already be coordinated with small stores, mini programs, and enterprise WeChat to meet the commercialization attributes of e-commerce functions and live streaming.
Fashion women's wear brand Goliath is the first batch of merchants to enter the video number live broadcast, at first only the video number as the entrance to brand promotion, and then after communicating with the video number team, reorganized the live broadcast and operation team, the live broadcast time changed from 2-3 times a week to 3 times a day, only half a month to see the obvious effect, live broadcast single day GMV compared to before, has a high multiple of growth.
At the same time, the video number live broadcast announced the launch of a new business incentive plan. In the next year, the video number will support no less than 100,000 high-quality merchants through traffic incentives, and the platform will at least incentivize one public domain user to the merchant for each private domain user to guide a private domain user into the live broadcast room. Mature brands such as Kaixia Life Hall and Fan Deng Reading have operated video numbers as an important position for brand self-broadcasting.
Traffic services in business, the "trust endorsement" of the acquaintance social system, coupled with the video number to encourage merchants to import the public domain traffic in the WeChat ecosystem into the live broadcast room, public and private domain traffic + circle effect + refined service combination fist, can precipitate long-term assets for the sustainable operation of the brand, shorten the brand in the early stage of the cold start cycle of the video number live broadcast.
Whether it is traffic monetization or public and private domain empowerment, new opportunities and increments are always the core of business, WeChat has a mature "content + social + transaction" chain, which is a steady stream of ecological capabilities and strength of video numbers, so that different brands can find the right target audience in The traffic pool of WeChat and improve the brand conversion rate.
To accelerate the commercialization of video numbers, it is necessary to continuously enrich the content ecology and expand the traffic pool, which is also the key to the Spring Festival Gala of this cooperation.