This year's Valentine's Day electronic squeeze is none other than "I Heard You Like Me". This sweet and sadistic emotional drama quickly topped the V list of online dramas after its launch, and triggered topic discussion on social platforms, and under the enthusiastic feedback of the audience, the drama was "plus" on Valentine's Day.
Reviewing the data performance of various dimensions of "I Heard You Like Me", we may find the content logic of this emotional drama that can kill the siege under the watch of the big drama.
Data observation
The popularity reached the "explosive level" in the first three days, and the characters dominated the hot search
The figure below shows the top 5 online drama popularity since the beginning of 2023, and "I Heard You Like Me" has become the first online drama list of this year's V list with an online broadcast index of 82.63, which is the first hit in the emotional track of this spring's drama market. At the beginning of the broadcast, it quickly broke out of the circle, and the show showed strong market competitiveness.
The figure below shows the trend of the online broadcast index since the start of the show, and it can be clearly seen that the popularity of the show rose rapidly after its launch on February 10, reaching the explosive order of 80+ on the third day. The rapidly rising popularity curve shows that the show not only successfully attracts a large audience at the beginning of the story with enough high-quality content, but also quickly expands the audience to the general public as the plot unfolds.
This work is also Tencent Video's first online drama with a popularity of more than 26,000 in 2023. The figure below shows the popularity trend of the show on Tencent Video, and its fermentation trajectory is consistent with the popularity trend of the V list. From the perspective of rising rapidly to a high level and continuing to maintain a high peak of popularity performance, the subsequent popularity growth space of the show is considerable.
The super high audience influence of the play can also be intuitively seen from the feedback of social platforms. Up to now, the play has been discussed on Weibo and Douyin, where young people are active, with 1.83 billion and 550 million views on the main topic, respectively. Such a high-level topic discussion shows that the play not only attracts a large number of netizens to follow the drama, but also arouses the enthusiasm of fans to share.
The following figure shows the specific topics of the play on social platforms. It can be seen that the characters, actors, plot, and producers behind the scenes are all topics that netizens are keen to discuss. The enthusiasm for interaction from the audience and the high attention to the content are important reasons for the rapid spread of the show's popularity.
The surprise of the drama market comes from the "blockbuster", and the birth of the popular drama is based on the activity and satisfaction of the audience, and the data performance of "I Heard You Like Me" once again verifies this rule. This work can become the first explosive emotional drama this spring at the beginning of the broadcast, and the solid and fascinating content is indispensable.
Anatomy of content
The double-line narrative is intertwined with sweetness and abuse, and the reality gene makes the aesthetic more advanced
From a content point of view, almost every "dark horse" work will bring new thinking at the creative level, and "I Heard You Like Me" is certainly no exception.
Judging from the feedback on social platforms, a good enough character is an intuitive element to attract the audience, and it is also the most discussed topic among fans. In particular, Ning Zhiqian played by Peng Guanying and Ruan Liuzheng played by Wang Churan are very charismatic and have countless fans in their respective circles.
The male protagonist Ning Zhiqian is a doctor with outstanding professional ability, and the unique rational characteristics of his profession make him lack emotional expression in the face of emotions, unable to respond to the emotional needs of the heroine in the early stage, resulting in the beautiful and romantic "marriage first and then love" of the male and female protagonists ending with regret. This male protagonist, who made the audience "love and hate", finally embarked on the abused journey of "chasing his wife and crematorium" after the appearance of "love rival", which made countless fans excited.
The sensual and warm heroine Ruan Liuzheng successfully aroused the audience's empathy from the first moment she appeared. The stage of chasing love of girls who are ignorant and pure in the early stage has made countless audiences distressed and full of empathy; The mature stage of self-improvement and self-reliance in the later stage allows the audience to taste the growth and refreshing feeling of independent women. Under the fine-grained emotional expression and the sufficiently plump growth arc, the heroine Ruan Liuzheng has become one of the most attractive characters in the play.
The audience's love for the role even extends outside the play, and the starring Peng Guanying and Wang Churan have also become hot topics discussed by netizens, bringing the heat effect of "drama throwing people".
The emotional relationship in the play is also one of the highlights that make the audience want to stop. Under the double-line narrative, the previous history of the male and female protagonists "marriage before love" alternates with the current "broken mirror and reunion" emotions, which not only brings freshness at the audiovisual level, but also makes countless fans quickly "enter the pit" and cannot extricate themselves.
What is even more rare is that the play pays attention to emotional logic in the promotion of emotional relationships, maintaining sweetness while making the emotional relationships in the work more landed. In traditional romance dramas, the male and female protagonists start a fairytale-like sweet life after "marriage before love", but in this work, the male and female protagonists fail after "flash marriage" without sufficient communication. The mode of getting along between the two parties also triggered the audience's discussion of the marriage run-in period.
The addition of reality genes leaves more space for thinking in the works in addition to being good-looking, and also makes the emotional expression of the works more mature and advanced, which is highly in line with the increasingly mature viewing aesthetics of the current audience.
Industry thinking
In front of and behind the scenes, the "explosive methodology" of Yaoke culture surfaced
The birth of a blockbuster is the result of the right time and place. However, the producer's accurate capture of the market trend, insight into the audience's aesthetics, and high requirements for high-quality creative resources and content quality at the production level are the prerequisites for determining whether a work has a "hit" appearance. "I Heard You Like Me" can become the first explosive emotional drama this spring, and its producer's trading ability of Fang Yaoke Culture cannot be underestimated.
Yaoke Culture is one of the few heavy players in the current drama market that can continue to output head content, and the company's "An Home", "Special Combat Glory", "Together", "Breakout", etc., are all explosive works with national recognition. From the commonality of these head contents, it can be seen that Yaoke Culture can continue to create the "content gene" of explosive models.
In general, these works are realistic dramas with social hot spots, and have distinct and positive positive energy attributes in theme expression and value output, which is highly in line with the aesthetic trend of the drama market in recent years. From the perspective of resource ratio, these works have gathered the top production force, creative team and starring lineup in the current market, ensuring that the work has a very high production standard.
Judging from market feedback, "An Home" won the 2020 ratings championship and was the most popular national hit that year; "Special Combat Glory" is one of the most popular military dramas in recent years, successfully expanding the audience of this traditional theme to young people; "Together" has a burst of word-of-mouth, with 100,000+ netizens scoring a high score of 8.4 points on Douban; "Breakout" has also reached the explosive level in terms of ratings and popularity.
And "I Heard You Like Me" uses excellent data performance to once again verify Yaoke Culture's ability to incubate high-quality content into market hits.
Specific to the production level, this work can present such a rich point of view, which is inseparable from the main creators in front of and behind the scenes.
Director Yang Yang
Director Yang Yang has directed popular dramas such as "Menghualu" and "Heart Technique", including "I Heard You Like Me", each work she directed is extremely beautiful in visual expression, with unique aesthetics and strict requirements for details, to establish a distinct personal style. In terms of content, director Yang Yang pays special attention to the realistic logic of character growth and plot advancement, and is good at exploring the characteristics of actors and matching the characters, which is why her works can always create memorable characters.
Producer Zhang Meng
The producer of the play is Zhang Meng, who is popular with the audience, and has created works loved by the audience such as "Crossfire" and "White Hair". This actor is a producer with outstanding achievements in front of and behind the scenes, has an accurate grasp of market trends and audience aesthetics, and is also unique in the selection of the main creator and actors. This is also the reason why the works she creates can always dazzle the audience's eyes with innovative content and bring a "drama throwing" effect. The strong combination in front of and behind the scenes is the confidence that the play can have such a high-level appearance.
At present, the drama market is ushering in the era of boutique, and the drama dispute is returning to the content itself. Such a market environment provides fertile ground for the birth of explosive works, and these dark horse works represented by "I Heard You Like Me" can feed back the market at the content level, inspire innovative inspiration, and provide vitality for the future development of the industry. The creative ecology of the virtuous cycle is the internal drive of the self-iteration of the drama market.
Looking forward to the birth of more dark horse works, while surprising the audience, it will also continue to inject vitality into the drama market from the source of content.