Text | Second Ale
No one expected that in 2014, a marketing article promoting the Forbidden City APP, "Yongzheng: Feeling Cute and Cute", would burn the IP of the Forbidden City so vigorously, on variety shows, sell cultural and creative peripherals, hold offline Lantern Festival, etc. - these all illustrate two points, one is that the Forbidden City itself has the temperament of fire, and the other is the key to marketing.
In fact, for any thing (products, works, etc.), no matter what the quality, it is inseparable from the assistance of marketing, good things can be used in marketing to achieve the best of things, and moderate things can broaden the boundary cognition and achieve the greatest value result.
Especially in the pan-entertainment industry circle, movies, dramas, variety shows, etc. are often unexpected because of an unexpected marketing. For example, the film level created an industry precedent at the end of 2018 "What is Page", and the earlier "One Kiss New Year" of "The Last Night on Earth"; the "China Has Hip Hop" "Do You Have Freestyle?" at the variety level The "skr" of "China's New Rap" has made these works burst out of the fiery temperament they deserve at a certain stage.
So, in the current focus on economic development, how to do marketing? And how to evaluate marketing performance? Yu Yujun had the honor to interview the dark horse company in the field of integrated marketing of Chinese entertainment, the founder of Kamiya Culture, COO Lou Lichang, to talk about how to make a thing become a blockbuster!
The reason why Kamiya Culture was chosen is because they have been in existence for a series of variety works in less than three years of their establishment, such as "China Has Hip Hop", "China New Rap", "Talk Show Conference", "This! It's Iron Armor", "This! It is the slam dunk", "Happy Comedian 4" and the opening year variety show "In the Name of the Group", etc., creating a national classic hot word, such as "Do you have freestyle?" "skr", etc.
The following is a compilation of some of the dialogues between "Reading Entertainment" (WeChat public id: yiqiduyu) and Lou Lichang, COO of Kamiya Culture:
About marketing
Reading Entertainment: For a variety show, when do you usually start to intervene in marketing?
Lou Lichang: When the program is planned, we will enter and communicate with the production team, how we will line up the troops, for example, we will give some opinions, and bury some hot words in front of the film; and according to the crowd attributes of the variety show, we will propose to add some circle-breaking gameplay settings. This not only has a paving effect on the later marketing, but also helps the variety show to go out of the circle.
It's like This! As a straight male variety show, about 80% of the audience is male. So when we did this project, we made a group, called slam dunk girls, we did dunk girls rushing ducks, bringing together girls who like to watch this kind of straight male variety show, and girls who accompanied their boyfriends to watch variety shows, so that she could find organization and a sense of belonging. Help the show break down the circle and create the circle layer.
Reading entertainment: Many marketing companies pay attention to simple and rough and effective, what do you pay more attention to with marketing? What marketing methods are generally used?
Lou Lichang: We have always advocated innovative entertainment means and delivered entertainment value. Just like the previous statement, we don't love routines, so our marketing pays more attention to topicality, events, and explosiveness. And marketing means will also be based on different variety shows to develop, first to develop a main line, this main line may be as long as a month, a quarter or even half a year, and then will be buried on a weekly and monthly basis, and strive to achieve a breaking point.
In order to meet the explosive point and customer needs, there will be a variety of marketing methods to assist, such as visual marketing. At present, the market demand for visual merchandising has changed greatly, in addition to the posters that play a role in informing in the early stage of the launch, the current marketing pays more attention to the viral map with certain interactivity, dissemination and topicality during the launch, as well as videos and so on. In short, different marketing methods will be adopted at different times according to the needs of different stages, and different effects will be presented.
Reader: How do you define new media marketing?
Lou Lichang: I think new media marketing is mainly due to new media channels and new creative content. The former is easy to understand, that is, the communication channels should be new. Because it is a fast-paced era and young people are king, we ask our staff to always maintain research on new channels, including apps, media and so on.
Just like Apps such as Little Red Book, Rabbit District, Eight Groups, and NetEase Cloud Music, the community is a channel outside the regular. It often gives some programs a miraculous effect (such as music programs in NetEase Cloud Music, etc.). Moreover, there are also different channels for different needs of customers, the public voice focuses on TOC channels, and the industry image pays attention to TOB channels.
As for the creative content of the latter, this is a point that all companies have been deeply cultivating for a long time, and our company pays special attention to innovation, such as in the brain storm, asking everyone to learn the exclusion method - excluding the first impression, the first thought, because this is something that everyone can think of, we must be different.
We also have our own methodology for creativity, and this set of things is from the summary of past cases, as well as some of the latest research from abroad and the present. Just like when we did "China Has Hip Hop" in 2017, a hot transfer activity initiated by Guanwei was our initiative. This idea now seems to have been applied in many marketing cases, but at that time, a hot campaign could cause 3.86 million retweets, which is a typical classic case of small and large.
Reader: At the beginning of this year, many brands and customers stopped and trembled, what is your current situation?
Lou Lichang: We basically do not help customers operate the official WeChat now, the reason why we stopped the official WeChat is because the WeChat cost performance is too low, busy half a day may be thousands of people, tens of thousands of people to see.
The continued operation of Weibo and Douyin is because compared with other brands and products, variety shows have special needs, and some materials other than positive films are passed on to the outside world, so as to attract more fans and rob them of more time and enthusiasm to pay attention.
Reader: How do customers rate your marketing fire? How do you define the performance of a marketing event?
Lou Lichang: In the past, there were almost no standards, just do it, the so-called KPI, is to write a few articles, sent a few media; and now more will pay attention to how many hot searches, the whole cycle to do several events and topics, these are more effect-oriented. Although KPIs are also required at present, we ourselves require employees to consciously convert the volume of sound into traffic when doing communication, although it is difficult, but we will try hard.
To define whether a marketing event is hot or not, we will judge according to the volume of sound, which refers to the effect brought by the spread, such as whether there is a traditional media active follow-up, celebrities, big V and other authorities as tap water to expand the volume. Once the sound generated by tap water reaches a certain level that we and our customers recognize, then it is on fire.
At present, the volume of sound will focus on hot searches, topics, etc., including Weibo, Douyin, Douban, Kuaishou, Zhihu and so on.
About the variety show industry
Reading Entertainment: As a marketer who serves variety shows, how do you view variety shows in recent years?
Lou Lichang: Although some people are currently singing about the arrival of winter, in fact, I think it is getting better and better. First of all, the network synthesis, in 2016 may still be groping in all aspects, to 2017 variety shows began to break out, especially the outbreak of our service "China has hip hop", the entire variety market has been driven up, everyone will feel that the original variety show can still have such a big energy, may bring so much value in all aspects.
In 2018, we will find that whether it is hip-hop, ironclad, dunk, and 101 drafts. Many, many themes have exploded, and there is a feeling of a hundred schools of thought. If 2017 is a big one, 2018 is a hundred schools of thought. At the same time, China's original producers are also trying to open up new themes.
Compared with the network synthesis, although there are also people singing decline in the Taiwan comprehensive, in fact, we see more exploration, including "The Next Station Legend" and "My Girl". Taizong is gradually stepping out of the comfort zone from the restrictions and creating more possibilities.
Reader: At present, are the customers you are connecting with Taiwan Or the network?
Lou Lichang: Among the customers we serve, there are still more network comprehensives, about 70% of the network comprehensive and 30% of the taiwan comprehensive. However, under the leap-forward development of the network synthesis, it is bound to bring pressure to the Taiwan comprehensive, and the future Taiwan comprehensive will also quickly rise to the top in the competition, and at that time, I think the proportion will shrink.
Reading entertainment: This year's entertainment industry economic situation is not good, variety shows have been constrained, how do you think? When variety shows are limited, do you feel that the budget is reduced?
Lou Lichang: I think the form is temporary, and it is also tending to be rational at present. From the current customer point of view, the budget reduction is not obvious.
In fact, since entering 2019, we have participated in more and more customers bidding, and customers are more willing to spend money on the cutting edge, so in such a situation, we have more opportunities.
Reading Entertainment: You have served so many variety shows, how do you think about the quality of the program? Will it be rejected because of the poor quality of the show?
Lou Lichang: There is definitely a difference between high and low quality, but in fact, each program also has its own essence in it, and our perspective as marketers is multi-dimensional and will be seen from different angles. For example, look at the contestants' singing skills and his dancing strength, as well as the laughter of the show, the sense of variety and so on. At the same time, we will also look at it from the perspective of the audience, try to tap the essence of each program, and expand the volume.
Reading entertainment: Some video platforms canceled the number of plays, changed to the heat, as a marketer, what do you think? Will it have an impact on you when it comes to helping with the marketing of your show?
Lou Lichang: Previously, a program with more than 100 million broadcasts would be used to increase publicity, but after many years, such content has been a bit like a report, and even these broadcasts have brought some negative competition.
Movies may also rely on ratings to tell users how the movie really is. However, because variety shows are free, they are much lower than the viewing cost of movies, so the amount of playback is not the key point to attract users, on the contrary, the essence of works passed out to the outside world can attract users more.
In fact, the closure of the amount of broadcast is a good thing for the entire marketing environment, there is no need to use traffic to consider whether this variety show production is good or not, whether the publicity is good or not, and the amount of playback is the result of a hundred things combined.
About the Company
Reader: Why did you want to start a business, and why did you choose to focus on the business of variety shows?
Lou Lichang: I chose to start a business because I love freedom and don't love routines. It's like choosing to focus on variety shows, because it's the hardest, so I want to take a differentiated path out. As we all know, variety shows are generally broadcast weekly, it is difficult to watch in advance and can not see the subsequent programs, then it is a test of rapid response ability. And the combination of variety shows and current affairs hotspots is very strong, it will require your response speed, so this is a big challenge. We think the hardest bones are definitely the greater the risk, the greater the return. Because when we entered, in fact, the marketing market for TV series and movies was basically stable and saturated.
How is the company structured? Which sector is more important for construction?
Lou Lichang: The company department is divided into project department, creative department, visual department, media department, etc. As for which department is more important, I think it is very important, because they are indispensable, and they can operate effectively under the trader and produce maximum efficiency.
Entertainment: How has Kamiya achieved in recent years? Is the profit high?
Lou Lichang: In three years, the company has grown from the initial three to the current 60 people, and the programs and cases created have continued to break records. As for profit, my fundamental purpose is not profit. Of course, you say that profit weight is not important, it is very important, but the most important purpose is by no means profit. What we pursue is real marketing effectiveness and more emphasis on sustainability.
Reading entertainment: In addition to focusing on variety shows, what layout will the company make in 2019?
Lou Lichang: In 2019, in focusing on variety shows, it will be extended to brand entertainment marketing. The so-called brand entertainment marketing is that the brand promotes the brand through this content, method and means of entertainment. Because now the brand is very closely tied to entertainment, such as implanting variety shows, star platforms, star spokespersons and so on. It is all these practices related to brand entertainment, which requires a second round of communication in the later stage.
In fact, most of these brands are served by advertising companies, public relations companies, 4A and other companies, but they are also more general in service, and we are different, we are doing entertainment marketing, is a vertical professional field, in the case of customers have entertainment marketing needs, we set aside a team to targeted services, perhaps we can make the plate bigger.
*Original article, reprinted with attribution indicated