Overbearing CEO and pretty aunt, sweet pet short drama rolls towards middle-aged and elderly people

From the popularity of "Flash Marriage, My Wife is a Wealthy Family" to various short dramas on sweet love and family ethics, this emerging content form is not only popular among the middle-aged and elderly groups, but also attracts the attention of young people. This article deeply explores the background of the rise of short dramas for middle-aged and elderly people, the market potential and challenges they face, and reveals the commercial value and social impact of this content field.

"The boss fell in love with me, a menopausal woman. Middle-aged women also deserve sweet love!"

In September this year, a short play titled "Flash Marriage with a Rich Family" (now renamed "True Love Never Dies") swept social media platforms. The main plot of the play is: Shi Xiaoxiu, who sells lunch boxes, met Lei Mengjie, the adopted daughter of the overbearing boss Lei Zhiyuan, in a street encounter. The two added each other on WeChat, and with Lei Mengjie's matchmaking, Xiaoxiu went on a blind date with the overbearing boss. Then, the two began a "twilight love".

If we say that the target group of vertical screen micro-short dramas at the beginning was biased towards the younger generation, the early popular works clearly had young males as the main audience, such as "Wushuang" and "Hua Long".

This year, the situation is changing, and short dramas for middle-aged and elderly people are likely to dominate the charts.

According to DataEye data, in the TOP10 short drama hot list in September 2024, short dramas about middle-aged and elderly bosses occupied three seats. Works such as "Flash Marriage to a Rich Family", "Flash Marriage at Fifty Years Old", and "Father and Son Fight in the Battlefield" have emerged one after another.

Image source: TikTok

Among them, the short drama "Flash Marriage with a Rich Family" has accumulated more than 550 million views, and has topped the list of short dramas on the entire network. The Douyin topic has even reached 1.93 billion views. The producer Tinghuadao said, "We are committed to being a dream maker for the middle-aged and elderly."

Shi Xiaoxiu, the heroine of "Flash Marriage with a Wealthy Family", said in an interview with the media, "Middle-aged and elderly women who are unhappy in their marriages may have found their unfulfilled dreams in this drama. They hope to be stable and happy after divorce. People over 30 really need to see this kind of story of 'being loved at any age'." "This is the love of middle-aged people, not passionate, but long-lasting."

Compared with the popular short dramas before, the appearance of "Flash Marriage with a Rich Wife" has caused a double shock to users and practitioners, and may also open up more commercial space for the short drama industry. And the short drama theme represented by it, with the middle-aged and elderly groups as the protagonists, may also appear more frequently in the next period of time.

01 Short dramas for middle-aged and elderly people, popular on Douyin and Kuaishou

Following sweet pet short dramas such as "The Domineering CEO Falls in Love with Me" and refreshing dramas such as "The Crooked Mouth God of War" and "The Son-in-Law", a large number of short dramas for middle-aged and elderly people with themes of family ethics and twilight love are rapidly becoming popular.

Kas observed that the styles of popular micro-short dramas on the market generally fit the pain points of middle-aged and elderly users. They don't care much about camera techniques and costumes, but are particularly keen on watching twilight romance, conflicts between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, punishing evil and promoting good. They like to watch the male protagonist use a dual identity to "slap" everyone in the face, and the female protagonist compromises and dedicates herself to the family... Elements such as sweet pets and domineering bosses appear to be at peace with the silver-haired group.

As mentioned earlier in the movie "Flash Marriage: The Boss is a Rich Family", the heroine, who was bullied by her ex-husband and daughter-in-law, had a blind date with an air-conditioning repairman by chance. It turned out that the repairman was a real "boss", and the two of them sparked a sweet and sincere love.

Image source: TikTok

Similar to the plot of "Flash Marriage with a Wealthy Family", the story of the short play "Flash Marriage at 50" is as follows: 45-year-old Li Xiuqin is a divorced woman facing a midlife crisis. Not only does she have to bear the pressure of her evil mother-in-law, but she also has to deal with her son who is addicted to gambling. After meeting many strange people on blind dates, she accidentally meets a wealthy chairman disguised as a Didi driver, thus opening a new chapter in her life.

The short series has a total of 95 episodes, in which the protagonist slaps the villains in the face all the way. In essence, it is actually a standard Mary Sue narrative, and the topic has been played 2.3 billion times on Douyin.

Image source: TikTok

The contents of the above two short dramas may be bizarre, but they are still within the framework of urban romance dramas. In comparison, the plot of "The Promise Returns of the Cleaning Mom" ​​mixes various elements such as urban, fantasy, and martial arts, showing the screenwriter's unique mental state.

In the play, the 45-year-old cleaning lady and the 27-year-old president who was drugged accidentally fell into the bathtub and had a one-night stand. After waking up, the president fell in love with the cleaning lady because she refused to accept the 20 million compensation, and chose to insist on taking responsibility to the end. After that, the cleaning lady experienced a series of stories of upgrading and fighting monsters, including but not limited to "the heroine was insulted by the female supporting role and poured with red wine" and "the heroine was falsely accused of breaking jewelry worth 1 billion". There was even a consortium boss who brought 100 trillion assets from the United States to attack the local economy in order to force the heroine to marry him. (100 trillion is even 5 trillion more than the domestic GDP in the first three quarters of 2024) In the end, the cleaning lady's true identity turned out to be the "world's richest man".

This skit was called "A 27-year-old domineering president falls in love with me who is in menopause" by netizens, and some netizens joked, "If you don't have cerebral thrombosis for 100 years, you'd be embarrassed to do a skit."

In addition to sweet pet stories and love stories, short plays for middle-aged and elderly people also focus on humorous and funny life works. For example, on the Kuaishou platform, "Love in the Hutong at Dusk" starring Sun Yue directly faces the various problems encountered in "dusk love" and expresses realistic concern for the single middle-aged and elderly groups; there are also some short plays that mainly talk about family affection, such as "Only the love of parents is selfless love in the world."

If the relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law mainly appeals to middle-aged and elderly women, then short plays about the relationship between father and son, brotherhood, and comradeship are more likely to impress middle-aged and elderly men. Themes such as loyalty and starting from scratch are common. For example, "Father and Son in the Old Man's Battlefield", "The Return of the Designated Driver Dad", "Father and Son", "Father and Son in the Old Man's Battlefield", etc.

It is worth noting that some young people are also moved by the exquisite grandparents and pay attention to short dramas about middle-aged and elderly people. Data shows that "Flash Marriage with a Rich Family" is not only popular among middle-aged and elderly users, but many young people aged 20-30 are also "deeply involved" and make jokes and recommend it in the comment area. In addition, the star of the drama @邬倩 has 121,000 fans on Douyin, with fans aged 18-30 accounting for more than 50%.

This can also be seen from the content characteristics and fan structure of middle-aged and elderly Vs on current short video platforms. In the past two years, silver-haired Internet celebrities @Wang Grandma Only Wears High Heels and @Mana Uncle have gained tens of millions of fans by showing their personal lives. They are the projection of their fans' ideal lives; in @Fashion Grandma Group's videos, the protagonists are grandmas with exquisite makeup and hair, fashionable clothes, and elegant postures, who no longer worry about food and clothing. Their content conveys the same view: "Women can age gracefully."

Contrary to our usual stereotypes, short plays about middle-aged and elderly people actually pay more attention to emotional rationality. Hua Juan believes that "short plays about elderly people must not be as simple as 'the protagonist has grown older', and we cannot force young people's plays into short plays about elderly people. The biggest difference between the elderly and young people is their pain points. One of the biggest pain points for the elderly in Chinese society is their children, so we need to make their pain points solid and create sincere content."

Why have short plays for middle-aged and elderly people become increasingly popular this year and seem to be occupying the C position in the short play industry?

On the one hand, the popularity of short dramas for middle-aged and elderly people is inseparable from the contribution of silver-haired netizens.

According to the "Statistical Bulletin on the Development of Civil Affairs in 2023", as of the end of 2023, the national population aged 60 and above will be 296.97 million, accounting for 21.1% of the total population.

Data released by QuestMobile at the end of 2023 showed that among users of short drama applications, 30.4% were under 30 years old, 32.4% were between 31 and 45 years old, and 37.3% were over 46 years old. Among them, the audience of short dramas over 46 years old was 12.3% and 4.8% higher than the audience of long videos and short videos in the same age group, respectively.

There are huge emotional needs hidden under the huge crowd, and short dramas are best at "stimulating emotions". Each episode is 1 minute long, with constant reversals and high-energy output, which can attract users to quickly immerse themselves in it. Tinghuadao found that among the main paying groups for short dramas after the Spring Festival this year, the number of middle-aged and elderly people aged 40-60 increased significantly, so it decided to set up a middle-aged and elderly content group.

On the other hand, in a large number of PGC (professionally produced content), middle-aged and elderly people are often associated with these keywords - taking care of children, gossiping, and messing around. In the short drama, their images and roles are completely subverted. They have money, leisure, time, and dreams to pursue. A man in his sixties can have great ambitions, and an aunt who has devoted her life can be favored... Of course, middle-aged and elderly people will also have fantasies about purer emotions, and the short drama has become a content carrier for "fantasy coming true."

In Kas's opinion, as Tinghuadao has conveyed to the outside world, "to be the dream maker for middle-aged and elderly people", on the basis of being close to life and down-to-earth, short plays are more responsible for dream creation and make money from emotional value.

02 Is it worth entering the market for short dramas for middle-aged and elderly people?

There is no doubt that short dramas still have broad commercial space. The "2024 China Micro-Short Drama Industry Research Report" released by iResearch Consulting shows that in 2023, 3,574 short dramas are planned to be filed and 584 are filed online; the market size of the micro-short drama industry has reached 35.86 billion yuan in 2023, and is expected to grow to 48.46 billion yuan in 2024.

At present, there are two main modes of revenue generation in the short drama industry: one is the paid mode and the other is the free mode. Because the elderly have relatively few viewing channels and are not familiar with free channels, short dramas for middle-aged and elderly people also generate relatively more payment than short dramas for young people, and many young people are less willing to pay.

From a commercial perspective, some imaginative short plays for middle-aged and elderly people have attracted a large number of paying users.

Take "Flash Marriage with a Rich Family" as an example. Its short drama producer Tinghuadao has directly opened short drama accounts on platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, and users can pay to watch the short drama directly on the homepage. The drama has a total of 69 episodes, the first 29 episodes are free, and the next 40 episodes need to be paid. It costs 1.4 yuan to unlock a single episode and 26.6 yuan to unlock all episodes.

According to Southern Metropolis Daily, the recharge amount of the drama reached about 30 million yuan in one week, but about 80% of this was investment costs and channel fees. The final native income was more than 6 million yuan, which is considered the most profitable short drama of the producer Tinghuadao Company after the Spring Festival this year.

According to data released by Tinghuadao, 60%-70% of the paid users of the drama's mini program are male users, and 70% to 80% of them are middle-aged and elderly people aged 41-50 or over 50. However, the male and female user portraits of the drama's original theater account on Douyin are more evenly distributed, among which users aged 41-50 account for 21%, and those over 50 account for 19%.

But this does not mean that short plays for middle-aged and elderly people are a drastic content innovation.

Overall, the elderly dramas on the market are essentially no different from the previously popular God of War, Overlord, and Sweet Pet. In terms of content selection, short dramas for middle-aged and elderly people with urban life themes account for the vast majority, and there are similarities and duplications. Therefore, some practitioners believe that "there are more people following the trend, rather than discovering the low point in content expression."

In addition to the problem of content duplication, the discussion on "short dramas are a tax on the IQ of elderly users" has also been put on the agenda. Issues such as inducing the elderly to top up too much, which has been criticized by the outside world, and the value issues of the plot may be minefields that short dramas for middle-aged and elderly people must avoid.

Image source: Weibo

Kas observed that although short dramas about middle-aged and elderly people are gaining more and more attention on short video platforms, they are still in the early stages of development in terms of content professionalism and monetization space, and have not yet become the core creative direction and monetization channel for most companies.

When a new content first appears, it is often viewed with a keen eye for novelty and exploration, but when it becomes a hit on the Internet, public opinion will not always be tolerant. The short dramas for middle-aged and elderly people will also face the fate of being scrutinized and corrected, just like the short dramas on themes such as rebirth and revenge before.

Author: Bi Shisan This article is written by the author of Operation Party [Kas Data], WeChat public account: [Kas Data], original/authorized to be published in Operation Party, and reproduction is prohibited without permission.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.