With so many hit dramas, how did Tencent's dramas become such a popular brand?

Why is Tencent Video so popular? The reason is that it respects the audience experience and the brands embedded in it. While enriching the drama-chasing experience, it opens up the channels between the plot, the audience and the brand, achieving a double harvest of brand promotion and sales. Follow this article to see how Tencent Video embeds and markets brands. It is recommended for Internet friends to read.

The heat of "Joy of Life 2" is still there, and another TV series on Tencent Video has become popular. "The Story of Rose", starring Liu Yifei, has been on the screens of major social platforms since its premiere, and related entries have been on the hot search list many times. It not only won a good result of breaking 1.9 in CCTV ratings, but also set a record for the fastest popularity value of urban dramas on Tencent Video to break 30,000, achieving a double explosion on TV and the Internet.

"The Story of Rose" is not only popular, but also well-received. The scenes and composition in the play are very advanced, the costumes are very suitable for the environment at that time, and even the brands implanted in it have become the subject of much discussion among netizens. For example, brands such as Jindian, Xizhilang, Wyeth, Vipshop, and Lee Kum Kee that appear in the play have naturally integrated their products into the plot through scene-based implantation, and successfully aroused the resonance of the audience with the help of the emotional attitude of the protagonist, and subtly planted the seeds for the products.

As an observer of the industry, Mr. Bingfa has been watching the new ways and trends of product placement in TV series and movies, and he knows that it is not easy to balance the perception of content and brand effect . In the past, many brands used popular TV series and movies as "advertising spots", so the content and advertisements seen by many viewers were separated, which is not the ideal state for product placement in TV series and movies. However, looking back at the popular TV series on Tencent Video, such as "Flowers", "The Legend of Phoenix", "The Three-Body Problem", "Joy of Life 2", and the ways of brand placement in them, we can find that the "integration" between them is getting higher and higher, and the advertisements are integrated into the content, and they are not abrupt when they appear. It is really rare to be able to achieve this step.

It is understood that more than 40 brands have chosen to cooperate with "The Story of Rose". Behind this data, not only does it reflect advertisers' strong confidence and expectations for the drama, but it also indirectly confirms Tencent's ability to integrate content and advertising. Let's take this as an example to talk about how Tencent's dramas have become "brand-boosting" dramas.

1. High-quality dramas are a “concentrator” of attention, but exposure is not the only purpose

In this fragmented era, the public's attention is becoming increasingly scarce, and those communications that users see but do not perceive are actually wasted. Therefore, the core and most basic advantage of Tencent's dramas is that those hit dramas can quickly focus users' attention in a short period of time, allowing information to be remembered.

However, the traffic advantage of hit dramas can easily make brands fall into the tangle of exposure. Most brands will think about how many shots they appear in, how long they appear, how obvious they are, etc. In fact, this kind of implantation thinking that forms an opposing relationship with the content of the drama is a misunderstanding from the beginning. The content attributes of these hit dramas are actually more important than the traffic itself.

Tencent Video, which is well aware of this, has used creativity and branding to create many highly "integrated" placements. For example, in "Flowering Flowers", Miss Wang was jealous of A Bao and Li Li getting too close, so she went to a roadside store to drink soda alone. The owner Jing Xiu comforted her. This passage not only hinted at the undercurrent under the Yellow River Road, but also matched the ups and downs of Miss Wang's heart at the time, and also paved the way for the plot in which Mei Ping backstabbed Miss Wang.

In "The Story of Rose", the heroine Huang Yimei's love view of maintaining her own self in love and bravely pursuing true love is the key to attracting many people to follow this drama. As the title sponsor of this drama, Jindian also cleverly used the attitude of roses towards feelings as inspiration, and carefully created a series of highly creative fusion gameplays to closely connect the brand with the plot. For example, the brand turned the rose's profound insights about love in the play into "Rose Proverbs" . While the audience resonates with the rose's emotional attitude, they will unconsciously empathize with the brand. In addition, there is also "Flower Road Barrage" in the famous scenes related to roses, which integrates brand information with the plot at the highlight moment to create a romantic interactive atmosphere.

In the scene where Huang Yimei needs to make a choice, Jindian also attracted the audience to participate by voting to express their attitudes. This creative point was also extended beyond the drama by the brand, using highly engaged social topics to further attract attention. It is understood that the brand will also produce a drama-watching experience report based on the user's life attitude questionnaire, so that more consumers can perceive their own brand attitude. This fusion approach not only enhances the audience's viewing experience, but also further consolidates Jindian's image as a high-quality milk brand.

In fact, in addition to the integration with the plot itself, the details of the era in the film also provide many opportunities for "integration" for the brand. For example, "Flowers" takes place in the 1990s, the Guangming milk trucks shuttling through the alleys, the Pepsi advertisement "The Choice of a New Generation" printed on the bus, etc., are all real things that appeared in that era. "Rose's Story" starts from 2001. The car driven by Rose's brother and the Nokia used by Rose can easily bring everyone's memory back to that era, laying a good foundation for planting grass.

2. Artistic value is the premise of commercial value, and content strategy lays a good foundation for "strong brand"

There may be a certain amount of luck involved in a single drama becoming a hit, but when we open the Tencent Video app we can see that Tencent has its own popular dramas in almost every field.

Tencent Video has not only spent a lot of money to develop top IPs such as "Ghost Blowing Lights", "The Three-Body Problem" and Jin Yong's series of novels, but also created annual hit dramas such as "Legend of Fuyao", "Longing", "Traveling with Phoenixes", "You Are My Glory", "You Are My City Camp" and "In the Blizzard" in the advantageous tracks of big female costumes, fairy tales and love dramas. At the same time, it is also actively escaping from the "comfort zone" and actively broadening the direction of topic selection. Among them, "The Long Season" has a brilliant score of 9.4 points with 930,000 people, becoming the highest-rated online drama in 2023. Not only that, Tencent Video is also actively purchasing top content from top suppliers. This idea of ​​"not rolling traffic but rolling word-of-mouth" has also led to the emergence of a large number of high-scoring hit dramas, and a "cluster effect" has appeared in terms of word-of-mouth.

Of course, the number of popular IPs is the core advantage of Tencent Video, but what really builds the "moat" of Tencent Video is the platform's overall management capabilities from content development, work value to promotion and breaking the circle. After all, only by achieving "production and broadcasting integration" from the source of IP to the back-end producer can the artistic value of the series be fully guaranteed, thereby providing more commercial value for the brand.

For example, the novel "Joy of Life" was first published on Qidian Chinese website, which is now affiliated with China Literature Group, which was formed by the merger of Tencent Literature and Shanda Literature and is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tencent. The work was adapted by New Classics Media, which is also a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Literature Group. From copyright holders to producers to broadcasting platforms, Tencent occupies the entire IP industry chain.

The recent success of "Joy of Life 2" and "The Story of Rose" is also inseparable from the long-term development cooperation of multiple parties. The producers of "Joy of Life 2" are CCTV, Tencent Video, Yuewen Film and Television, and New Classics TV, while the producers of "The Story of Rose" are also CCTV, Shanghai Tencent Penguin Film and Television, and New Classics TV, thus achieving resonance between the Internet and TV stations and maximizing the distribution effect.

3. Leverage Tencent’s ecosystem to open up the entire IP industry chain and make the value of content marketing more multidimensional

The last point I want to make is that product placement is a systematic project. It is not enough to just throw product placement into the series and it will be done once and for all. In addition to the exposure and discussion brought by the drama itself, we should also explore many communication points with the audience, so that the popularity of the drama content can be connected with the sales link. With the support of Tencent's ecological capabilities, the one-stop marketing demands of brand topics, product promotion, and product promotion can be met in Tencent Video, and it continues to innovate in marketing methods.

Tencent Video has designed many clever communication touchpoints in "Celebrating Yu Nian 2". For example, the card collection gameplay gives benefits, and you can collect character cards while watching the show to win benefits, which continuously strengthens the user's mind; Qidian Reading interacts with users in the form of bullet screens during the "Celebrating Yu Nian Moment", and surprisingly distributes brand benefits and smoothly jumps to the brand's private domain , achieving one-click conversion to achieve brand-effect integration, and developing the original functions of Tencent Video to the extreme.

Outside of the drama, many brands have also directly connected Tencent Video accounts, mini programs, and business positions such as JD.com. For example, during the hot broadcast of "Fang Hua", a special page for the drama was created on Meituan Waimai, and Fan Tiantian, the actor who plays Lu Meilin in the drama, was invited to be a guest in the popular live broadcast room, opening up the conversion link and driving real sales. From this perspective, the ecosystem in which Tencent Video is located is equivalent to providing brands with a "fast track" with multi-channel superposition and public and private domains connected, which can further improve the brand implantation effect.

In conclusion:

In fact, if you look closely, you will find that the reason why these brands implanted in Tencent dramas "win" is not only because they catch up with the popularity of the dramas, but also because they have made refined and systematic innovations in the presentation methods within the dramas and the marketing layout outside the dramas, which can maximize the value of the content.

These successes are not accidental, but the result of the interconnection of each deterministic link. Tencent Video respects art and artists very much, and provides full support for "good stories". At the same time, Tencent Video also respects the audience experience and the brands embedded in it. While enriching the drama-chasing experience, it opens up the channels between the plot, the audience and the brand, achieving a double harvest of product promotion and sales. The quality control capabilities of integrated production and broadcasting, and the ecological capabilities behind the platform are almost unique, which is also the real reason why Tencent's dramas can "prosper the brand".

Author: Mr. Bingfa

Source: WeChat public account: "Marketing Art of War (ID: lanhaiyingxiao)"