With new concepts, huge investments, and big names joining in, how will brand short dramas be successful?

In the wave of digital marketing, brand short plays, as a new form of content marketing, are rapidly becoming a new battlefield for major brands to compete for traffic and consumer attention. From huge production costs to the participation of big stars, brand short plays are constantly setting new heights in marketing with their unique charm and efficient conversion capabilities.

However, in this seemingly prosperous field, how can brand short plays achieve a gorgeous transformation from supporting roles to leading roles? And how can they stand out from the fierce competition and create stories that can truly touch people's hearts?

This article will give you an in-depth understanding of the strategies and challenges behind brand short films, and explore how this marketing tool can help brands ride the wave in an era where content is king.

Brand-customized short plays have always been something that cannot be underestimated in the short play genre.

The two have complementary qualities, which have led to the continuous rapid growth of brand-customized dramas and set traffic records one after another. According to the "Micro-Short Drama Industry Observation and Marketing Guide in the First Half of 2024" released by Gou Zheng Technology, the number of brand-cooperated commercial micro-short dramas in the first half of 2024 increased by 68% year-on-year and doubled month-on-month.

There has also been a polar reversal in roles - breaking away from the implantation model, "exclusively customized" brand sketches have gradually become the mainstream cooperation model.

(Data source: Gouzheng Technology)

In the past September, brand-customized short dramas performed well: Red Star Erguotou sponsored the Kuaishou Xingmang short drama "Love in the Hutong Dusk", which received 300 million views; Yili Dairy's first workplace short drama "Artists in the Laboratory" invited actor Li Chengru to participate, etc. Brands have gradually jumped from "eye-catching" supporting roles in short dramas to "not intrusive" protagonists in customized short dramas.

What kind of energy does the short play bring to the brand? What kind of sparks have been created by the collision of multiple parties after years of development?

01 It is a sharp weapon, but also a sharp blade

Early brand-customized skits served as "marketing tools" for a long time.

Brand-customized short dramas have a strong contrast of low cost and high effectiveness, and have always been the favorite of many brands due to their extremely high conversion ability.

From commercial placement to brand customization, the relationship between the two is changing with the progress of cooperation demands. With the attraction of traffic, brand-customized short dramas are gradually taking shape.

From the cosmetics brand Hansu, which can be called "the first brand to try out brand-customized dramas", we can see the original appearance of brand-customized short dramas.

In 2023, Hansu began to enter the brand-customized short drama market with the "expert cooperation model". In the more than half a year from February to September, five short dramas such as "All Love and You" and "Dress for Growth" co-produced by Hansu and @姜十七 were launched one after another, and achieved billions of views. The "Red Waist" and "White Waist" series of products inserted into the plot also ushered in a climax in sales.

At the same time, in 2023, Hansu continued to cooperate with many female drama masters such as Lin Ge to create serialized short dramas. The exposure traffic and frequency increased, and the product line was also expanded to "Blue Waist" and "Green Capsule".

It can be seen that Hansu quickly found its own brand positioning: based on product characteristics, the themes are concentrated in life and workplace; based on user portraits, the types of cooperating experts are concentrated in the user circles of emotions, beauty, mother and baby, and comedy. At the same time, Hansu's brand customized short dramas are not mythical at major promotional marketing nodes such as Double Eleven, but through daily and continuous production and broadcasting, they create a "subtle" brand awareness for the audience.

The "expert cooperation model" is the cooperation model at the beginning of most brand-customized short dramas, and because of Hanxuan's leading effect, various beauty brands have tried it out: Guyu has launched two customized short dramas such as "New Year's Day" on Douyin; Marubi directly set the "Marubi Group" in the brand short drama "The Double A Couple is Beautiful and Cool" it produced.

The beauty brands’ pursuit of the initial popularity of brand-customized skits has contributed to the maturity of brand-customized skits to a great extent.

As short dramas matured and various brands gradually tasted the sweetness, more funds flowed into brand-customized short dramas. Not only did they set up their own studios, but big names began to join in, and the types of brands became more and more diverse.

Judging from the performance of the brand-customized short dramas in September, there are significant differences from the brand-customized short dramas a year ago.

Brands no longer rely on the "influencer cooperation" model. Hansu's branded skits are only presented on the accounts of the leading influencers. On the one hand, they can enjoy the influencer's traffic, but on the other hand, the conversion of brand effectiveness needs to be considered. It can be seen that the Douyin account @KFC has an independent skit tag, and the two skits that have been broadcast are listed in it. The production and broadcast of branded skits have begun to be completed independently by brand accounts, which is an improvement in brand capabilities and a change in the cooperation model.

Along with the changes, there is also the participation of celebrities in brand short plays: during "Quality Month", Yili Dairy launched its first workplace short play "Artists in the Laboratory", inviting actor Li Chengru to star in it, revealing how a new product was born; Red Star Erguotou's brand short play "Love in the Hutong at Dusk" invited crosstalk actor Sun Yue to star in it, telling the bitterness and sweetness of a Beijing-style family.

When a brand account independently completes the production of a skit, how to attract traffic becomes the biggest challenge. The appearance of celebrities, to a certain extent, makes up for the shortcomings and uses their own traffic to increase the exposure of the brand skit.

At the same time, we can also see that brand short dramas are making balanced efforts on the Douyin and Kuaishou platforms.

"Love in the Hutong at Dusk" is a Kuaishou Xingmang short drama, while @KFC short drama is being developed on the Douyin platform. During the 618 period this year, Taobao short drama launched many brand-customized dramas, covering categories such as beauty, household cleaning, clothing, home appliances, 3C digital, and health, and produced many hits. The Liby customized drama "The Woman Who Sells Luxury Houses" has been played nearly 50 million times on the site. The diversification of platforms also provides opportunities for brand short dramas to make more choices based on user portraits.

So far, we can see that after nearly two years of development, brand short dramas have broken through from a small circle to a large track. As a sharp tool for brand marketing, short dramas have harvested wave after wave of traffic. But as the number increases, the blade will also cut the efficiency in half. How can brand short dramas continue to be popular? The answer may be glimpsed in the popular brand short dramas.

02 "Pick the best"

The core reason why brands enter the short drama industry is that short dramas can provide brands with efficient and practical conversions.

It can be seen that the earliest brand short dramas entered the market from Douyin and Kuaishou, and the brand customized dramas launched on Taobao short dramas later directly proved this point. The traffic, live broadcast room customer base, and conversion brought by short dramas to brands are all obvious.

Secondly, under the premise of efficiency, brands use content platforms to achieve more accurate conversions.

Combining the existing user big data of the content platform, brands can achieve higher marketing efficiency. For example, the beauty brand short drama first chose the "expert cooperation" model and chose young and female self-media accounts such as @姜十七 and @林鸽 for cooperation because their audience groups highly overlap with the consumer groups of the beauty brand itself.

In addition to active selection, the big data push of content platforms also provides the greatest possible guarantee and support for accurate traffic flow for today's brands to independently operate short dramas.

Thirdly, with the "involution" of commercial competition, brands cannot be just "flat" and need to have three-dimensional memory points. With the help of the soft operation of short drama customization, not only can the brand have continuous and high-frequency friendly exposure, but also bring opportunities to enrich the brand connotation.

Finally, brands are also attracted to the visual data feedback of the short drama itself and the mature conversion feedback of the platform. This is very helpful in driving a virtuous cycle of brands and optimizing delivery strategies.

Therefore, capable brands are flocking to branded skits, and brands at all levels of consumption have been involved - catering brands are not to be outdone: beverage brands such as Cha Baidao and Starbucks also have customized skits. The Starbucks branded skit "I Opened a Starbucks in Ancient Times" that was popular a few days ago created a "time travel to Star Country". Car brands are also not absent: SAIC Volkswagen brand launched a branded skit "Unexpected Life" on Kuaishou, starring actor Wang Yaoqing, telling the brand story. Jewelry brands are not to be outdone: Chow Tai Fook took the lead in launching a branded customized skit "Dreaming of Yihe" in jewelry stores. Although the popularity is not high, it is also a valuable attempt.

Looking at the track of branded short dramas, it can be said that it has gone from being a rising star to being closely packed with people. But it is undeniable that works that can stand out from the crowd and gain traffic and truly effective conversion effects are already the "top of the line".

Looking at these brand skits that have finally emerged and gained popularity, we can see what these “top students” have in common.

Regardless of the type of cooperation model used, it is necessary to basically cater to the rhythm of the short drama.

Whether it is the "expert cooperation" model in the expert account or the independent operation model under the brand account, the brand skit can only really penetrate the audience of the skit if it really adapts to the rhythm of the skit. Take KFC's delivery model as an example. The Douyin homepage originally updated two or three times a day, but adapted to the rhythm of the skit, and completed the high-frequency delivery of brand skits with a frequency of ten updates a day and ten minutes between each update, breaking the original rhythm.

The scripts of branded short plays strongly cater to the ideas of short plays, or make major innovative breakthroughs.

As we can see, taking the brand short play "I Opened a Starbucks in Ancient Times" as an example, the plot of time travel, love, earthy taste, and hot topics is very consistent with the creative ideas of the short play script, but judging from the feedback from the public opinion, the heat is not on the "keyword" plot of Starbucks, but on this "rare" sinking of Starbucks.

Grasp the code of traffic: experts, big names, etc. help to join.

Judging from the practices of various brands, they will basically choose actors with their own traffic to participate in the show, which has a multiplier effect in attracting traffic. However, as brand short plays are sought after by various brands, the operation of "top students" has naturally been imitated by many brands, and the problems are obvious.

The themes of brand short plays are single and the plots are homogeneous.

It can be seen that the basic plots of brand short dramas are relatively similar, mostly concentrated in light comedy, romance, and workplace tracks. This is also similar to the key tracks of short dramas, resulting in greater homogeneity and attracting fewer natural audiences.

Excessive pursuit of frequency will result in low product quality.

Brands lack professional skills and experience in the production of skits, but in order to cater to the high frequency of updates, they have to emphasize mass production, which results in low product quality and the popularity and traffic not meeting expectations. It is not easy to "stand out", and becoming the lucky one to catch the overwhelming traffic seems to be "relying on fate", but for brand marketing to move forward, it is bound to explore how brands can "rely on themselves".

03 Breaking the Short Life Curse

Brand marketing plays with plot, and it doesn’t just start with skits.

Many years ago, brand micro-movies were in full swing. After the emergence of some popular brand micro-movies, various brands vied with each other to interpret and sublimate their brand connotations in this form. However, due to disadvantages such as long conversion links and high costs, various brands gradually stopped pursuing micro-movies.

Similarly, the pursuit of short dramas by various brands today is also along this path: seeing some brand short dramas siphon large amounts of traffic, achieve efficient conversions, and scramble to imitate them.

But unlike brand micro-movies, brand short dramas may have a better chance of breaking the curse of short life.

For brands, brand short dramas are ultimately "commercial advertisements disguised as plots." If brand short dramas want to last long, they still have to find a balance between content and business.

Hansu, a beauty brand that can be called the originator of brand skits, has found a balance in its collaboration with influencers, which is also the reason why it can continue to produce multiple series. In brand skits, which are known as "the dagger is revealed after the picture is finished", as long as the plot has a hook and the advertisements appear as they should, users can continue to be attracted to the product.

This is bound to place high demands on the content and plot. Youchenpin launched "I Became a Rich Lady After the College Entrance Examination", Taier launched "The Internship Boss Loves the Fish Seller", and Meituan launched "I Picked Up the Amnesiac Boss and Bring Home", etc. It can be seen that the similarity of the style of Shuangwen has become the biggest minefield for brand short dramas.

Among the many faces with similar styles, only differentiated content has the opportunity to break through in the future.

For the platform, branded short dramas will invisibly increase the vitality of the platform, and what the platform needs to do is to shorten the link from content to business.

No. 1 believes that the reason why brand micro-films eventually fell silent is that they are helpful in enhancing brand connotations, but lack the motivation to achieve final commercial conversion. However, with today’s video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, and even directly commercial platforms such as Meituan and Taobao, content production will have the opportunity to directly reach the sales end through small yellow cars, blue links, topics, etc., which is a great blessing for brands to choose to increase the production of short dramas.

At the same time, brand sketches have also spawned more gameplay, from the simplest hanging links and keyword settings to interactive traffic, slice traffic, live broadcast room jump and other combined gameplay, bringing more opportunities to both brands and platforms.

For suppliers, exploring more diverse cooperation models can provide more problem-solving ideas for all parties.

From collaboration with MCN talents, to independent production by brands, to star actors joining in the performance, branded short dramas can have more forms of collaboration and have the opportunity to spawn more diverse content themes.

In order to break the curse of the short life cycle of content commercialization, brand short dramas must make efforts in many aspects on the road to rapid development. The fundamental basis for sustained vitality is to have a virtuous cycle.

Conclusion

After live streaming and product promotion, brand short dramas have entered a stage of stable explosion.

"What does the brand want to gain by investing in short dramas?" is a goal orientation that any brand must clearly define before starting a short drama investment.

From the perspective of the complete chain of product effectiveness and sales, sustained profitability and positive cycles are what brand short plays still need to think about calmly in a noisy environment.

It remains to be seen how many brands will be able to take advantage of the popularity of short dramas, and which marketing form will be the next "traffic pioneer" is also waiting to be tested by the market.

Author | Di Fei This article is written by the author of Operation Party [Media No. 1], WeChat public account: [Media No. 1], original/authorized to be published on Operation Party, and any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

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