Text: Yiqing
Editor: Principal
With only one live broadcast of "Singer 2024", Mango has revitalized the entire internal entertainment.
At the Mango Merchants Conference half a month ago, this reboot variety show attracted much attention, but after it was broadcast, it was found that it was even more out of the circle than imagined: it directly challenged the real singing link of internal entertainment in the form of live broadcast and returned to the Vocal home field; In an unexpected out-of-the-circle situation, the audience automatically joined the competition, simulating Na Ying's mentality and helping Na Ying summon "comrades-in-arms" to find their home field.
This variety show from 2013, after eight seasons of changes, stopped briefly after the broadcast of "The Year of the Singer". The reasons are complex, including the program's own factors, such as the difficulty of inviting singers, the decline in program attention and audience response, etc.
On the other hand, there are also changes in the general environment. At that time, her variety shows became a craze, and there were many talent shows, and many new programs also emerged in the music variety track, "2020 Weibo Entertainment White Paper - Variety Show" concluded: "The discourse power of online variety shows is gradually improving, and those variety show IPs that have been bought by various satellite TV with heavy money and used as a secret weapon to compete for market share are bidding farewell to their own golden age." ”
In the three years that "Singer" has been suspended, the variety show market has also experienced a process from hot to calm. The pockets of the long video platform are tightened, not only is it difficult to pass the series, but also the variety show investment may face the dilemma of no one cares. In May 2022, Hunan Satellite TV and Mango TV jointly held a conference for the first time, proposing the theme of "Doubles against the wind, integration and rebirth"; In November 2023, Hunan Radio and Television put forward the ecological layout of "four swords combined, horses are difficult to chase", and combined the power of Hunan Satellite TV, Mango TV, Golden Eagle Cartoon, and Xiaomang e-commerce to open up a new pattern of the platform.
From the broadcast of "I Am a Singer" in 2013 to the explosion of "Singer 2024", in the past ten years, Mango has finally embarked on a path that is different from both the Internet and traditional media organizations under the continuous adjustment of content, talent and ecological strategies.
On April 26, 2024, at the Mango Spring Investment Conference, Gong Zhengwen, Secretary of the Party Committee, Chairman and Director of Hunan Radio, Film and Television Group Co., Ltd. (Hunan Radio and Television Station), summarized the achievements of the four platforms as follows: "Hunan Satellite TV, which has been on the star for 27 years, has maintained the first provincial satellite TV for 21 years, and as of April 24 this year, it has won the first place in the national all-day ratings for 115 days; Mango TV has been broadcasting exclusively for ten years, achieving 66.53 million effective members, and its growth data is eye-catching in the long video platform; Golden Eagle Cartoon, which has been online for 20 years, is the best children's parent-child channel in China; Xiaomang e-commerce has been established for 3 years, and last year's GMV exceeded 10 billion yuan, and there is still more room for growth this year. ”
In the fierce competition in the market environment, the mango department may have lagged behind in the ratings, but looking back at the performance of the past year, the variety show has "New Flowers" and ushered in the "Singer 2024" out of the circle, and the drama series has "Apocalypse" and "National Color" and other drama reserves with an audience base...... Whether in the field of variety shows or dramas, they all appear in front of the audience with a newer look.
Behind the explosion of "Singer 2024" is not only the self-transcendence of restarting the IP, but also the self-transcendence of Mango in more than ten years. In this kind of transcendence, Mango has become more adept, more value-oriented, and more steady.
More and more will "live"
I have to admit that "Mango Productions" can always master the traffic password and create a "famous scene" that the audience likes to see, which brings a little shock to the domestic entertainment variety show industry.
There are many ways to judge the popularity of a program, the long video platform uses the popularity value of the station to prove, the TV station uses the first rating to prove, and the social platform uses the number of hot searches to prove. But a variety show that is really out of the circle, in addition to being good in data, can often derive more unexpected topics, so that the audience has the right to participate and feed back to the platform.
After the first live broadcast of "Singer 2024", foreign players Chanté Moore and Faouzia ranked in the top two, while the highly anticipated Chinese player Na Ying only won the third place. The form of live broadcast finally revealed the strength of the real singing of domestic entertainment singers, and musicians wrote small essays and sharp comments one after another, and the collection of famous scenes of previous "singers" was directly raised to the height of the "singer national team".
Audiences, who haven't seen such a cruel and real status quo of the show for a long time, finally can't help but collectively create topics, so that this real fire burns even more. While taking screenshots of Na Ying's pre-game and post-game emoji comparison, everyone produced a bridge on the Internet, using the stalk of "Chanté Moore first, Faouzia second, Na Ying third, and the remaining four tied for seventh" to describe the singer's strength level, and used "56 years old is the age of Chuang" and "next week Yingzi Bao four fight for three" to cheer for Na Ying, and sincerely listed the invitation list for the show, Chen Jianbin , Guan Xiaotong , Lin Junjie , Shan Yichun , Zhou Shen , Peng Jiahui , Gong Linna ...... Each name is taken out separately, and it is a hilarious interpretation.
Blogger @real Gan Dazi described the famous scene on the night of the live broadcast of the show: "From one night to now, all kinds of memes, emojis, famous quotes, and golden sentences are flying all over the sky, and the music industry, which has been lifeless and cheating, has suddenly cheated the corpse." ”
Just like the impact of "Singer 2024", Mango's leading position in the variety show industry is obvious to both audiences and practitioners, and it can always create new topics through the update of content and form, making the longboard longer.
At the end of 2023, "Love's School Trip" will be broadcast. Zhu Dan and his wife, who are generally rated in the field of public opinion, reversed the public's stereotype of them after participating in this show; The equally controversial couple Xi Mengyao and He Youjun made the audience label this wealthy couple different from the past. In fact, the mode of "Love's Study Trip" is very simple, that is, several couples travel and communicate together, but the program team's selection and judgment of artists, as well as the effect of reversing the wind and comment, invisibly reflect the production skills of Mango people in "reality show".
In the film list of this spring investment promotion, you can see the agile response ability of Mango people to the market. After the 0713 men's group became popular again, Mango recalled Supergirl as soon as possible, and at the 2024 spring investment promotion site, the Hedgehog Commune paid attention to the fact that the new season of "Time Concert" will link Supergirl to create a new round of nostalgia. Using their own on-board resources to empower the music variety track, just like using live broadcast to open up the second pulse of "Singer", Mango people can always use their own skills to find a way to break the variety show.
When the wind of AIGC blows to the entertainment industry, Mango does not regard AI as a trend, but according to its own advantages, it integrates the characteristics of Mango producers to develop the AI director "Aimang", and makes it the assistant director of the program of "We Three", participating in the planning of the entire process of the program, and in domestic entertainment, this is also a unique attempt. After "We Three", Mango is preparing for the new variety "Aimang's 1% Rule", creating a challenge for the growth of AI directors and new intelligent youth, and continuing to let Aimang exert his AI imagination in the variety show industry, and not fall behind in the whole activity of "technology + culture".
Behind being good at the whole work, it actually reflects the solid production skills, agile market response and bold courage of the Mango variety show team, they can always find a balance between the three, taking into account the novelty and traffic of the show. Full of innovation and creativity, dare to think and dare to do, is Mango's consistent temperament.
To entertain, to value
Being too good at mastering traffic passwords has also become one of the troubles of Mango people. A staff member close to the Mango Department once told the Hedgehog Commune (ID: ciweigongshe) that the outside world's complaints about mango marketing are somewhat a misunderstanding, because of the attributes of Hunan Radio and Television, Mango does not take the initiative to create entertainment traffic and negative topics.
For Mango, all the "whole work" is more and more pointing to "value", which deeply affects the life of the audience.
The change in thinking of "de-entertainment" and "value-oriented" is very obvious in the restart of less IP. "Flowers and Boys", as a travel variety show, has attracted much attention because of the disputes between the guests in the show, and has been regarded by major netizens as a famous social scene for frame-by-frame analysis, and is studied as "flower science".
I have to admit that catching horses with blood can indeed become a source of discussion for the show, but when Mango restarted this variety show, he did not take the old road of "flower learning", but looked for a new social field in peace &love, although the camping season was criticized by the audience for being boring, but the main creator found the right solution in the Silk Road season, not only creating "new flower science", but also creating a high reputation evaluation of 9.2 on Douban.
From the spring investment list, we can also see that Mango variety shows have always been building a value bridge between the audience and the program. In addition to well-known variety show IPs such as "Goodbye Lover", "Flowers and Teenagers, Friends Season", "Happy Friends", the new variety show "Splendid Garden" creates Zhang Songwen's circle of friends, and the upcoming variety show "Escape from the Hate Island" calls on individuals to find the courage to be hated, and "Flowers Bloom: Country Season" even extends this relationship to the construction of life between people and the countryside. Looking at the essence through the variety show genre, the variety shows that are abundant in mango often form a close connection with our lives.
This value also has a commercial extension. In addition to increasing the content level, Mango will also gather the music resources in its hands to create a "Mango TV music performance track", linking online and offline, and presenting a scale of 100 performances in the form of IP tours. At the moment of the recovery of the concert, Mango Music Variety took advantage of the offline situation, which undoubtedly raised the commercial value of the Music Variety one step further.
After the integration of the four platforms, the combination of Xiaomang's e-commerce and content has become closer and closer, helping variety show content to explore more commercial value. In the past year, there have been many examples of e-commerce live streaming in the entertainment industry, such as TVB's entry into Taobao Live, "This! is Street Dance" as a variety show has a live broadcast room on Taobao, and Mango also embraces live broadcast e-commerce and chooses "Hello, Saturday" to test Taobao. It is reported that the first live broadcast was transformed into the TOP1 of the Taobao live broadcast room, and the traffic of the first live broadcast was TOP4.
It is not difficult to imagine that with the success of the live broadcast of "Hello, Saturday", what kind of e-commerce value will Mango's variety show IP library bring.
In the current variety show environment, on the one hand, it is difficult to innovate, it is difficult for a brand-new variety show to determine whether it can make a splash in the market before it is broadcast, and on the other hand, it is difficult to attract investment, and advertisers pay more attention to cost performance when using money. Mango's strategy of favoring content value actually fundamentally solves the current variety show dilemma, valuing content value will win back word of mouth, and broadening commercial value will meet brand needs.
Make up for shortcomings and motivate talents
Whether it is the variety show's control of traffic, topics, and value, or the layout of the drama series on genre and track, all of them reflect the pragmatism of the Mango team.
In 2014, after the Golden Eagle Network became "Mango TV", Hunan Radio and Television supported the growth of Mango TV in the form of exclusive broadcasting, and in the past ten years, although Mango TV is not as large as Aiyouteng in scale, it has walked out of its own way. In 2017, in the era when the long video platform was still burning money, Mango TV already had an advanced sense of profitability, and achieved profitability for the first time that year.
Compared with the long video platform, Mango TV has tasted a lot of sweetness from Hunan Satellite TV in terms of copyright purchase, but in the later process, it has also realized the feedback between channels, such as the broadcast of programs such as "The Great Detective" and "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves", the former's maze track incubated the "Nan Bowan (NO.1)" brand series, achieving cumulative sales of 1 million pieces, GMV of 200 million yuan, and the latter has repeatedly driven the rise of Mango Supermedia's stock price.
It is also this pragmatic spirit that makes today's Mango pay more attention to the layout of the series. In 2023, at the Mango Four-Platform Integration Investment Conference, Mango officially announced a list of 80+ dramas, which are mainly divided into five popular tracks: "Love and Growth", "Oriental Passion", "Hundred Flavors of Life", "Pure Feelings" and "Suspenseful Exploration"; At the new season of the investment conference, Mango has launched 5 major drama labels, including Qingmang, Xingmang, Jinmang, Fengmang, and Damang, focusing on different groups of people and content categories such as love, ancient costumes, mature people, suspense themes, and micro-short dramas, and moving forward with the trend of the market.
Compared with the variety show section, the shortcomings of Mango dramas are obvious. Although the layout is late, Mango has learned the lessons of the long video platform in the field of dramas and reduced the risk of drama production. Judging from the film list, the big dramas it bets on are limited, but from the perspective of the main creative team, there is also an audience base guarantee, such as "National Beauty" by Yang Zi and Li Xian, and "Alley People" with Noon Sunshine.
Mango did not bet on the project by blindly burning money, not only took a shortcut to traffic, but also output valuable repertoire, and used the cost performance to the extreme. In the film list, we can see the figures of companies such as Stellar Gravity and Huanyu Film and Television, as well as Chen Sicheng, Guo Jingming and other main creators who have mastered the traffic password.
In the long run, Mango still has a long way to go in order to make up for the shortcomings of the series, because it lacks the impact of popular models on the audience, and works like "Apocalypse" that can represent the temperament of Mango dramas have not yet appeared in batches. The production cycle of film and television dramas is long, and it will take at least two or three years for Mango to make dramas before they can see the results one after another.
In the process of trying to catch up and pragmatic adjustment, the entire Mango ecology has not formed similarities with other long video platforms. For example, Mango has established studios internally, and Mango currently has 56 variety show teams, 22 film and television teams, and 36 strategic studios; The general direction is also similar to that of the long video platform, such as the focus on the layout of drama content, the emphasis on users of all ages, including children's users, and the cultivation of newcomers in the industry and the accumulation of talents, creating the "Xinmang S Plan" and "Film and Television Drama Super Partner System", and long-term cooperation with excellent film and television creators.
But it's more about finding common ground while reserving differences. In addition to the studio system, in the new season of investment promotion, Mango has launched a "super studio" system to form a clear promotion and incentive mechanism internally, and this more targeted competition is one of the factors that promote the output of more good content; The integration of the four platforms has also broken through the barriers between content, users, and e-commerce, for example, in the integration of network and station, the cumbersome process can be reduced and become more efficient, thus forming a unique mango ecological advantage.
How much effect this ecology can have depends on the length of the short board of the series.
From "Singer" in 2013 to the re-popularity of "Singer 2024", the only thing that has not changed in Mango is that it is always changing. It is like a tree, growing towards the sun in the wind and waves of the market, making the fruits of the content newer, and also renewing the ecology of the forest, and finally growing into a forest that can withstand the wind and waves.
References:
1, "Singer" is not done, these data tell you the reason, the advertising and marketing circle
2. The success of Hunan mango, the strategy of Chinese businessmen
3. Chen Guoquan: The Market Mechanism of Mango TV, Chinese Reporter