"Brand x Short Drama" 7 Common Marketing Methods, But This Is Just the Beginning

This article explains in detail 7 common marketing techniques used by brands in the era of short plays, and is recommended for students who are interested in brand marketing.

Short dramas became popular this spring, and the behind-the-scenes "promoters" iQiyi, Youku, Tencent, Mango TV, Douyin, and Kuaishou have been planning in the short drama field for many years.

As early as 2018, iQiyi launched the first vertical screen short drama in China. Since then, not only have mainstream long and short video platforms joined this trend, but brands have also extended an olive branch of cooperation to short dramas.

In 2021, Clinique's "Fox Girlfriend Can't Be Provoked" launched on the Kuaishou platform received 150 million views, becoming one of the first brands to profit from the traffic dividend of short dramas. The "2023 Kuaishou Short Drama Value Report" shows that last year the platform launched more than 90 commercial short dramas and cooperated with more than 35 brands. Customized short dramas from brands and Internet platforms such as Hansu, Proya, One Leaf, Marubi, Taote, JD.com, Sprite, and OPPO are popular on Douyin and Kuaishou platforms.

The rising enthusiasm for dramas has been transformed into a beautiful brand report card. For example, the beauty brand Hansu collaborated with the short drama expert @姜十七 on the Douyin platform last year to produce five short dramas, with a total of more than 5 billion views. The "Hansu Red Waist Gift Box" that frequently appeared in these short dramas sold more than 2.9 million sets in the first three quarters of last year alone.

Although all industries are being reshaped in the era of short videos, it is very rare to see a new industry like the short drama industry that has emerged out of nowhere and is so popular that it can challenge traditional movie theaters. What is even more rare is that the short drama industry has quickly sorted out a clear commercialization path, which seems to have really helped brands find a new way out for advertising and marketing.

01 Traditional film and television dramas vs. Internet short dramas, have the marketing capabilities been upgraded?

When short dramas were first created, they left people with the impression of "fast-paced, brainless and refreshing dramas", but only a few years later, the industry has produced many well-made and sincere works - just like the live broadcast rooms in the previous two years, many celebrities and famous directors have also entered the short drama studios, forcing the overall quality of works in the short drama industry to improve significantly; at the same time, the rhythm of short dramas is very compatible with short video platforms, so platforms represented by Douyin and Kuaishou have become the mainstay of the industry, and this has also provided short dramas with a very large and active audience group (Kuaishou released a report at the beginning of this year stating that its daily active users of micro-short dramas have reached 260 million+; Douyin said that its daily deduplicated users of micro-short dramas have reached 100 million+).

So to some extent, short dramas are a kind of video product that combines the characteristics of "traditional film and television dramas" and "short videos", and naturally take into account the advertising and marketing capabilities of these two types of video content.

Like traditional film and television dramas, short dramas provide brands with marketing methods such as "prop/scene placement", "main character oral announcement", "customized storyline" and "sponsorship".

Ability 1: "Props/scene placement", product hard advertising

During the Spring Festival this year, in the short play "Big New Year" starring Xu Mengjie and Li Chuan, there was a plot where the protagonist gave a whitening set of skin care brand "Guyu" as a New Year's gift.

Ability 2: "Protagonist's oral presentation" to leverage the star/character halo

The Kuaishou short drama "Super Office Worker" sponsored by Tmall New Year Festival invited actors Guo Xiaoting and Yin Zheng to star in it. When the protagonist encountered the problem of gift-giving, a line appeared in which Guo Xiaoting introduced the Tmall New Year Festival.

Capability 3: “Customized storyline”, brand is closely integrated with the plot

Another short play titled "I Open a Bar in Song Dynasty" sponsored by Tmall New Year Goods Festival on Kuaishou invited "Doctor Wen" and "Shen Meizhuang" from "The Legend of Zhen Huan" to "reunite as a couple" after a decade. In the play, there is a plot in which "Shen Meizhuang" opens a "supermarket" in ancient times. The supermarket is hung with banners of Tmall New Year Goods Festival. "Discounts for purchases over a certain amount", "free shipping", "pigeon customer service" and other common service scenes in Tmall online shopping appear many times in the play, driving the development of the plot.

Ability 4: "Naming rights" to enjoy the short drama's full platform traffic

The purpose of brand-sponsoring short dramas obviously goes beyond being seen by the short drama audience. Instead, it is to be "bound" to the drama and gain longer-term and comprehensive exposure opportunities both inside and outside the platform, thereby leaving a deep brand memory in the minds of the audience of the short drama and even outside the short drama.

At the same time, as a product of the short video era, short dramas present some marketing capabilities that traditional dramas do not have: such as "brand customization", "comment interaction", "product page jump", etc.

Ability 5: "Brand Customization", Brand-led Plot

Because of the short, flat and fast production characteristics of short dramas, many brand-customized dramas have appeared on Douyin and Kuaishou platforms, which is obviously not available in traditional film and television dramas. Some "customization" can even be seen from the title of the drama, such as the customized short drama "Love Has Hundreds of Freshness" played on the Douyin platform by Cha Baidao, and "A Bunch of Sunshine and a Bunch of Love" by Hanshu. The plot of "Love Has Hundreds of Freshness" also revolves around the female protagonist @姜十七 who works at Cha Baidao. This short drama with only five episodes has received more than 360 million views and more than 4.8 million likes.

Ability 6: "Comment Interaction", surprise special effects appear in the comment interaction area

Brands can set some keywords during the broadcast of the drama to interact with netizens. For example, if you comment "superpower" in the comment section of the drama "Superpower Office Worker", "superpower cards" with photos of different protagonists will pop up on the page. Of course, in addition to some cool comment section stunts, the strong interactive attributes of Douyin and Kuaishou platforms have attracted users to leave messages and interact spontaneously in the comment section of the short drama.

Coupled with the star power of some actors in the series, it can attract more fans and drama fans to comment. This has also become a short drama marketing method that brands can do more.

Capability 7: "Product Page Jump", you can jump directly to the brand live broadcast room or product page, and the link conversion is completed

In the eyes of brands, traditional movies, TV series, and variety shows mainly serve as brand advertising. However, short drama marketing takes advantage of the mobile Internet as the main broadcasting platform and gradually opens up the marketing link of drama content . For example, the comment area of ​​short drama videos can directly jump to the purchase channel outside the site, jump to the live broadcast room within the site, and even directly use the yellow cart to sell goods to achieve a closed loop within the site.

In short, whether on or off the site, the short dramas on major platforms basically have the ability to achieve post-link conversion. As for the actual conversion level of the brand, it depends on whether the short drama video content is attractive enough for users to click on the jump link; secondly, it depends on whether the jump path inside and outside the video platform is smooth and user-friendly enough. This part of the ability will surely be a focus of future competition among major platforms.

02 Quality + precision, short drama marketing can last long

Although the industry generally defines that short dramas have entered the "mature stage" around 2023, this does not mean that short drama marketing has also entered the mature stage.

At this stage, brands still need to fully examine factors such as the audience of the broadcasting platform, the specific cooperation form of the short drama marketing drama, the spiritual theme conveyed by the short drama plot, the texture and level of the short drama production, etc., before they can truly reap the dividends of this wave of short drama marketing.

Based on the experience of the past two years, beauty and skin care, e-commerce platforms, and food and beverage brands are "frequent customers" of short drama marketing. The common characteristics of these categories are that the average customer price is relatively low and the consumer purchase journey is short, so it is very likely that sales will be directly promoted in a three- to five-minute short drama; at the same time, these categories are necessities of life for consumers and are easily implanted in the drama, and performed by the protagonist as the plot progresses.

In addition to the categories with strong conversion mentioned above, there are also cases of combining "brand/category market education + long-term conversion" for demands such as automobiles and health . For example, SAIC Volkswagen's Kuaishou short play "Unexpected Life" promotes SAIC Volkswagen's Touron brand through the performance of "entertainment circle overlord" Wang Yaoqing. The advantage of using short plays for brand advertising is that generally speaking, young users account for a high proportion of video platforms, and the user group portrait is clearer, making it easier to target the target group; more importantly, the linkage and even secondary creation of short plays and KOLs can take over the early traffic, amplify the communication potential, and make the reach path relatively deeper and longer. But the disadvantage is that this has relatively high requirements for the quality and creativity of the short play, otherwise it may backfire and have a negative effect.

We have noticed that Douyin and Kuaishou will continue to focus on short drama brand marketing in 2024, vigorously provide traffic support, and improve their competitive advantages in script writing, content production, account operation, commercialization and other aspects.

So what will be the development trend of short drama marketing in the future? Can it lead brands to unlock more marketing ideas and even business growth opportunities?

In terms of content, branded short dramas will inevitably become more refined . Short dramas should be different from short video ads and KOL-led advertising, so whether it is the platform, the drama maker or the brand, they will promote this trend into reality. Otherwise, users may see short dramas as a useless content advertising product and give up watching them.

Moreover, high-quality advertising content and big brands are mutually beneficial. When more and more leading brands in the industry flock to the short drama marketing track, they can break the stereotype that short dramas are "earthy content" and prove that this marketing method is truly universal and has more development possibilities.

Getting sufficient data-driven and precision marketing is one of the reasons for brands to try short drama marketing . If the platform can provide brands with clearer user portraits and produce exciting short drama content based on their content preferences, and form a complete full-link marketing in the later stage and continue to track the audience of short dramas, then this will be a great help to brands.

Author: Claire Source: WeChat public account: Morketing (ID: Morketing)