Text │ Qi Fei
"Mango does the content, relying on a brute force that does not reach the goal and does not accept defeat. This is the Xiang Army, this is us. Zheng Huaping, member of the party committee and vice president of Mango TV and executive director of Mango Film and Television, said in an interview. "Bullying" in the Hunan dialect is a word that Zheng Huaping always hangs on his lips, and the dictionary interpretation of this word is "highly persistent, eating bitterly in difficulties", which is most appropriate to describe the attitude of Mango Xiangjun to do content.
This "brute force" of Mango TV is vividly reflected in the creation of monsoon theater. From the decision to do monsoon theater in July last year to the official launch of the first work "Wolf Hunter" on May 24 this year, this time Mango showed the market not only the speed of mango, but also the attitude and quality of mango.
From "Wolf Hunter" with a hard-core "wild" style to open the prelude to the "stylization" of the monsoon theater, to "I am good in other places" to capture the audience with "warm realism", douban scored up to 8.4, becoming the annual excellent realism drama, not to the genre of the theater's mango monsoon did withstand the pressure and doubts, for the market to blow a "drastic change" wind.
"Either do the first, or do the first" is mango's long-term winning secret, from the frequent explosions in the early years to the current creation of a 70-minute X12 episode of the weekly short drama Monsoon Theater, "We have always been walking in the first", Zheng Huaping said, "We have been studying the forward-looking judgment of content." ”
Judging from the 2022 film list released a few days ago, next year mango will not only continue to blow the "monsoon", in addition to the monsoon theater, for the two major "content bases" of "new era main theme" and "warm realism", Mango TV is also constantly exerting efforts, launching high-quality works such as "The Loveliest You" ("Real Man" film and television version) and fantasy urban emotional drama "Boyfriend Pawn Shop", which tell the heroic posture of female soldiers; at the same time, with criminal investigation suspense themes such as "Forensic Qin Ming" and historical themes such as "The Long River under the Heavens" as "experimental fields" ", constantly inject fresh blood into Mango's content and attract new user groups."
The "anti-routine" monsoon blows to the space for innovation
When it comes to monsoon theater, Tang Fan, deputy editor-in-chief of Mango TV, general manager of the film and television center, and general manager of Mango Film and Television Company, called it a theater that "does not play cards according to market routines".
"Actually, if you ask me what the monsoon is, I can only say that we are still exploring." Tang Fan confessed that doing monsoon theater was like "running out of 10,000 meters when she warmed up, and in the end everyone saw only the 100 meters when I sprinted."
"Originally, our original intention of doing monsoon theater was to change the market status quo of long drama water injection and flow theory, and as the content of monsoon theater continued to enrich, we had extremely stylized content like "Wolf Hunter", warm realism such as "Other Lands", and pioneering innovative attempts such as "Mother-in-law's Bracelet", so I think that monsoon ultimately represents a creative attitude - whether it is sincere enough and whether it wants to innovate."
The sincere and innovative Monsoon Theatre brings room for exploration to Mango TV.
In the past, when it comes to mangoes, what emerges more in the audience's mind may be some "small and beautiful" emotional dramas. "Female audiences are mango's most solid underpinnings", Zheng Huaping admitted that the previous user portraits of Mango TV were indeed dominated by women, and a gust of monsoon "blew" mango to bring a more diverse audience. Zheng Huaping said that after the broadcast of the anti-poaching theme of "Wolf Hunter" and the criminal investigation theme of "True Detective of Lies", the male audience proportion of the Mango platform increased by 3 to 4 percentage points.
The monsoon theater, which does not subdivide the content, brings diversification to mango's content, and next year, mango will also test the science fiction theme at the monsoon theater. Produced by Han Sanping and directed by Zhao Yilong, the first domestic science fiction drama "Orphans of Mars" will land in the Monsoon Theater next year, and the original work has won the Silver Award for Best Novel at the Nebula Award, which is very different from Mango TV's previous drama style. Born in the monsoon theater, it seems to have integrated it into the big family of mangoes in an incomparably natural manner.
Also appearing in the Monsoon Theater's 2022 film list is the audience's long-term "Great Song Youth Chronicles 2". Like the weekly broadcast mode of the Monsoon Theater, the Hunan Satellite TV Youth Theater, which was first broadcast online in the "Great Song Youth Chronicles", is also a weekly theater. This time, the second part was adjusted from the youth theater to the monsoon theater, Tang Fan believes that this unit case form is more suitable for the monsoon theater's 70-minute X12 episode weekly broadcast mode, and the longer single episode time allows each story to be presented in a more complete structure, and this drama structure has also been recognized by Wang Ti, the main screenwriter of "The Chronicles of the Great Song Dynasty".
In addition to the continuous innovation in content, the mango monsoon is also constantly upgrading in the scheduling mode. Tang Fan revealed that with the continuous improvement of the episode reserves of the Monsoon Theater, the monsoon theater will be stylized in the future, that is, the works of similar styles and themes will be serialized to meet the audience's demand for a certain type of drama in the theater.
Under the tide of self-production, how to break through the production of mango?
Whether it is out of cost control or to enhance the control of content, today, platform self-production is the trend of the times. Mango is also no exception, according to Zheng Huaping, the current proportion of mango TV's self-made custom dramas and copyright dramas is about 4:6, and the proportion of self-made custom dramas will continue to increase in the future.
However, under the trend of everyone's self-control today, blindly increasing the amount of self-control is not the breakthrough method of the platform, for the drama content market, playing the "drama sea" tactic is the most "uneconomical", and Mango is also well aware of this truth. For the creation of self-made content, Mango has formed its own unique set of differentiated play methods in five aspects: audience, cost, IP, production team, and broadcast form. In the choice of copyright dramas, Ren Xu, general manager of Mango TV Copyright Center, said, "We buy dramas that are not expensive to buy, but to grasp the hit rate, grasp the boutique rate, and grasp the cost performance." ”
First of all, in terms of audience, Zheng Huaping uses "broad spectrum" to describe the mango audience he expects. "We hope that while grasping the original female audience, we can attract the support of more people with more diversified content and achieve the effect of breaking the circle of mangoes."
I believe that all people who pay attention to mangoes should be envious of the word "profit" in the annual financial report. In this regard, Zheng Huaping said that Mango's annual profit growth comes from the strict control of the "production ratio": "We have the production ratio requirements at the beginning of the project, and we cannot start the drama when we do not meet the production ratio requirements."
Specific to the operational level, Tang Fan, general manager of Mango TV Film and Television Center, summed up Mango's experience in controlling costs as follows: Don't make a big fuss, and don't make a big fuss. "I don't quite agree with the current situation of mentioning S-level production at every turn, some themes and projects can be presented in a lighter form, blindly emphasizing that large investment, large production, and large flow are a waste." When we get a project, we first evaluate it and match it to the most appropriate cost to produce. ”
Launched on Mango TV this summer, the sweet pet drama "Mr. He's Love Not Forgotten" that has received great popularity is a representative work of "fighting big with small". Under the condition of low production cost and no traffic star blessing, this small sweet drama reached the top of the heat in the mango station and won 970 million plays, and the comprehensive heat reached the top 4 of the bone drama list, while the CP sense of the male and female protagonists also brought a super high degree of discussion to the series, and won 18 Weibo hot searches. Whether it is the popularity or the amount of playback, "Mr. He's Love Never Forgets" undoubtedly performed very well.
As for how to ensure the competitiveness of Mango's self-made content, Zheng Huaping said, "Earlier insight into social sentiment, care for social reality, and forward-looking judgment of content, so that even after a long production cycle, we can ensure that our content is still competitive." On September 26, China Writers Publishing Group and Mango TV signed a strategic cooperation agreement on the sharing of literary resources, focusing on the field of published books and forward-looking intervention in literary planning, so that Mango has taken the lead in the recent serious literary film and television resurgence.
In addition to more actively involved in literary IP planning in the early stage, copyright dramas are also one of the ways for Mango to make up for the lack of IP reserves. "We have established cooperative relations with a number of high-quality content production companies in the market, and the rich themes and IP reserves in the hands of the production companies are sometimes incomparable to the platform, so we supplement the IP reserves of the platform through the form of copyright dramas, adhering to the idea of matching copyright dramas and self-made dramas and walking on two legs." Ren Xu said so.
In terms of "productivity tools", Mango layout to create a characteristic studio system, after the integration of Mango Film and Television, the formation of 25 film and television production teams, follow-up will be further optimized; at the same time the introduction of directors, screenwriters, etc., to guide the team like variety shows to find their own good subdivision areas, excellent teams will also have the space to be promoted to super studios and subsidiaries; at the same time, the new MangS plan was launched, signing 30 strategic cooperation studios.
After ensuring the quality of the content from the four aspects of audience, cost, IP and production team, Mango also has a unique broadcast mode to help maximize the effect of the content of the series. For the episodes of the Monsoon Theater, Mango will still adhere to the broadcast form of the Taiwan Network Simulcast, and select more network-sensitive content to implement the broadcast strategy of the first network background; and for some episodes with rich and interesting regional characters, Ren Xu revealed that Mango will also jointly create regional character Fanwai episodes, link the e-commerce platform Xiaomang APP, and launch character Fanwai and other episode derivative products in it. It is reported that the costume drama "Shang Food", which will meet the audience next year, adopts this new broadcast mode, and the huge supporting role group in the play will have a derivative plot in the fanwai, and the Hanfu, court cuisine and other peripherals that appear in the play will also be launched in Xiao mang.
Sweet pet "old line", how to "upgrade mangoes again"?
Although such a diverse content has been created to make Mango's audience "broad-spectrum", the young female group is still mango's "base". And what is used to consolidate the "base area" is the sweet pet of mangoes, "the old line".
However, for the term "sweet pet", Tang Fan did not agree. She believes that Mango is creating a love drama that focuses on the diverse face of love, rather than a speculative sweet pet drama that attracts audiences with brainless sugar. "Our original intention of self-control is to write love, to show the different faces of love, to be patient, sweet, sad, etc., and our internal judgment standard for love dramas is never whether it is sweet enough or not petted, but whether this relationship is moving enough."
In addition to self-control, Ren Xu said that in the process of choosing the copyright of sweet pet dramas, she also did not take whether it was sweet enough to be pet as a standard. "Choose some special, interesting and meaningful people or extreme story setting projects; even some small and medium-sized companies or new high-quality projects that are good at sub-accounting drama settings, improve the accuracy rate, so that there is a certain chance of finding a small dark horse." Last year's "I Don't Want to Be Friends with You" was 'translated' in this way. ”
Mango's 2022 film list also reflects this upgrade to the sweet pet "old line". Adapted from the ancient language and abuse benchmark IP "Spring Flower Weary", the costume drama of the same name, which is contrary to the sweet pet atmosphere on the market today, creates the sadistic LOVE BE aesthetic under fate; and the Xianxia drama "Ningyuan" is adapted from the IP of the same name by the author of Jinjiang Literature City, Xing Zero, telling the aesthetics of abstinence in love, "sweet" and "sprinkled sugar" are no longer the only solutions to love dramas.
In addition to the content, Mango is also upgrading the scheduling of sweet pet dramas. Tang Fan revealed that the sweet pet "old line" may become mango's first content subdivision theater.
From the start of more than ten self-made dramas every year in 2017, to the start of more than Chinese New Year's Eve self-made + custom dramas every year, Mango's self-made road has already begun, and it has been getting better. The "brute force" of Mango Xiangjun's incomparable dedication to high-quality content is bound to bring a "drastic change" that cannot be ignored for Mango and the market.