Short videos are indispensable for variety show promotion

This article deeply analyzes the role of short videos in the promotion of variety shows, and explores how the variety show market uses short video platforms to achieve content dissemination and commercialization. It guides readers to understand this emerging media trend and hopes to inspire your work in the media and entertainment industry.

Nowadays, it seems that no one can escape the promotional content of variety shows.

Xiao Xiong is a short video user. She was not very interested in variety shows at first, but big data overwhelmingly recommended variety show clips to her. The CP clip of Zheng Hehuizi and Zhang Dongliang in "Infinite Beyond Class"; the tenth anniversary reunion of "Flowers and Youth"; Chen Lijun's stage in "Sisters Who Make Waves 5"... Weibo hot searches, Xiaohongshu notes, Douyin short videos, B station complaints videos, as long as you open the content APP, the latest variety show topics will always occupy Xiao Xiong's sight. "I can watch no variety shows, but I won't miss any of the memes."

The situation Xiao Xiong encountered is not an isolated case. The "2023 Douyin Variety Show Promotion and Marketing White Paper" shows that in 2023, ten variety shows became popular on Douyin, among which the four variety shows "Running Man 7", "The Voice of God 4", "Ride the Wind 2023" and "Dad is in Charge 2" all had over 10 billion views; many program creators gained millions of fans on Douyin and became popular amateurs.

Behind the data is the new relationship between short videos and TV series and variety shows. Short videos provide a promotional environment for TV series and variety shows, with pre-broadcast promotion, on-air hype, and long-tail effects continuing to ferment after broadcast... Variety shows have achieved one-stop dissemination on content platforms, even extending to live streaming and selling goods, and short video users have also subtly become part of the "variety show paly".

In 2024, can the sluggish variety show market find a path to innovation by relying on content platforms?

1. Short video "famous scenes" make variety shows popular

Finally, after watching the cut of "Infinity and Beyond Edition" for the nth time, Xiao Xiong decided to watch the full movie.

Looking back at the development of acting variety shows, when the acting variety show "The Birth of the Actors" appeared in 2017, it contributed to the classic hot topic of "The Ants Have Been Racing for Ten Years". Since then, a series of acting variety shows such as "I Am an Actor" and "Actors Please Take Your Place" have emerged one after another, and a series of Internet hot topics such as "Guo Jingming's S Card" and "Li Chengru's Proverbs" have appeared, which have aroused widespread discussion and laid the foundation for the spread of acting variety shows.

Image source network

The second season of "Infinite Beyond Class", which will be aired in February 2024, is also an acting variety show. It is an actor's professional art training inspirational reality show jointly produced by Zhejiang Satellite TV and Youku. Er Dongsheng is the chief producer, and Hao Lei, Ning Jing, and Wu Zhenyu are the producers. The artists include Li Fei'er, Zhu Zixiao, Ji Lingchen, Zheng He Huizi and other actors.

Since its launch, "Infinite Beyond Class" has followed the path of using hot topics to create topics and conflicts to attract traffic for acting variety shows. Instructors such as Wu Zhenyu and Hao Lei made sharp comments on the students; Zhu Zixiao and Ji Zhua acted together; the conflicts between Li Fei'er and Jin Chao; the CP feeling between Zheng He Huizi and Zhang Dongliang... This season of "Infinite Beyond Class" contributed many "famous scenes".

Image source network

Observing the distribution of these so-called "famous scenes", it is not difficult to find that almost every episode has several "topics" and "hot spots" that can be output as 1-minute short videos. During the update of variety shows, these topics that are strongly bound to the content are finally completed through real-time monitoring of hot spot communication feedback and the layer-by-layer communication effect of the content platform to complete the topic marketing of the variety show.

Relying on short video topics to spread variety shows has become a consensus among current variety show producers. As for the Douyin platform, data shows that 390 variety shows will be stationed on Douyin in 2023, and Douyin has achieved high coverage of the country's top variety shows and provincial satellite TV stations. At the same time, long video platforms such as Tencent Video and iQiyi have reached content cooperation with Douyin around the joint promotion of long and short videos and the secondary creation of short videos.

Looking back, Wang Xinling's popularity on the Internet in the variety show "Sisters Who Make Waves 3" was the highest, thanks to the producer's quick response to the hot spots. When the show was broadcast, the producer released multiple groups of artist stages under the official account and monitored the data feedback in real time, thus discovering the potential of the "Love You" stage. Subsequently, the producer supported the topic #王心玲一句爱你爆出全网老粉#, which led to the spread of Wang Xinling's boy dance. In addition, Wang Xinling initiated the "Love You" co-production challenge, which triggered the second creation of the whole people, and finally led to the discussion of the whole network. The total number of views of the platform-related topics reached 2.35 billion, which also brought enough traffic and feelings to the variety show "Sisters Who Make Waves 3".

Image source network

Since the launch of "Riding the Wind 2024" this year, related hot searches have not stopped. From Guo Biting's condition to Wang Lin's study in the Soviet Union, a series of hot searches have appeared frequently. Although there are no phenomenal IPs such as Wang Xinling and Mei Yiliya, after the first episode was broadcast, the stage where Yue Opera actor Chen Lijun combined "Mulan" and "Sun Wukong" became the topic center of "Riding the Wind 2024", and the discussion on social media increased.

Image source: Mango TV

2. Variety show promotion does not necessarily rely on drama

The Infinite Beyond Class, which became popular due to its topic, has been gaining popularity since its second season was launched. It is understood that this variety show is sponsored by Junlebao, and has brand placements from Youcui, Youchen, and Dongyangguang.

However, since the topic hype of acting variety shows tends to be more negative, it has affected the audience's perception to a certain extent.

According to Douban, the second season of "Infinite Beyond Class" currently has a score of 5.2 points, and comments below often include questions such as "too awkward", "more about the show than the content", and "too much of a script".

Image source: Douban

In the era of short video marketing, must variety shows rely on conflict to attract traffic?

The farming documentary variety show "Let's Farm" that became popular last year gave another answer. As a slow variety show with the theme of "farming", it has a long cycle and the guests are not celebrities, which makes the audience's viewing threshold very high. However, the producers used "slow live broadcast + official release of highlights + derivative secondary creation" and other methods to dig out highlights from the simple and slow-paced work of farming. In the end, it not only received 380 million yuan in investment and won 885 hot searches on the entire network, but also brought countless viewers pure healing.

Image source network

Before the show was broadcast, the production team conducted a Reuters preheating on the short video platform to arouse everyone's curiosity about the "boy group farming". In the middle and late stages of the show, the official marketing account of "Let's Farm" @小丰收大哈哈" was opened to create creative short videos such as "Jiang Dunhao failed to catch a sheep and was thrown to the ground by the sheep", further amplifying the "laugh" effect. Following the hot spots of "Let's Farm", "Let's Farm" also planned a number of live broadcasts with goods, combined with the content of the main program, to open up the live broadcast e-commerce channel to help farmers. In the live broadcast of the "518 Shopping Festival", the goods were sold out in seconds and entered the TOP30 of the goods list.

Image source: TikTok

Coincidentally, the fifth season of the hit variety show "Flowers and Youth" in 2023 changed the "open and secret struggles" of previous seasons. It did not deliberately create conflicts to attract traffic, but instead gained countless views and word of mouth with its heartwarming travel records.

Image source network

Variety show promotions on short videos are not limited to this. Many variety show guests also operate outside the variety show through short video accounts. Take Huang Kai, one of the main creators of "The Heart-Stirring Offer 5" as an example. After the show was broadcast, he attracted much attention because of his "original family" and "abandoning medicine to pursue law and finally entering Tsinghua University after five attempts." With the promotion resources of the program team and the linkage of media interviews, @黄凯's Douyin account has surpassed the content linkage variety show, and the number of fans has increased by 500,000 in 5 days. The current number of fans of his account has reached 1.358 million.

3. Assisting Commercialization

At a time when budgets are tightening, monetization remains an important issue for variety shows.

In recent years, due to various factors, the marketing budget of brands for variety shows has shrunk, and short video platforms have diverted the ability of brands to launch long video variety shows. However, the complementarity between the traffic of short video platforms and the content of variety shows has attracted more and more brands to pay attention to the dissemination of short video platforms.

The "Tik Tok Variety Show White Paper" mentioned that because "Let's Farm" achieved an unexpected traffic effect during its broadcast, it eventually attracted more than 10 brands including Yinlu, Lvyuan, Midea, Xilinmen, and Golden Dragon Fish to add cooperation during the broadcast period.

Relying on the variety show format of short videos, in addition to IP fermentation to help the spread of variety shows, Douyin, Kuaishou and B have also produced their own micro-variety shows in recent years. Short video platforms themselves are content-based, and many contents themselves are another form of variety shows. It is natural for them to produce their own variety shows.

With the explosion of short dramas at the end of 2023, "micro-comprehensive" has become an important tool for content platforms. At present, micro-comprehensive is represented by "Mao Xuewang" and "Nice to Meet You". Today's micro-comprehensive focuses on interviews, celebrities, travel and other content. It is understood that "Nice to Meet You" takes Zhou Xun and Aya as the main guests, creating "artists + showcases + short videos + live broadcasts to cultivate beauty, clothing and home products", and has increased its fans by nearly 1 million in half a year, and its e-commerce level has jumped to the top author.

"Mao Xuewang" (Photo source: Internet)

However, micro-variety shows have not yet produced phenomenal products, and most of them are still derivative products produced to match variety shows. To some extent, micro-variety shows have not yet broken away from the topics of variety shows, and their fun needs to be improved.

As more and more variety shows create more "gameplay" on short video platforms, we hope that creators will not forget that variety shows should not only be innovative in their promotion, but also ensure "truth" in their content. Only by allowing good content to gain commercial feedback can the industry move towards positive feedback and allow more good content to be implemented and seen.

References:

• Why are short video promotions popular but not commercial when watching variety shows on Douyin? | Entertainment Business Observation
• "2023 Douyin Variety Show Promotion White Paper" | Douyin
• In 2024, will the promotion of variety shows depend on short videos? | Rhino Entertainment
• The most popular variety show in 2023, what did "Flowers and Youth 5" do right | New Voice

Author: TopKlout

Source: WeChat public account "TopKlout (ID: TopKlout)"