Rhino Entertainment Original
Wen | Fat Department Editor| Park Fang
In the sixth year of cat night, latecomers flocked to the scene, and the audience requirements also upgraded year by year, but cat night still steadily caught the expectations of all parties.
#Yi Qianxi asked to buy no#, #Zhang Yixing flew up#, #Brilliance Yu treble#, #Zhou Shen jumping bliss pure land is too cute #...... On Weibo, or play terriers or confessions, the popularity and topic of the night cat night before the double eleven confirms the industry status of the cat night as the benchmark and standard of the commercial evening. Nielsen network data show that in 2020, the national network rating of 2.18 and the rating share of 4.8 are strong, leading the country in the same period of programs; the whole network has more than 300 hot searches, 72 Weibo hot searches and four times topped the top of the hot search TOP1.
Another year, cat night has become a national event that condenses the memory of the people.
After six years of hard work, Cat Night has become a national memory and experience on many levels from a commercial carnival warmed up for Double Eleven. Especially at this special point in time in 2020, this year's cat night with the theme of "stand up for you and live happily" has further opened up the resonance of national emotions and memories.
Lin Zhiqiang, vice president of Youku and chief producer of 2020 Cat Night, described the vision of Cat Night to Rhino Jun, "Users may not remember what they buy every year on Double 11, but we hope that he can remember who came to Double 11 that year and what kind of show he performed." ”
Internationalization, strong production, heavy content:
The cat night symbol in national memory
On November 6, Youku officially announced that "Fruit Sister" Katy Perry joined the 2020 Cat Night, becoming the postpartum debut of Fruit Sister. At that time, everyone was most curious about how international artists participated in this year's cat night?
And on the evening of the 10th, when The Fruit Sister wore a long skirt on the space carousel and sang, this beautiful answer surprised the four seats. The space background is synthesized with the help of XR technology, which is also the first time that the technology has been applied in the domestic evening. "The biggest difficulty is time. General XR synthesis technology, at least 20-30 days. "And the cat night team only has a few days.
The "rush march" around the fruit sister is not only at the technical level. Youku relevant personnel revealed to Rhino Jun that it took less than 6 days from the invitation to finalize all the details and issue the official announcement, and in essence, it took only 2 and a half days to enter the international negotiations and landing. This is the fastest speed of Artist Invitation ever by Ali, and for comparison, 2019 was a cat night, taking 2 and a half months from communication to finalization.
Entering the sixth year, whether it is the cat night or the links and characteristics in it, it is being fixed for the public's expectations with more and more symbolic forms, and the IP cognition and user stickiness condensed by this expectation are increasing day by day.
"Internationalization" is one such symbol. Before Sister Fruit, international superstars such as Scarlett Johansson, David Beckham, Taylor Swift, etc. have appeared on the cat night stage over the years, which is unique in the same kind of evening.
"Strong production" is also one of the biggest features of cat night.
Last year, the led floor screen + 46 Tmall six prisms + 500 dancers composed of the event stage became a hot topic. This year is the first time that the 3D sports stage has been used in the evening, a CNC mechanical screen composed of more than 700 small matrix screens constitutes the most core part of the stage, and the "cat's head" rolling like a wave has been produced since July and August.
The stage floor is also embedded with a number of sports machinery modules with lifting functions. This year's cat night dance is the most used in six years, the party called nearly 30 lifts, almost all the lifts in shanghai area were concentrated in the scene of the cat night. The technical team needs to start building from October 21, which takes three times as long as cat night in 2018.
The stage design allows the content team to fully relax its hands and feet. When Zhang Yixing sang "Descendants of Yanhuang", a large cape of 450 square meters formed an "overwhelming" effect, which could not help but remind people of Qin Lan's seven-meter long skirt last year, and the big strokes of the cat night were in the same vein.
This can also be seen in the characteristics of the "heavy content" of the cat night.
The content of this cat night is set as "first there is a program, then there is an artist", that is, the program is designed first and then the artist is determined according to the needs. To become the national memory of a generation, it is necessary to transform the cat night genre into a variety of years, rather than just famous artists holding famous works to cat nights to perform. Therefore, many programs or casts of Cat Night are on stage for the first time, and 40% of the programs are tailor-made for Cat Night.
Some combinations can be described as brain-opening, such as Lin Yun and this year's explosive "sisters" Meng Jia and Wang Feifei, as the performance assistant of magician Wen Peiran, to stage the "Great Change"; the 80-year-old guqin master Gong Yi actually partnered with the young Lehua Qizi to bring the ancient and modern music and dance show of "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest". There are also some programs with a sense of subversion, "cat head" turn, "Northeast F4" Song Xiaobao, Yang Shulin, Wen Song, Song Xiaofeng played the guitar rack drum and sang rock "Your Answer".
From last year's Tengger singing "Ugly Eight Monsters" to now, such subversion seems to be the norm for cat nights. This year, on the basis of the attempt to break the established impression of artists, we will further achieve the breakthrough and dissemination of content, and realize the expansion of the form and type of program. It is also from this pursuit.
With these symbols, the cat builds up the IP perception in the public context a little later. On this basis, whether it is these symbols or the cat night itself, the content tone of always seeking change and pursuing freshness is transformed into the vitality and growth of ip itself.
"Only cat night can surpass cat night"
For six years, at eleven o'clock at the end of the night every year, Cat Night executive PMO Rena had to cry a nose, because the pressure in the early stage was too great but had to be stretched to the end. This so-called "pre-stage" represents a preparatory stage that lasts for half a year or even half a year.
This year's Cat Night has been in operation since March. "Highlight the drainage, commercial value, but also highlight the culture of the entire Ali enterprise, and even a lot of positive energy advocated by the society, all of which must be integrated into the live broadcast." Changing the director team for three consecutive years, Hou Jie, the general director who won the bid this year, seems to be quite necessary, because this party really "hollowed out" her creativity.
Not only the person in charge, around the cat night, Tao and Youku will build a team with a deep linkage of the whole system. Taking this year as an example, Cat Night gathered more than 3500 people in the whole department to promote the project with seven teams.
On the one hand, such a large corps operation ensures the execution of cat night, and the degree of completion is higher than that of other party commissioned productions. On the other hand, the linkage between different teams also drives the resonance of multiple values.
For example, The Ali technical team will use the annual cat night stage as a technical show. Previously, such as in 2017, Cat Night was through AR+VR technology to allow stars such as Lu Jingshan to "cross" to the audience's home; in 2019, cross-screen two-way interaction was realized, and the audience could participate in the game with the stars. This year, not only launched the horizontal screen + vertical screen dual guide system, but also the first application to the evening "Fan Sister's Eye", in the live broadcast process no matter how the horizontal and vertical screen turns, enjoy the CV star direct shooting perspective unchanged.
The whole series of linked teams makes cat evenings have a base point that is very different from other evenings, and such an environment also creates space for participating artists and stars to refine and polish content.
The rehearsal and performance of the general evening party will occupy two days of artists, while the average cat night has reached 5 days, such as Meng Jia, Wang Feifei and Lin Yun, who arrived in Shanghai on the evening of the 5th in order to be familiar with magic; and Zhang Yixing flew to Shanghai twice under the busy notice; Eason Chan, Xiong Dailin, magician Wen Peiran and other Hong Kong and Taiwan artists experienced 14 days of isolation before.
"Fortunately, Cat Late has formed a certain IP influence in the past 6 years, and artists are willing to give the greatest sincerity to cooperate." Let the actors always take the cat night stage as the most preferred, let the cat night program have more room for choice, and a virtuous circle has run through.
The cooperation of 138 artists and a team of 3500 people has given Cat Night the confidence to create national memory and cultural symbols, and also has the judgment that "only Cat Night can surpass Cat Night".
In Rena's words: "I hope to bring a 'wow' feeling to the majority of users, hope that every year every year let everyone's expectations for cat night continue to upgrade, and then see something unprecedented in cat night." ”
Six years of cat night
Open up emotional and value identities
The Cat Night team's positioning of the party was clear: the leader of the industry.
"Since we have already made the first one, as a pioneer, we are very willing and confident to lead such a commercial evening to a new level." Lin Zhiqiang said. Perhaps six years ago, the cat night project team would not have thought that the cat party organized by themselves would come to the sixth thought, and they would not have thought that their honor would become the anchor of so many people's memory.
On the one hand, it is to create memories, Zhang Yixing's cape, Eason Chan's future radio, these classic scenes will be deeply bound to the year of 2020 in the future; on the other hand, it is to carry memories and freeze a lot of 2020 content on this night, Fruit Sister's new song has since had a "cat night" XR version, and "Sister" Meng Jia and Wang Feifei have entered the magic circle to continue to "ride the wind and waves".
Further, Cat Wanshi opens up the user's experience and emotional cognition, and obtains deep recognition from the content to the core.
It should be noted that the theme of cat night has had social appeals throughout the years. Last year, 41 celebrities helped the public welfare poverty alleviation in 21 counties, and even appeared in the live broadcast room with the anchor and the county mayor to "bring goods" for agricultural products, and spoke out in the key year of poverty alleviation. This year, Cat Night has taken education as its public welfare export. Bao Rui, principal of Wanling School in Hainan Qiongzhong Li and Miao Autonomous County, and Chen Guan, principal of Qianha Village Primary School in Longmen Township, Meigu County, Liangshan Prefecture, Sichuan Province, came to the stage of Cat Night to convey responsibility and love with their personal experience of taking root in rural education.
And for a wider audience, the pandemic in 2020 has also brought tough times for everyone. During this period, MiuMiu, a 6-year-old Nanjing girl who became popular with her music, sang "The Only Flower in the World" on the cat night stage with a crisp children's voice; on the side of the stage, she played with Lang Lang and her pregnant wife Gina. Young and nurturing life seems to give hope.
The efforts of a group of people have gradually become the memory of a generation.
From the content stage, consumption scene to the value platform, the construction of the entire cat night scene continues to enrich the diverse values that are difficult to replace for this annual evening, and becomes the "unique" of each year by integrating the events and needs of the year. It is also this multi-dimensional IP value chain that builds the brand appeal of cat late long-termism.
After six years, the popularity and public perception of cat night are still on the upward curve and will become the anchor of national memory in more years in the future. On this road, cat night wants to surpass only himself.