In the stock era, the rapid slowdown in the growth rate of users often forces game companies to fall into a zero-sum game situation. Especially for products that are competitors, the expansion of the other party's user disk usually means the loss of its own users. In order to compete for a small number of users, the purchase volume marketing that represents the voice of the product to a certain extent has become more and more diverse.
On September 3, 37 Interactive Entertainment's Guofeng simulation business mobile game "Call Me a Big Treasurer" was launched as a adaptation of the same name. Unlike longer film and television dramas such as "You Smile Beautifully", "Call Me a Big Boss" is actually a micro-short drama with a duration of only 3 and a half minutes.
Overall, the micro-short drama is more inclined to the plot of light sand sculpture, which not only accelerates the pace of the promotion of the story line itself, but also takes care of the fragmented time viewing experience of netizens. According to Tencent Video's data, the cumulative number of views in the three days since the launch of the micro-short drama has reached 1.073 million times.
Compared with the number of plays, it is obvious that the changes in game marketing behind the micro-short drama are more noteworthy. In GameLook's view, this is an important shift in the purchase volume from extensive marketing to more refined content marketing in the state of the game industry gradually rolling inward.
3 high-energy reversals in 3 minutes, this micro-short drama is too addictive
Before discussing this play, we need to understand what is a micro-short drama?
In the past, micro-short dramas were often defined as film and television dramas of no more than 3 minutes. However, with the need for plot content, many video platforms, including Tencent Weishi, have raised the maximum length of micro-short dramas to 15 minutes. In order to distinguish it from short videos, micro-short dramas usually have a certain lower limit of duration.
In order to meet the audience's fragmented entertainment needs in a short period of time, the plot of the micro-short drama usually needs to be reversed several times in a very short period of time, in order to stimulate the audience's perception and make people feel like "on top".
In the play "Call Me big boss", this reversal is actually used very appropriately, and it only takes one look to completely engrave the plot in the audience's mind, and even reduce it to a sentence or a title, that is, "The Little Thing About Me Helping jinding chamber of commerce to win the top of the game leader list and then being back stabbed by the scumbag president and crossing back to the game world tyrannical scumbag".
From a single sentence, you can guess the approximate elements contained in the drama, such as crossing, overlord, sweet pet, hand-torn scumbag and so on. If you analyze it in depth, you will find that there are also certain laws and emotional buffers in the arrangement of these elements.
The first reversal in the play, "Helping jinding chamber of commerce to the top of the ranking package", appears in the 30th second of the video. Subsequently, the backstab split by the scumbag chief appeared at 1 minute and 20 seconds, and finally the beginning of the whole story, crossing the bridge, appeared at 2 minutes and 40 seconds. The time interval between the three reversals leaves a good space for the paving of the inverted bridge segments.
In addition, these high-energy reversal bridges that can easily stimulate dopamine secretion also fully mobilize the rise and fall of the audience's emotions after being reasonably distributed. Compared with film and television dramas that can last more than 30 minutes at a time, "Call Me big boss" obviously has more advantages in the pleasure of watching movies, which has been verified in the comment area.
As a game micro-short drama, "Call Me a Big Boss" is also more convenient in terms of plot content. It is not difficult to find that the screen design at the beginning of the play directly adopts the common UI of the game, with buttons such as backpacks and tasks, and also directly implants systems such as leaderboards in the game to further enhance the player's immersion when watching the movie.
Thematically, the content style of Call Me the Big Boss is more inclined to witty humor, which is in line with the tone of the game itself. From the perspective of brand marketing, this makes the two maintain considerable consistency in the core of the brand, thereby strengthening the player's perception of the game IP in the emotional dimension.
Seemingly simple micro-short dramas, in fact, more "fight bayonets"
At the beginning of the "Call Me Big Boss" micro-short drama, there is a detail that is easy to be overlooked: the drama itself has a record number, indicating that the drama is not a traditional purchase advertisement, but has become a veritable film and television drama that needs to be filed.
In the introduction, the official introduction of the micro-short drama will be updated on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, indicating that the official intends to lengthen the plot line to continue to cultivate the stickiness of the audience, so as to open up the traffic pool between the game and the micro-short drama, behind which is to highlight the official thinking about the long-term operation of the game.
Although from the perspective of length, the length of each episode of "Call Me the Big Boss" is only maintained at about 3 minutes, which seems to be a low input cost, but because the production of a good drama needs to take into account factors such as choreographers, actors, props and costumes, in fact, the cost of shooting is not as low as imagined.
For example, last year's popular mobile game "The Strongest Snail" invited the "Never Expected" team and comedy director Lu Zhengyu to shoot a series of micro-short dramas with good market feedback. From this point of view, "Call Me a Big Boss" dares to shoot micro-dramas, which actually shows that the game is quite good in terms of revenue ability.
In the traditional way of buying, the advertising materials placed by the game party also have the characteristics of humor and humor, which can achieve good user conversion, but most of them give people the feeling of not being on the table. The micro-short drama is different, it has a complete story line, and it also takes into account the high-energy reversal in the traditional buying advertising, providing a foundation for the second creation of UGC content.
At the same time, it also avoids the shortcomings of the long cycle process and large production investment in the past production of long dramas, and can match the marketing period of the game faster. This makes the micro-short drama more prominent in terms of number of likes, views, and ability to get. This is reflected in platforms such as Kuaishou.
In the month ending March 9, 2021, the "Kuaishou Little Theater" account still maintained a high number of fans, and the number of likes for the micro-short drama on March 2 became the highest in history. Source: CTR-Short Video Business Decision System
Does that mean that as long as the game is on the micro-short drama, it can bring significant market effects? The answer is clearly no.
The marketing method of the micro-short drama has certain risks, such as the team's capital investment in the early stage, the control of the shuangwen plot, the grasp of the popular meme, and so on. Of course, the most important point is whether the game product can withstand the expectations of users after the micro-short drama is out of the circle. This means that the quality of the product should be good enough to hedge the risks brought by this game, not only the thickness of the content, but also the market effect.
Anecdotal rumors that a brand once spent 2 million yuan to produce a micro-short drama, but the final box office was less than 200,000, which shows that micro-short dramas are not suitable for all brands.
As a leader who has achieved good market results, "Call Me a Big Boss" quickly climbed to the first place in the iOS free list and the sixth place in the paid list after being launched in Hong Kong and Taiwan last year, and it still continues to remain within the top 20 of the list. This verifies the quality of the product to a certain extent.
From short videos to micro-short dramas, the results of a marketing volume
User fragmentation time is getting shorter and shorter, giving birth to the rise of short videos, according to APP Growing data statistics, in August mobile game advertising mostly concentrated in the form of short videos, accounting for up to 57.72%, the entire marketing method is also from the original simple display of game content, to close the emotional transition of both sides, the proportion of game content has further narrowed.
Easier to understand emotional advertising is more likely to occupy the user's mind for the first time, but the reduction of the proportion of game content weakens the differentiated characteristics of the product in the buying market to a certain extent, which is not conducive to the retention of subsequent players. That being the case, how can the problem be solved?
The answer is micro-dramas.
Take "My Name is the Big Boss" as an example. It is not difficult to see that the bridge section arranged by the screenwriter is actually a good implantation of product content into the plot, and the protagonist of the game played by real people actually represents the perspective of an ordinary player, further strengthening the emotional connection between product content and players.
The combination of product and emotion is not only presented in the traversal drama, but also in some short dramas set in modern cities. For example, "Fantasy Journey to the West Web Edition" once invited Zhang Yiduo of "Love Apartment 5" to shoot a series of micro-short dramas, and there is no shortage of game-related content in the play.
Of course, to achieve the dual output of products and emotions, there is not only one way to micro-short dramas, but also relying on the traditional way of buying "ALL IN".
In the two-dimensional game that pays attention to the diversification of buying volume, such a method is actually quite common, and the methodology of its release has been iterating.
For example, the product "Kangong Riding the Crown Sword", many people in the outside world will think that its distribution strategy is a traditional two-dimensional strategy, in fact, this is a more three-dimensional attempt case.
When "Kangong Riding Crown Sword" was launched on station B, it not only used the nostalgic pixel animation to cover the main page position of station B, but also continued to exert efforts in the direction of playing terriers, and the emergence of a large number of UGC content such as "Kara Bungee Adaptation" also fed the entire marketing atmosphere. This combination of two-dimensional and three-dimensional marketing methods finally succeeded in breaking the circle of the product.
Since the second half of 2019, pan-quadratic games with the label of "two-dimensional" have emerged in an endless stream, and marketing means have also shifted from two-dimensional player gathering places such as B station and A station to the distribution of pan-user groups in various channels, and creative forms have also shifted from comic plots, radio dramas, voice actors, and concerts to more huge forms.
In addition to the second dimension, large manufacturers such as Tencent and NetEase are more inclined to extensive delivery, such as liking to put ads on spokespersons and other aspects, and then using the purchase method of "online smashing advertisements and pulling banners offline", combined with the star effect of spokespersons, to maximize drainage.
Compared with the above two traditional buying methods, the advantage of micro-short dramas is that they have realized the sustainability and standardization of advertising sales, so that the relationship between advertisers and players can be adjusted. For advertisers, it goes from "I want you to see" to "you want to take the initiative to watch".
In today's situation where the competition in short video marketing is gradually intensifying, micro-short dramas are more like the products of internal volumes. In the future market, micro-short dramas may become the next stage for inner volume.