In Cheng Wu's view, the IP ecological chain is the key to breaking through the ceiling and fighting uncertainty.
On June 3, Reading Group held an annual press conference on the banks of the Huangpu River. After more than a year at the helm of Yuwen, Cheng Wu, CEO of Yuwen Group, vice president of Tencent Group and CEO of Tencent Pictures, reviewed the achievements of "reorganizing Heshan" to the outside world, and announced the strategic upgrade of "Great Reading" - based on Tencent's new cultural and creative ecology, taking online literature as the cornerstone and IP openness as the driving force, and openly building an IP ecological business matrix with partners in the whole industry.
Turning over the financial report after the new management took over last year, comparing the analysis of the "words and blood" at that time with the current business progress, the changes in the past year are obvious.
Cheng Wu said at the time, "We are aware of the lack of anti-risk ability of the company's underlying business model and the structural problems that have been deposited for several years." At that time, Reading was facing three major problems: the new contract made the writers angry and triggered a strike storm; the free literary opponents were aggressive; The performance of Xinli was repeatedly failed, and the integration was "less than expected"; and "there was also a lack of a mechanism and top-down planning to promote the construction of IP-centric content and operation strategies, thereby promoting the development and production of various content forms to maximize the life cycle value of IP." ”
Several major life-point problems, a year has passed, have a systematic countermeasure.
For writers, Yuwen has launched a series of new training, welfare, and operation support plans in order to stabilize the hearts and minds of the military; free literature is clearly not the core of the battlefield, to a certain extent, it is promoted as a supplementary strategy; the core, of course, is the improvement of the IP development mechanism, proposing the "troika" of Tencent Pictures, Xinli Media, and Yuwen Film and Television, and establishing a "three-level development system of IP ecological chain" from publishing sound, to animation film and television games, to commercialized offline consumption.
Launched in February this year, "Son-in-law" was the first shot of the "troika", and the annual report of 4.47 billion losses released in March this year actively detonated the performance of goodwill mines. It's a bit of a point of embracing the new phase with all your might.
Cheng Wu
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="9" > the author is still the basic disk</h1>
Tianxia Baxiang, who had a copyright dispute with Yuwen, appeared at Reading's annual press conference.
As a representative of the "big god" writers who returned to reading last year, Tianxia Baxiang was created as a model by Reading this time - the new work "Big Tricker" warmed up for publication through reading, and "Ghost Blowing Lights" was preparing for IP games and won The "Annual Game Adaptation Expectation" award of Reading.
Since the dark heart of the group of online pioneers to carry forward the paid subscription model, a group of grassroots online writers have been able to support themselves, which constitutes the basic business model of the reading platform. But last year, writers protested against online contracts, directly threatening the stability of that foundation. The division between the author groups also exposes the real situation that the vast majority of authors have little income outside of the god writers.
In order to respond to the demands of 8.1 million authors, but also in order to cope with the industry competition that has been heated by opponents such as Byte Baidu, Yuwen has released a "single optional new contract", upgraded the writer welfare system, and successively launched the "Professional Writer Star Plan", "Starting Point Creation School", "Young Writers Support Plan" and so on.
Yang Chen, editor-in-chief of Reading, also put forward the goal of "three times", doubling the number of newly signed writers, doubling the remuneration, and doubling the number of new gods among young people under the age of 30 within three years. Yang Chen revealed that there are 14 writers who have paid millions of writers on the platform.
Although the management is an airborne soldier in the online literature industry, many product and service changes have received positive feedback in the author community. A year later, more than 900,000 new writers have been added, and the great god writers such as Tianxia Baxiang and Xu Gongzi Shengzhi have also announced their return.
From the perspective of readers, the other end of paid reading, in 2020, the monthly active users of reading articles increased by 4.2% year-on-year from 220 million to 230 million, the average monthly paid users increased from 9.8 million to 4.1% year-on-year to 10.2 million, and the monthly paid income of single users increased by 37.2% from 25.3 yuan to 34.7 yuan. Paid reading broke the previous two years of decline and returned to growth.
But the number of payers is still lower than the peak of 10.8 million in 2018. From the perspective of the whole industry, the number of users in the paid online text app industry in 2020 was 219 million, a decrease of 13.7% over the same period of the previous year; the scale of users in the free online text app industry was 144 million, an increase of 22% over the same period last year ("2020 China Internet Literature Blue Book").
This is a conflict of business logic that Cheng Wu and the other new management must resolve. Paid and free, to a certain extent, how can free cultivate IP with real user loyalty to ensure subsequent value development?
Cheng Wu gave the answer of "big reading", the logic is very clear, free payment is only a specific business dispute, IP value is the real blue ocean.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="20" > free literature for strategic collaboration</h1>
In the entire keynote speech of the five executives, the free literature only accounts for about 2 pages of PPT.
A major setback to the business model of Reading Group before was the contempt and slow response to the free literature industry. The performance of free literature on user data, a punch to the death of the teacher.
The data comes from QuestMobile
In 2019, Reading launched the free reading APP "Fly Reading", but the new management said bluntly in the 2020 mid-year report, "The free reading business failed to meet our expectations... The overall performance of Feiyue does not match the leading position of online literature corresponding to the reading. Subsequently, Yuwen set up a joint project team for free novels.
In this reading conference, Feiyue has disappeared, replaced by the "Kunlun Chinese Network" and "Nine Days Chinese Network" launched in January this year. Nine days to advertise "new media text" (characterized by diversion in new media, such as the God of War son-in-law type text), Kunlun received free text. In the industry's view, nine days against the standard palm reading, Kunlun benchmark tomato.
As of the end of last year, the average DAU for free content reached 10 million. The accelerated layout of free reading, on the other hand, partially offsets the growth of paid reading. According to the annual report, due to the company's continuous expansion of the free reading business, the paid reading revenue from Tencent's self-operated channels of tencent products has further decreased, falling by 18.4% to RMB681.8 million.
For readers who have a paid reading fortress, doing free literature is, to a certain extent, forced to follow the action, and the territory can no longer be encroached upon by others.
"Free reading has never been able to create any IP", the phrase "wandering toad" by the author of the network text god represents a consensus in the industry. A person in charge of the publishing business of the online text platform previously analyzed Quanjin that the content quality on the current free platform is not high, and for IP operations, the fan economy is very strong, and the free platform users are not too loyal. This is the central paradox of whether free reading can be an IP amplifier.
However, in the past two years of large-scale launch, free online texts have been channeled through content forms such as short video sitcoms, but they have explored the IP short link of "free literature - micro short dramas". There is no need for head IP, and routines and dramatic conflicts naturally coincide with the preferences of short video users. Tomato novels and interesting headlines have been explored. According to Qutoutiao's quarterly report, MiYu has developed 38 IP short dramas, which have been broadcast more than 3.4 billion times on the whole network.
The current business model of micro-short dramas is mainly customization, sub-accounting, brand implantation, user payment, etc., which are still in the exploration period, and as a free online text platform for IP providers, copyright revenue is limited.
But the reading also saw the merits of these new ideas. For example, at the conference, the reading article mentioned that new developments in sub-sectors such as sub-account dramas and short dramas were explored.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="32" > blueprint for "IP industrialization"</h1>
"IP never fails." Cheng Wu announced at the annual press conference. He once again cited Marvel's success story as the opening of his speech.
What is the gap between China's IP giants and their benchmark companies on the other side of the ocean?
In the painful semi-annual report a year ago, the new management envisioned a set of Internet plays for Yuwen, "We need to fine-tune the value of each IP in its life cycle, and apply a unified methodology to the entire IP portfolio to maximize the benefits of the portfolio." ”
A new mechanism is slowly taking shape.
Tencent Pictures, Xinli Media, and Yuwen Film and Television "Troika", which debuted in October last year, are the first big moves. Cheng Wu's positioning for the "troika" is to deeply and systematically improve the efficiency of IP film and television, and explore a set of efficient and high-quality playing methods.
The result of the "Troika"
At this press conference, Yuwen further proposed to build an "IP ecological chain", "The IP ecological chain is the key to breaking through the ceiling and fighting uncertainty." Organically combine talents, resources, and different content formats, do a good job in the top-level design and landing development of IP, and build an IP ecological business matrix with partners in the whole industry. In terms of practice, Yuwen sorted out the three-level development system:
Sound and publishing are the first level of driving force, which can enrich the reading scene and consolidate and expand fans for IP in a lighter way; animation, film and television and games are the second level of driving force, and provide a visual foundation for IP, with both "amplifier" effect; IP commercialization and offline consumption are the third level driving force, running through the derivative development of animation, film and television, and game content formats, which is an important exploration direction for the future of "Big Reading".
It also announced a number of preparatory and live projects under this strategic framework. Combing it down, there are several features:
One is faster. Previously, the online text developed by film and television is mainly works from 5-10 years ago, and for the audience, these IPs have essences, but there are also many places that are no longer appropriate. Recently, the IP process from creation to development has become faster.
"DaFeng Da Ren Ren" is the "Best Work of the Year" in 2020, and the sound work has been online for two months, and the number of broadcasts on the whole network has exceeded 40 million.
In the "Big Reading" animation project, the head IP of the past two years, such as "Da Feng Da Ren", "The First Sequence", "Starting from the Red Moon", and "Global Gao Wu", has been developed.
"Lord of Mysteries", which ended last year, is also already undergoing game adaptations.
The second is not just chasing the head. The situation of the head and waist and tail authors on the online text platform is particularly disparity. Reading is intentionally guiding the diversification of content genres and themes on the platform, so as to derive more IP development opportunities.
Editor-in-chief Yang Chen said that the upcoming "starting point theater" is going to support novels of 50,000-500,000 words, and this theater is directly oriented to the IP development of short dramas and network large fields.
Yang Chen said that the previous protagonists of online articles were more bitter and vengeful, first destroyed by a full door, carrying a deep revenge in the blood sea and then taking revenge, and now more popular is Xiao Qingxin. In addition to adventure suspense, game competition, ancient style legends, oriental fantasy and other categories, the "annual theme works" of The Reading Article also recommends light novels, science fiction and other themes.
A video platform film and television studio staff told Quan now that she has seen a lot of female frequency novels nominated on the spot, and the adaptation of light novels is very marketable, bringing the audience a game-like experience.
Third, the entire IP chain is more "industrialized" and more closely linked to Tencent.
Previously, the Rich Mine of Reading IP failed to effectively transform with Tencent Games and other businesses, basically chickens and dogs heard of each other but did not interact with each other. In terms of offline consumption and theme parks, it is also lackluster. At the beginning of the year, Yuwen set up an "IP value-added center", which will focus on the three major tracks of consumer goods supply chain, all-category tide play, and offline real-life consumption, and also announced that it will jointly develop script killing with Mango TV, Xi Multi-Culture, Detective Notes, etc., and cooperate with Bandai to develop blind box toys.
The linkage with Tencent Games has run. With the experience of Star Wars IP creation cooperation in the front, Yuwen will open the "Magic Pen Project" with King Glory, who invites many well-known writers to create heroic stories based on the game world view. However, in the game development of IP, the cooperation between Yuwen and 37 Interactive Entertainment and China Mobile Games is currently deeper.
There is also a small detail that can see the impact on product details under the idea of IP full link. Hou Xiaonan, president of Yuwen Group, specifically mentioned that "bixin", that is, the role of the role of the "hit list" function in the book to discover and amplify the value of IP.
Last year, more than 47.77 million people "compared hearts" to the role
After Cheng Wu entered the main reading, he has already taken over the literature, animation, film, ticket marketing and game market business in the Tencent system, and can be regarded as the trader of Tencent's IP strategy. If Cheng Wu's representative tencent will brings something to Yuwen, he stands in the framework of Tencent's new cultural creation, with Tencent's Internet genes, trying to turn the "traditional" business of IP development into a more efficient and controllable industry.
Referring to the goal of the next ten years, Cheng Wu said that for the first time, "Dayuewen" puts creators in the vision, and through the achievement of creators and IP, it is necessary to make Yuwen become the world's top cultural industry group.