Author| Wu Zhaoren
This year's Spring Festival stall is the first Spring Festival stall in three years. Today, the box office of "Manjiang Red" and "The Wandering Earth 2" has exceeded 1 billion, and the reputation of Douban is above 8 points, which can be said to be the Spring Festival file with the best reputation. In the past three years, the film industry has undergone severe tests, but it has also prompted everyone to pursue quality more. In the past three years, self-media people have also experienced the trough of the industry, and even nearly half of the personnel have left the industry, and now they can be regarded as seeing hope.
In this Spring Festival file, at the moment when the film industry seems to be about to recover, self-media people seem to have encountered a lot of "negative temptations", there are black water business orders, there is a demand for standing in line, and fans have organized collective reporting, these experiences as part of this Spring Festival file, although it does not affect the overall situation of everyone's unity and progress, but it is undoubtedly a regrettable footnote.
Fortunately, there are the following self-media people who are willing to stand up and expose such bad phenomena with us, after all, we don't want these things to destroy the hard-won film market.
Viewing group: maintain quality and value the audience
Acheng's viewing group is the largest viewing group in his city, and the 7 films in this year's Spring Festival file have cooperated with Acheng's viewing group, and six of them were released in groups on the first day of the New Year, so on the first day of the new year, Acheng's viewing group was very busy with work. After watching some of the films in advance, Ah Cheng already had expectations for the reputation of the film in his heart. He feels that except for "Bear Haunted" that is not in the same evaluation system, the quality of the other six films is above the level. His own selfish favorite "Man Jiang Hong", as expected, the second day of the film's release, he completed the box office reversal and topped the box office champion on the day of the Spring Festival. After that, on the third day, a comprehensive overtake was completed.
After watching the film, Acheng is full of confidence in his Spring Festival business.
Acheng's viewing group is more dependent on offline venues, so it can be said that it has tasted all the hardships in the past three years. On the one hand, the supply of films in the past three years is insufficient, but this is still a good way for large viewing groups with a certain accumulation. The most important thing is the lockdown and the closure of the theater, because for the viewing group, the closure of the theater equals no income. But in general, because of the reputation and industry popularity accumulated by Acheng, the epidemic has not had a deep impact on Acheng's business for three years, and until this year's Spring Festival, Acheng's movie-watching group is still in business.
Ah Cheng was originally a senior media person who lived in a first-tier city. His previous job was as a journalist. In his 10 years as a journalist, he has accumulated a wealth of contacts. In 2018, he founded his own self-media, which coincided with the decline in text chain traffic, and then he chose to make a profit by doing a viewing group.
First, compared with other channels, the viewing group landed quickly and the cost recovery was relatively fast. A viewing group, from venue to recruitment, to execution, can be completed in less than two weeks. Moreover, the film side needs audience word of mouth in terms of marketing. As we all know, the calculation standard of Douban score is very harsh, and it will accurately identify the water army, and the value of the viewing group is also here.
Finally, and most importantly, the film side needs to bring traffic to the viewing group to expand publicity, and Acheng's self-media comes with a considerable number of fan accumulation, which is why Acheng can become bigger in its own city. After the film is screened, it will not deliberately guide the direction of word-of-mouth output for the audience.
This year, a film party focusing on visual aesthetics made some viewing groups before the release, and these viewing groups often forced the audience to submit multiple five-star reviews. But Ah Cheng dismissed it, he believes that the audience's choice must still be respected, and the audience's experience is still the most important. Acheng's viewing group attaches great importance to the service of fans, often has small gifts, and will prepare water for fans when conditions permit before the epidemic. Acheng's recognition in the audience group is accumulated little by little.
In the future, the demand for viewing groups may gradually decline, and Acheng is observing the trends in the video field. Recently, Ah Cheng has also made some attempts in the video business, and has launched on-site word-of-mouth videos, which have achieved good results, but he hopes to consider the plan to land after maturity.
Vlogger: Recovery is not easy, don't "roll in"
Xiao Liu, who is also a senior journalist, was originally a science and engineering student, and learned video editing with his love and became a video reporter. In 2018, video media trends were on the rise, and he saw the possibilities, so he quit his job and gave himself a year to focus on video media. The website has a very strong support for content creators, and high-quality content that meets its own positioning will be preferentially pushed, and there will be 3-4,000 creative incentives per 100W of views before the epidemic. Combined with other incentives, high-quality video creators are more discoverable by viewers. Xiao Liu himself is constantly adjusting the direction and carefully polishing the content, and the first two years of the epidemic are the two years of Xiao Liu's fastest growth.
Every time the popular schedule, there will be the head film party to take the initiative to find cooperation, and the annual Spring Festival file is a place where all publicity parties must compete. In 2019, 3 out of 8 films will find Xiao Liu to cooperate (this number doubled in 2021). The website will also give him priority to cooperation with many official projects, and in one year, Xiao Liu has achieved positive profits. And this year's Spring Festival file, 3-4 film parties found Xiao Liu to cooperate, and the business is still very gratifying.
In fact, not only the Spring Festival file, since 2019, the demand for video media by the film side is higher than that for text media, so the budget tendency of the film side is slowly approaching the video media. Before 2019, the budget of video media accounted for about 30% of the budget in the publicity process, and this year's Spring Festival file, based on Douyin, Kuaishou, B station and other related data, roughly estimated that the budget of video media may be more than 80%, and the film side is more willing to invest the budget in video media rather than text media. This objectively also achieved Xiao Liu's career. In this year's Spring Festival, he privately likes "Deep Sea" the most, and he thinks it's a pity that this film has today's results. He also likes "Manjiang Red" and "The Wandering Earth 2" very much, but he is very disgusted by some special behaviors.
In this year's Spring Festival file, all kinds of publicity are buying videos to smash other people's reputation, and Xiao Liu also received such an order. As early as a month ago, the promoter of a certain movie in the Spring Festival file handed Xiao Liu an olive branch, asking him to make a "black water" video for another opponent in the same schedule, which was resolutely rejected by Xiao Liu. Xiao Liu's friend and Xiao A, who came from Xuanfa Company, said that this is a common phenomenon in the industry. There are also some media and film interests that are deeply bound, so all accounts controlled by it will publish so-called "floor washing" and "black water" and other remarks.
Xiao Liu scoffed at this phenomenon, and although Xiao Liu praised the video of a certain film being attacked by black water as soon as it was released, he was unwilling to participate in this "involution". Xiao Liu, who has nearly ten years of media work experience, even if he changed careers and became a video blogger, still holds the original belief of media people.
"This is consuming the patience of the audience and is corroding the foundation of the entire industry!" The audience will not tell which one did it, they will only think that all domestic films are rotten, so there will be such market chaos. He very well understands the reasons why some of the self-media accept orders, after all, everyone has had a hard time in the past three years of the epidemic, and everyone has to eat some dishes that they are not willing to eat. However, Xiao Liu is a person who loves movies, and he does not want his beloved film industry to be dusted because of this. The film market has just recovered a little vitality, and mutual blackening is a kind of "fishing and fishing", which will not only hurt the film, but also hurt the audience's overall impression of domestic films, which is an unsustainable action.
"When there is no recovery, we look forward to the recovery of the film industry. But once it recovers, all sorts of riots will follow. In Xiao Liu's opinion, it is better to buy black water and black others than to do a good job yourself. In the "black" war, winning is a momentary scenery, and losing is the audience's trust in the industry.
KOLs: Don't want to be "black" for money
Abu is a KOL and has many fans on Weibo and Douban. In 2005, Abu started playing Douban, and in 2007 he started playing Weibo. At first, he just shared the viewing evaluation of some niche films, and then mastered scientific Internet skills, he began to flip through foreign language websites, subscribe to foreign language magazines, and extract first-hand news from it and translate it into Chinese Weibo fans, he became a vertical blogger in the field of foreign films. In 2018, he founded his own self-media at the suggestion of a friend, and at that time, under the "aftermath" of the summer of 2018, the film market was still relatively hot, and Abu also received some business cooperation and also made a viewing group.
Since the beginning of the epidemic, especially from last year to this year's Spring Festival, all film publicity actions have been very "anxious", and the budget has been reduced. In this year's Spring Festival, 80% of the company's budget was placed on video media, and the budget of text media was more difficult to grab, so the impact on vertical KOLs such as Abu was relatively large. Abu adjusted the update frequency of his public account to every week to save the budget and actively seek other ways.
Abu felt that in recent years, the public opinion environment has become worse and worse, and the living space of neutrals has become smaller and smaller. Coupled with some "god operations" of the film side, the entire film review market has become very distorted. On the second day of the Spring Festival, many films, whether publicized or distributed, were wrapped up in public opinion, wave after wave, and even some netizens posted ratings to question that "Nameless" was attacked by the "black water" hired by the opponent. In order to grab the remaining 20% of the budget of the public account, some media have accepted some soft articles that are completely inconsistent with their own value proposition, and even have "black water" articles. Abu often sees various trolls tearing around on his Weibo homepage, and with Abu's years of experience in self-media, he can always see at a glance who is a trolls and who is a real fan. For this situation, Abu chose out of sight as a net thing, and he even suggested that Xiaoyu "read less Weibo when you are in a bad mood".
But even so, Abu, who loves to tell the truth, is inevitably approached by the distributor. On the first day of the first day of the first year, Abu gave a bad review to a movie he had seen on Weibo, and as a result, he received a call from the film owner within an hour. The filmmaker demanded to pay to change it to a positive review, and at the same time wanted him to give another film a bad review. Abu rolled his eyes and agreed to the request for deletion, but at the same time said that he would not collect money, would not change his praise, and would not help the film party to hack opponents. What the media cares about most should be their own reputation, Abu does not want to be beaten behind the back of fans, let alone sell his conscience against his will to make praise. "If I betray my conscience and change my praise, then everyone's sins will be in vain last year!" Many KOLs around Abu chose to stand for money, and Abu took them all down. But in a pool of black water, if you don't choose to join the stream, it means falling behind. So because of this, Abu lost many opportunities to cooperate with the film side.
He eventually chose to reject this demand as much as possible by scaling himself down. Faced with the same market, self-media people have made different choices. Some choose to try their best to stick to the bottom line while struggling to survive, and some choose to choose another way to make a living, taking film media as a hobby.
The three years of the epidemic are also three years of rapid cracking of public opinion, and the atmosphere of the entire society is rapidly extreme and torn, and a lot of black public relations methods will naturally breed in the middle, and the industry will be more or less affected and involved. This Spring Festival stall, it is hard for everyone to smell the smell of spring, but if we continue to wear and tear, then there will be no winners in this war!