Behind the explosion of "Nezha 2": How do short videos subvert the logic of film and television promotion?

"Nezha 2 is a phenomenal hit, and short videos reveal the secrets of its promotion." In the current fierce competition in the film and television market, why can Nezha 2 stand out? What unique and key role did short videos play in its promotion? What changes and inspirations has this brought to the film and television industry?

The Spring Festival has quietly passed for more than a week, but the discussion around "Nezha: The Devil Boy Conquers the Dragon King" (hereinafter referred to as "Nezha 2") has not diminished at all. This phenomenal film not only created the first 8 billion box office record in Chinese film history, but also helped the Chinese film market surpass North America in cumulative box office for the first time, firmly occupying the throne of the world's number one film market.

Since it hit the big screen, "Nezha 2" has attracted countless audiences to the cinema with its ups and downs of the exciting plot, meticulous production and deeply rooted character images.

However, in the fiercely competitive film market, many films are desperately trying to attract the audience's attention. Apart from the reason that the content is high-quality enough, why can "Nezha 2" stand out and become a hotly discussed benchmark?

In the opinion of "Claure", the answer is precisely because short videos played a key role in the promotion of "Nezha 2".

01 Short video promotion: precise reach and fission

Looking through the Douyin account of @电影Nezha之魔童闹海, we can find that although it has only been established for three months, it has already posted 332 videos, an average of 3 videos per day. The high volume of content and the explosive popularity of each video have helped the Douyin account of "Nezha 2" to receive 210 million likes and more than 8 million fans.

Moreover, the popularity of short videos is not only concentrated after the movie is released.

Scrolling down the video list to the end, we will find that the short videos released by "Nezha 2" during the warm-up stage have already received a large number of likes and comments from users. Many videos have received over one million likes, and even reached 4.6 million.

Image from TikTok

It is not difficult to find that the publicity and promotion team of "Nezha 2" has devoted tremendous energy to the short video platform. Some media reports even said that they invested up to 68% of the publicity and promotion costs in the short video platform.

Although this data may not be accurate, the logic behind it is clear. Short video platforms are where traffic is concentrated, with a huge user base and high activity. Promoting on short video platforms can gain extremely high exposure and a considerable input-output ratio.

It is precisely because a large number of promotional videos were released on short video platforms that "Nezha 2" successfully attracted a large number of users' attention in the warm-up stage, laid a solid foundation for the release of the film, and even made thousands of users buy it through short videos during the hot period.

In addition, the publicity and promotion team of "Nezha 2" is well versed in the business of short videos. Each short video is produced with sufficient sophistication and in various forms, so as to reach users at different levels.

It is no exaggeration to say that every video of "Nezha 2" is unique and ingenious, whether it is the trailers of the main and supporting roles, the creative process, CG animation, celebrity collaborations before the movie was released, or the record-breaking posters, fun collaborations, and interesting emoticons after the movie was released, and every video of "Nezha 2" is truly a hit.

In order to further expand the influence of the film, "Nezha 2" not only released short videos on the main account, but also cooperated with well-known figures in the film and television industry such as Zhang Yimou, Zhao Liying, and Ni Ni to jointly promote it. The relevant content triggered a wave of discussion on the short video platform, making the influence of the film further spread.

Image from TikTok

02 Short videos have triggered new changes in film and television publicity and promotion

In fact, it is not surprising that "Nezha 2" focuses its publicity and promotion on short video platforms, because the current user scale and activity of short video platforms are amazing.

Public data shows:

Currently, Douyin has more than 700 million daily active users and 1 billion monthly active users;

Kuaishou has more than 400 million daily active users and 700 million monthly active users;

The daily active users of the video account, which started to develop last year, are estimated to have exceeded 550 million;

If we add in platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Weibo, Bilibili, Baidu and even Alipay that have a large amount of short video content, it can be seen that short videos have a great influence and almost cover the vast majority of people who go online.

The pictures are from Weibo, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili

Such a large user group provides a huge potential audience pool for film and television promotion.

Compared with traditional offline promotion and previews, the supplement of short videos can greatly increase the attention of movies. Once the movie promotion content is released on the short video platform, it has the opportunity to gain massive exposure, greatly increasing the probability of the movie being known by the audience.

More importantly, the algorithm recommendation mechanism of the short video platform is its core competitiveness.

Currently, almost all major short video platforms can accurately understand users' interests and needs by analyzing their browsing history, likes, comments, and attention behavior data, and push content that users may be interested in to them. For film and television publicity and distribution parties, this can use algorithm mechanisms to accurately reach the target audience with film promotion content.

In addition, there are buttons for directly purchasing movie tickets under many popular short videos, which will undoubtedly stimulate users' interest in purchasing and further improve conversion efficiency.

Image from TikTok

In fact, "Nezha 2" is not the first movie that attaches so much importance to short video promotion. Many movies before it have already regarded short video platforms as important promotion channels. It's just that the topic of many films cannot reach the level of national discussion like "Nezha 2", so few people will discuss this matter separately.

"Hello, Li Huanying", which was very popular in the past few years, also has nearly 100 million likes and more than 2 million fans on Douyin. During the release of the film, they also launched the #HelloLiHuanyingChallenge#, attracting a large number of users to participate in the "no crying challenge, singing challenge", which quickly caused the popularity of the movie topic to soar.

"Detective Chinatown 1900", the second most popular movie during the Spring Festival this year, also started releasing short videos on Douyin in mid-December last year, just like "Nezha 2". It has released 361 works so far, received more than 56.6 million likes, and gained more than 1.43 million followers, which are also quite impressive statistics.

Image from TikTok

These successful cases show that short video platforms have become an indispensable part of film and television promotion.

And we should know that these data are only the content deposited on the main account of the film. If the relevant videos posted by netizens on short video platforms, the second-cut videos of various marketing accounts, and the interpretation videos of various media are all counted, the amount of relevant data may be too huge to be measured.

After all, from the film itself to the director's creative methods, to the sold-out blind boxes related to "Nezha 2", as well as the popularity of supporting roles and the exposure of voice actors... In the past week or so, any short video related to the word "Nezha" has basically attracted a lot of attention and discussion.

The pictures are from Tik Tok and Video Account

03 Conclusion

However, although short video platforms have brought unprecedented opportunities for film and television promotion, they are also accompanied by some challenges.

No matter what, the core reason why a movie can become a hit is still the content. If the content is not good, even if the film and television publicity and promotion opens up more new channels, provides new methods, and brings new opportunities, it will not become a hit.

Although the success of the promotion of "Nezha 2" on the short video platform cannot prove that the promotion of movies on short video platforms will definitely achieve success, it can promote the industry's recognition of the short video promotion format to a certain extent.

Especially in this era of information explosion, the integration of "Nezha 2" and short videos can allow more high-quality films to see successful examples and find more innovative ways of dissemination. With the further development of technology, short video promotion will become more diversified and intelligent.

Film and television practitioners need to actively embrace change, deeply understand and study the characteristics of short video platforms and user needs, explore more interesting and effective new ways of promoting and distributing short videos, increase the chances of excellent works being seen by the public, and make real gold shine more easily in the highly competitive market.

Finally, the question is: How did you first know about Nezha 2? Please leave a message in the comment section and discuss with us!