Short drama marketing, honey or poison for brands?

Short drama marketing, once seen as a powerful tool for brand sales growth, is now facing the fading of traffic dividends and a surge in costs. This article deeply analyzes the changing role of short drama marketing in brand promotion, from Starbucks, McDonald's to Hansu, and explores how short dramas shift from traffic-driven to the dual challenges of content and conversion.

A boy in a Starbucks work uniform accidentally bumped into a girl in a white dress. When he stood up again, the surroundings turned into an ancient street - the boy traveled through time. This is the beginning of the Starbucks customized short play "I Opened a Starbucks in Ancient Times". Then, with the two bags of Starbucks coffee beans he brought with him when he traveled through time, the boy embarked on the road of opening a store in ancient times.

Before Starbucks, a number of local lifestyle brands including McDonald's, KFC, and Mixue Ice City have successively launched short dramas such as "Reborn: I Practicing Magic in McDonald's", "Reborn: The Foodie Queen Is Not to Be Provoked", and "The Snow King's Time Travel Diary".

During this year's Double Eleven, short drama marketing has also become a focus for a number of e-commerce platforms such as Douyin. Among them, Douyin has not only increased the investment in short dramas, but also launched the "drama promotion, search and live broadcast" link gameplay, linking recommendations, searches, live broadcasts and other scenarios to promote short drama marketing.

During this period, Hanxuan, which has achieved soaring sales thanks to short dramas, continued its past glory and topped the Douyin beauty list for 14 consecutive months. There was also a new success story - the leading smart lock brand Kaadas released its own short drama during the Double Eleven period, which drove its exposure to more than 300 million yuan and ranked No. 1 in the category lists of multiple e-commerce platforms.

But amid the excitement, many things are changing.

Xiaofan founded a short drama studio in September last year. In her vision, this studio will gradually develop into a state that integrates script production and filming. At that time, Xiaofan was not sure what kind of business model the short drama would eventually take, but she had already clearly shown her preference for brand marketing short dramas. But now, Xiaofan's short drama studio is still in the script production stage, because there are not so many orders coming, and she has also put more energy back into long dramas.

According to Su Cheng, CEO of brand marketing company Eurogamer Group, in the first three quarters of this year, "many short drama talents' business has plummeted and they have basically withdrawn from the mainstream market."

Xiao Yangge, a top anchor who was previously regarded as a dark horse in the short drama field, was also reported to have failed in his efforts to produce short dramas. The first short drama "Master Fu, Your Substitute Bride is a Boss" of his MCN agency Three Sheep Network was removed from the shelves, and the short drama producer Hangzhou Yimeng was also once caught up in rumors of disbanding.

The trend of short dramas has been around for two years. For brands, is short drama marketing still a good business?

01 Traffic dividend fades

2023 is called the first year of short drama by many practitioners. This year, there are countless counterattack stories surrounding short dramas, the most representative of which is Hanshu, which is all in Douyin short dramas.

In March last year, Hansu collaborated with Jiang Shiqi, a Douyin blogger with tens of millions of fans, on its first short drama "Dress for Growth", which became a hit soon after it was launched, and Hansu's GMV (gross merchandise volume) on Douyin exceeded 100 million.

From the data point of view, this success continues to this day - data from Chanmama, a live e-commerce data analysis platform, shows that from August 2023 to August 2024, Hansu received a total GMV of more than 6.2 billion yuan on Douyin, ranking first on Douyin's beauty and skincare sales list. During this period, Hansu has launched nearly 30 short dramas.

The surge in sales of Hanshu is closely related to its seizing the bonus period of short drama traffic. Su Cheng and his company have participated in this successful marketing case. He said that last year Hanshu's launch logic was batch launch, and it achieved large-scale diffusion only by relying on natural flow.

But this traffic dividend did not last long and almost ended at the end of last year.

According to iResearch Consulting's "2024 China Micro-Short Drama Industry Research Report", the number of registered short dramas launched in 2023 is 584. According to data released by the Supreme People's Procuratorate Film and Television Center, the number of registered short dramas has reached 589 in the three months from August to October alone.

More and more short dramas are pouring into the platform, and with them come increasingly rare hits and increasingly expensive traffic.

At the beginning of this year, the free cake has been eaten. The CPM (Cost Per Mille) of short drama marketing has increased from a few yuan at the beginning to the current range of 30-40 yuan, nearly 10 times.

Zhang Peiran, vice president of MCN agency Gangshanghua, said that some brands that broke through the circle with short drama marketing will continue to reinvest in the agency, "so much so that some of our vlog accounts and even film and television commentary accounts have received short dramas." However, it is said that many brands rushed into the market after hearing the news, and after cooperating with some industry experts to test the waters with a few short dramas, they chose to withdraw because they did not meet expectations. "Clients later found that not all agencies and accounts are good at producing short drama content."

Including Hanshu itself, not only has the number of short dramas released been reduced this year, but the data of customized short dramas has also been lower than expected. During the 6.18 period, the playback volume of "Let Love Surrender", which was also a collaboration between Hanshu and Jiang Shiqi, was 230 million, which was more than half of the 600 million playback volume of "Dressed for Growth".

Bai Yunhu, founder of Meiyun Space e-commerce, said that the reason why Hanshu can still maintain good sales today is because of the popularity of short dramas accumulated in the previous year. In addition, Hanshu's growth path is difficult to replicate. In addition to hitting the marketing trend of short dramas, its success is also due to multiple factors, including the accumulation of domestic brands for many years, its founder Lv Yixiong's grasp of the trend, and the high-profile marketing style.

So, when the traffic advantage is almost gone, is short drama marketing no longer useful for brands? As it turns out, at least this year there are still brands using short drama marketing to tell new stories.

02 Can better content and smoother conversions resist more expensive traffic?

"Saved again" is how Su Cheng described Starbucks' short drama marketing case.

As the traffic dividend faded, brands once lost confidence in short drama marketing and chose to abandon the short drama path. "The entire market faced a huge crisis in Q3." Su Cheng's order volume also declined significantly during this period.

The turning point came in October, when Starbucks' first customized short play "I Opened a Starbucks in Ancient Times" was broadcast on Douyin, and Su Cheng's company was responsible for planning and marketing. The short play finally achieved 80 million views, which is not high, but it brought 1.35 million local life buyers. Starbucks also surpassed Luckin Coffee for the first time on the Douyin channel and became the number one in the beverage category.

Su Cheng said that this marketing campaign for Starbucks is very different from the past. On the one hand, both the traffic cost and the production cost have increased a lot - the CPM has reached 40 yuan, and the cost has reached 3 million yuan. On the other hand, this short drama marketing also focuses on cultivating consumers' brand awareness. "We are no longer harvesting high prices with low prices, but using content to bring topics and emotional value, so that Starbucks can remain competitive even when facing 9.9 yuan coffee."

This is consistent with the brand's demand for the evolution of short drama marketing. Compared with the past when many brands directly expressed the hope that short dramas could bring high conversions, more brands now require "brand and effect integration". In addition to conversions, they also hope that short drama marketing can fit in with or even change the brand image.

In order to achieve this effect, the quality of branded short plays has been continuously improved. Taking "I Opened a Starbucks in Ancient Times" as an example, the camera language is infinitely close to traditional film and television dramas, and the actors are also professional short play actors with rich acting experience. When traffic cannot be attracted, content can be attracted, which is the path of short plays, and it is also the path of brand customized short plays.

In this process, the form of skit marketing is also changing, from the original one that can have multiple advertisements placed in a skit to the one that is completely created by one brand, so that the plot and brand can be better integrated, also known as soft placement. Today, the latter is becoming the mainstream of brand skit marketing.

In addition, the success of Starbucks' marketing case is closely related to its affiliation with a local lifestyle brand. E-commerce brands on Douyin, especially beauty brands, have already been very popular in using short dramas for marketing, but local lifestyle brands have not yet entered the short drama marketing on a large scale, which also makes it easier for them to break out of the circle. For short drama marketing, it can also eat up the superimposed traffic of local lifestyle.

Starbucks' success will also attract more brands to choose short dramas as a marketing solution. Before Starbucks, McDonald's, KFC, Mixue Ice City and Tai Er Pickled Fish have all launched their own brand customized short dramas. It has become a trend for more and more local life brands to compete in the marketing short drama track. As the competition intensifies, the related investment costs will also increase accordingly.

Along with content, traffic conversion methods are also evolving.

During the Double 11 event this year, the boss and the couple who were supposed to appear in the skit also appeared in the live broadcast room of the talent under Gang Shang Kai Hua. She told 36Kr that this was a new gameplay launched by Douyin e-commerce on Double 11 this year that can link short videos and live broadcasts. Currently, nearly a thousand accounts on the entire network have participated in it. Gang Shang Kai Hua seized this opportunity and performed a secondary interpretation of the product based on the character settings in the skit in the live broadcast to achieve better sales results. The MCN agency will also authorize these interpretations to the brand to make slices for secondary dissemination.

In addition, Zhang Peiran also found that during the big promotion period, Douyin officially connected the traffic pools of short dramas and live broadcasts, thereby raising the upper limit of traffic for live broadcasts of different categories. During the Double Eleven this year, Douyin's Bytedance official account also announced a clear investment plan for short dramas on the platform.

Faced with increasingly expensive traffic, all parties in the short drama marketing chain have tried their best. Judging from the current results, the emergence of successful cases including Starbucks may mean that there are still brands that can taste the honey of short drama marketing, but the growth miracle like Hansu cannot be reproduced.

Author | Lan Jie Editor | Qiao Qian