The 1905 Movie Network special article went from the much-anticipated "Snow Field" to the actual "Zhang Wansen, it's snowing".
Regardless of whether it is "embarrassing" or not, the marketing event of the movie "Twinkle Twinkle Twinkle Star" alone allowed the movie to achieve record-breaking box office results and lead the New Year's Day file. Under the impact of many films, the beginning of 2024 will also usher in the first 1 billion total box office.
It's just that the promotional gimmicks of the movie are getting more and more sufficient, and the filmmakers are doing their best to attract the attention of the audience - the dramatic feedback from the audience during the viewing process has evolved into a small theater where half of the film is healed by the film. This kind of exaggerated mode with no upper limit will only be something that everyone can't think of, and it can't be done without them.
There is also no lack of celebrity effects, and even evolved a three-piece movie promotion set of "Zhang Yimou was shocked, Wu Jing visited the class, and Huo Siyan shed tears at the premiere" on the Internet.
Looking back at every movie that has been recognized by the market, it is all the content of the film that has won the recognition of the audience. In the end, those false propaganda are just a pre-emptive possibility for the rollover.
01.
The audience's curiosity before seeing the movie is nothing more than the main creative lineup, the genre of the theme, and the content of the story.
The Spring Festival file "Man Jianghong" very clearly presented these contents to the public before the screening. The main "out-of-print lineup", the character trailer is as short as possible, from Shen Teng, Yi Yang Qianxi, to Zhang Yi, Lei Jiayin, Yue Yunpeng, almost everything, each character is accompanied by a trailer with a duration of about 30 seconds. This behavior makes this seemingly mixed lineup fit the genre of the theme that the core of this film wants to highlight.
At the same time, the poster directly named suspense and comedy - "suspense is enough, laugh to the end".
The core posters released by the film are all based on red and black, corresponding to the two themes and hinting that this will be a humorous drama in a literary sense.
Especially on the final poster, the silhouette of Qin Hui is left in the core position, which seems to spoil the final villain, but when the real reversal appears, I know that the original story is not simple.
In terms of pre-screening marketing, "Man Jianghong" has a great style of opening and closing, and soon won the audience's advanced recognition, leading the Spring Festival pre-sale box office.
Not only that, when the word-of-mouth fermented after the screening, the content of the film drove the audience to recite "Man Jianghong", and the soundtrack of the film walking on the short video platform, the overall content returned to the movie itself.
The same is true of the literary film "Mistake by the River", which was released in the second half of the year. "Crazy" is a keyword that is constantly being extracted on the eve of the movie's release, and even the promotional slogan on the poster is "There is no answer, it is better to go crazy".
seems to be an act that caters to the current crazy mode, but with the revelation of the movie, the situation of the madman in the story, and whether Ma Zhe played by Zhu Yilong falls into the open ending of the cycle of madness, has become the core of the discussion in the later stage of the film.
At the same time, the movie does not reject the label of "literary film", from the operational level of the official Weibo, the blog post processing does not have the redundancy of the past, there is no burden, just the processing of short words and phrases, but it has a literary and artistic tone in everyone's concept. At the same time, Douyin has almost given up the sinking publicity, highlighting the value of the original author Yu Hua and the appeal of actor Zhu Yilong.
Truly let the film promotion return to the film itself, find the audience, and will not be eaten up because of the excessive emphasis on "commerciality", even in the not popular schedule, the box office of the movie "The Mistake by the River" exceeded the expectations of the industry, and at the same time, it achieved a long-term screening in the real sense.
02.
"Screening" must be the key word at the level of film promotion and distribution in 2023. Especially in the summer file, it has set off a wave of controversy.
The first is the movie "In the Octagon Cage". The pre-screening attitude focuses on self-confidence, with Wang Baoqiang wanting to "return a good movie to the audience" as the keynote, while amplifying the sincerity of the new work, he does not avoid the problems of the previous work, and it is the Dragon Boat Festival file nearly half a month before the screening, taking the lead in opening the screening activities, and then fermenting the film's reputation and driving the counterattack of the movie.
The directorial value of "Wang Baoqiang" has been enhanced through this film, and the box office of the film has also risen from 4 or 500 million expected by the industry to 2.2 billion in the end.
Another strong point is the movie "All or Nothing". Compared with "In the Octagonal Cage", which has the bonus of Wang Baoqiang's "audience popularity", then "All or Nothing" is "the right time, place and people".
In the first half of 2023, many social news of Southeast Asian fraud rushed to the hot search, although it was not borrowed by the filmmaker, but it still made many viewers connect with each other and bring heat.
This kind of topical news topic can make the movie sink better.
At the same time, the short video promoter of the film released a clip of Lu Bingkun played by Wang Chuanjun and worshipping God after killing people before the screening, which on the one hand highlighted the acting skills of the actors themselves, and on the other hand, it also satisfied the audience's curiosity for this group, and soon spread on the short video platform.
The value of "1+1>2" has been magnified in "All or Nothing", and the number of people who want to see it has surged. After the box office of nearly 500 million, the film was directly raised. After the screening, the film strengthened the topic of the film itself, focusing on the concept of "one more person watching the movie, one less person being deceived", which met the needs of the current environment for anti-fraud.
03.
Good publicity can always help the film to achieve a reversal after the release. Among the many cases in 2023, I have to mention works such as "The Wandering Earth 2", "She Who Disappeared", and "Fengshen Part 1".
Although "The Wandering Earth 2" has a strong IP value, it is understood that director Guo Fan did not deliver the film until the last minute before the release, and if there is still time, he will refine it again. This led to the pre-release promotion of the film, which was weaker than other films in the same schedule.
After the film started, it took the lead in starting the roadshow. Ma Zhao, played by Ning Li, was even out of the circle because he was "seagull", and during the roadshow, he interacted with fans to claim this image, which made the film get a pan-dimensional breakthrough.
The strongest out of the circle of "The Wandering Earth 2" is that after its release, the audience's affirmation of the content and setting of the film, netizens said frankly, "If "The Wandering Earth" is to open the door to Chinese science fiction movies, then "The Wandering Earth 2" is to open the door to Chinese science fiction movies. ”
The film links Chinese enterprises to develop their own machinery and equipment, and realizes the linkage between the film and the heavy equipment of a big country in a real sense, so that the audience not only feels the charm of China's film industry, but also feels the power of China's industry.
The phenomenon of "Guo Fan's fate" hidden behind this phenomenon has also been spread. The combination of these two promotional contents allows the film to skillfully balance mainstream publicity and entertainment communication, create multiple topics, and form a national help to promote and feed the box office.
Similar to "The Wandering Earth 2", it is the movie "Fengshen Part 1".
After the release of "Fengshen Part 1", the topic and word-of-mouth assisted in both directions, and in the early stage, it was combined with the easter egg of "Wen Taishi's Return to the Dynasty" at the end of the movie, with "Fengshen Part II" still in "icu" due to the production cost as the topic point, and the director echoed the audience's homophonic stalk "523 (no 23)" and changed its name to "U23 (23)" to form an effective interaction.
At the same time, the film opened a 5-city premiere and a 24-city tour, allowing the actors to interact with the audience offline at zero distance, telling the behind-the-scenes story of the filming, and deeply restoring the "Fengshen Training Camp", fully showing the creator's intentions and sincerity to the movie, and reproducing the style of "tap water" marketing.
Compared with the first two movies, the roadshow of "Disappearing Her" is not the main plus, but its topic fermentation is precisely in the process of the roadshow, turning the topic of female reality into a breakthrough, with the lyrics in the song "Cage", "Why is it gorgeous/It makes people flutter in the air/Why do those who love me give me a cage", and wake up the "love brain" at all times.
Needless to say, the song "Cage" has become the best movie song of the year in 2023.
The sentence "The light boat has crossed the ten thousand mountains" in the movie "Thirty Thousand Miles of Chang'an" also sublimates a lot for the content of the movie, and it is in line with the life of the current 30+ audience.
04.
Although most foreign films will perform mediocre in the Chinese film market in 2023, there are still many films that use efficient marketing methods to find accurate users.
For example, Makoto Shinkai, the director of the Japanese animation "The Journey of Suzuya", came to China to fulfill an agreement made four years ago. The film draws on the past "Your Name. The momentum accumulated in the Chinese market and other works achieved the first wave of movie-watching climaxes after the Spring Festival.
Along with this, there is another Japanese animation "Slam Dunk".
With the help of the feelings of "Slam Dunk" itself, this work stimulates the audience's admission with zero-point fields and other modes, and realizes the movie-watching boom of zero-point fields. At the same time, the film strives to restore the classics, inviting some Chinese voice actors of the drama to dub the movie, so that the audience can feel like they have entered their childhood in the cinema.
The movies "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" have achieved "borrowing strength" in the market, and with a "Barbieheimer", this craze has "burned" from Hollywood to the Chinese market.
Judging from the publicity position of the two films in the Chinese mainland market, director Nolan came to China for "Oppenheimer" to carry out a two-city promotion, while Warner Pictures probably did not use "Barbie" as a key film, quite bare-haired. After the release, the core value of the film's content was extracted, and Xiaohongshu, Weibo and other positions were used to achieve "Barbie fever".
The final box office performance of "Barbie" of 252 million seems mediocre, but with the performance of Hollywood films in the Chinese market this year and the limitations of the film's audience, this achievement can be said to be far beyond expectations.
05.
Looking back at the various films mentioned above, no matter how the publicity model changes, there is always one thing that is constant, and these publicity patterns always start with the movie and return to the movie.
These promotions may be able to use exaggerated words to attract the audience again and again, use the shock of the well-known director to highlight the actors' acting skills, and use the tears at the premiere to reflect the emotions of the film. But after the film really faces the audience, will the value of these entertainment transmissions appreciate or depreciate?
Perhaps, what we should think about is how to make the audience and the movie interact in both directions and achieve effective communication in film marketing, rather than just "tricking" the audience into the theater for the sake of box office figures. Eventually, perhaps the viewer remembers "how many reversals" the film "reverses," but not how the film actually describes those reversals.
In 2023, the marketing will treat "Burning Winter" as a love movie, "Parrot Killing" as a cool movie, and "Yongan Town Storytelling" into a comedy movie. But after the end of the film, the backlash of the wrong goods abounds.
In 2024, we should perhaps return film marketing to movies, let audiences consider the essence of these films, and let more people return to the cinema.