Creating Popularity: New Discoveries in Film and Television Promotion in 2023

Many buzzwords or popular contents come from movies and TV shows. Let’s take a look at their contents.

I have never seen a village with the aurora borealis, nor have I ever seen anyone setting off fireworks late at night.

The evening star is like your eyes, killing and setting fire, you said nothing, and the wild wind disturbed me.

In early November 2021, folk singer Liu Shuang's "Mohe Ballroom" suddenly became popular on Douyin. This song was not well-known before. Its popularity was due to the secondary creation on Douyin. A blogger paired the song with a clip of Liao Fan's solo dance in the cabaret in "Fireworks in the Daytime". The melancholy temperament of the background music complemented Liao Fan's wild dancing with a cigarette in his mouth. This short video clip can't be dispelled from people's minds for a long time.

The short video brought the movie "Black Coal, Thin Ice" into the eyes of more people, and Liao Fan's solo dance shot successfully attracted the audience to find this movie to watch.

In late July 2023, a group of "worshiping Buddha" videos posted by influencers and users on Douyin suddenly became popular. They imitated the scene in which Wang Chuanjun worshipped Buddha in the movie "All or Nothing". This shot formed a contrast between indifference to life and devout belief, which aroused the curiosity of many users about the character and they went to watch the movie.

These two movie clips and the related short videos on TikTok have become a trend in online communication, attracting people's attention, discussion and imitation.

This phenomenon actually brings an inspiration to film and television promotion: discovering and creating trends on social media.

1. Film and TV promotion, creating popularity on Douyin

Film and television promotion is not fundamentally different from product marketing, but it has a unique promotion method - using the content of the film itself to create a popular trend, which will trigger the audience to imitate and follow, thereby increasing the popularity of the film and television and promoting box office. Star Wars in the 1970s and 1980s pioneered this marketing method.

As a classic science fiction film, Star Wars not only created a grand interstellar world, but also created a kind of pop culture. Fans are not satisfied with just watching the movie, they also organize various activities such as parties, movie marathons and discussions to share their love and insights on the movie.

Characters from the movies, such as Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, etc., have become extremely popular choices in Cosplay activities.

The classic line in the movie, "May the Force be with you" has also become an iconic phrase in popular culture. This sentence has been widely quoted and transformed, and used in various occasions and contexts, such as blessings, encouragement, and ridicule. This allows the style and atmosphere of the movie to be integrated into daily language.

These elements have kept the Star Wars film series' box office high and enduring.

There was no social media when Star Wars was popular, but it created a trend that was spread through offline interpersonal communication, ultimately promoting the widespread dissemination of the movie.

Today, this method is still one of the most effective ways to promote film and television works. Thanks to social media such as Tik Tok and Weibo, popular trends created by film and television works can be better spread on the Internet.

A classic line from the drama "Kuang Biao" "Tell Lao Mo, I want to eat fish" has triggered countless netizens to imitate it, and the number of views of "Kuang Biao" has also "skyrocketed"; the careful costumes and makeup of "Prosperity" have allowed a large number of users to learn the 1990s Hu Ge style of dressing on Douyin, and the search and viewing volume of the work has also risen accordingly; when Fei Xiang's "Business Language" continued to be screened on Douyin, more and more people were attracted to go to the cinema to watch "The First Part of the Gods".

It can be said that when relevant elements of film and television become a popular trend and are widely discussed and disseminated on Douyin, the viewing data will be driven accordingly.

Because of this, more and more film and television works have begun to promote and release on Douyin, striving to create popularity. The "2023 Douyin Film Annual Report" shows that the related content released on Douyin for movies released in 2023 has a playback volume of 239.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 168%; the total number of likes has reached 5.4 billion+, a year-on-year increase of 144%.

The report also shows that movie box office is strongly correlated with the number of topic views on Douyin. The 2023 Douyin movie popularity TOP10 list is highly overlapped with the Chinese movie box office TOP10, and 8 movies are in the annual box office top 10. Good content has always been the foundation of high-quality movies. When good content drives the popularity of movies on Douyin, the box office will also soar.

There are several characteristics of promoting film and television in a popular way:

First, the cost is low. Different from advertising, the marketing method of creating popularity is to explore the content of the film and television itself and help the content become a hot topic or popular trend on social networks. Once excellent content is discovered, re-created or imitated, the film and television clips will become popular. The budget of this marketing method is much lower than pure advertising.

Second, it is fast. Once content based on a certain film or TV work is formed on social networks, it spreads very quickly and may become a hot topic within a day and be known to the public. Compared with advertising, which takes at least several days or even more than a month, this marketing method has a faster impact.

Third, it affects a large number of people. Once the scenes, characters, lines, etc. in a film or TV show become popular on social networks, the number of people affected will be very large, which of course can also inspire these people to go to the cinema.

Therefore, for current film and television publicity and promotion, influencing potential users by creating trends on Douyin is a very effective marketing method. So how should film and television works create trends on Douyin and promote the spread of the works themselves?

2. How to make film and television content a popular trend?

Last November, Douyin released the Douyin Movie Promotion Guide, which provides two core methods for film and television promotion: position management + content seeding. Based on this guide, I give the following tips on how to create popularity in film and television, providing guidance from the aspects of content, position, KOL, and topic, for your reference.

1. Content innovation: giving the familiar something strange

The core of creating popularity is to create content that is easy to become popular, which is the essence of this marketing method.

How to create this kind of content? Derek Thompson believes in his book "What Happens" that the things that are most likely to become popular are often those that find a delicate balance between familiarity and novelty, with both surprising content and sufficient familiarity. For example, the reason why Brahms's Lullaby is so popular is that it imitates an Austrian folk song and adds some church music elements to make the song more gorgeous.

For film and television works, users are often familiar with the famous scenes or lines in the works, but if they are too familiar, users will not be motivated to spread them. Therefore, it is a better idea to make modifications on this basis, "making the familiar become unfamiliar" and achieving a balance between familiarity and novelty.

The reason why most of the popular movie clips are widely spread is that they have new interpretations on this basis. For example, the "Black Coal, Thin Ice" at the beginning of the article is liked by users because the BGM of "Mohe Ballroom" brought something new to it.

In the movie All or Nothing mentioned at the beginning of the article, Wang Chuanjun's famous scene of worshipping Buddha became an instant hit. His performance of disregarding life in the previous second and worshipping Buddha devoutly in the next second made people feel that "the fraud boss has two faces, which is terrifying when you think about it carefully." This famous scene was imitated by more than 100 top talents, giving a new interpretation to the clip, and it quickly became popular. This imitation broke the record of movie-related challenge gameplay, and the total number of likes for the hot video exceeded 23 million.

2. Official position: Official memes are the most deadly

In the era of social media, film and television works that fail to operate official accounts are equivalent to losing a great tool for work promotion. Long-term operation of official accounts helps audiences understand the behind-the-scenes stories of movies, improves the viewing experience, helps the positions achieve user accumulation, strengthens the long-tail effect of box office, and promotes long-term box office success. On Douyin, official position operations should give full play to their own strengths and form a matrix of official account operation + celebrity online business + live broadcast promotion.

In terms of official operations, official accounts can publish classic content of works, stories behind the scenes of movies, stories of actors, and other related content to increase user attention to the works.

The report shows that on Douyin, the top 10 most popular official movie accounts posted an average of 494 pieces of content, with an average total content playback volume of 7.4 billion and an average increase in followers of 1.77 million. Among the top 10 Douyin official movie accounts with the most likes in 2023, 7 movies made it into the top 10 annual box office.

From the perspective of stars actively doing business, stars themselves have a huge number of fans, who are high-potential moviegoers. Stars can release content related to film and television works in a timely manner and interact with fans. While responding to fans' enthusiasm, they can also effectively increase the popularity of the film. For example, Wang Baoqiang collaborated with many Douyin influencers to shoot short videos in "The Octagonal Cage" in order to "boost the box office." In "The First Part of the Gods," the crew created a meme together, "V me 50, and I will let Xue Longju take you home, tell you Ji Fa's weakness, and make you the king of the world." These are all manifestations of stars helping to create popularity.

In terms of live streaming, people related to film and television works can initiate and participate in live streaming, which can intuitively demonstrate their characteristics and enhance interaction with users. For example, during the promotion of "The Long Season", Qin Hao recreated the Gong Biao dance in a single live streaming room, with 1.37 million viewers and a maximum of 170,000 people online at the same time.

3. KOL boost: the power of influencers

The book "The Tipping Point" mentioned the role of the "key person rule". Key people are KOLs. They spread information to more people quickly through their social networks, professional knowledge and persuasiveness, thus triggering popularity. In the past, film critics were key people, but today, many professional experts have become key people.

For example, the real-life author @一只百岁猫 deeply analyzed the 3 big pictures + 20 hidden details + 14 classic paintings in "She Vanished", which made many topics such as #She Vanished's review, #She Vanished's movie suggestions, #She Vanished's worth a second watch become popular, stimulating discussions among the audience after watching the movie and driving the continued dissemination of the movie content. Many viewers watched the movie twice for the details.

Fei Xiang became popular for his role as King Zhou in "Fengshen". His distinctive accent was nicknamed "Business Yin Language" by fans. The master Luffy Senbei imitated "Business Yin Language" and focused on "perfect restoration". The video received over 1 million likes, which promoted the popularity of "Business Yin Language".

4. Topic: guide the public and become popular

When interesting and witty content has become a popular trend under the promotion of official and KOLs, the next step is to push the content to the general public, trigger discussion, imitation or secondary creation among the public, and finally make the content a hot topic.

In this regard, a unique feature of Douyin is that a large number of users like to create secondary works based on the content of film and television works and participate in movie-related topics. When more and more users create secondary works based on film and television content, the topic playback volume will continue to increase, thereby helping the topic content break the circle.

During the release of "Man Jiang Hong", the short walking clip of the film became popular because of the opera BGM. Netizens filmed imitation videos and created secondary creations, calling it "the aftereffects of walking after watching "Man Jiang Hong"". #全抖音总都满江红式走器 ranked second on the topic list, and the related topic was played more than 800 million times, and many videos received more than 300,000 likes.

When more people imitated the walking style of "Man Jiang Hong" and it was seen by more and more people, the box office of "Man Jiang Hong" naturally increased.

Similar examples include the "head-on kill" in "Goodbye, Li Kele" and "Gao Qiqiang said to tell Lao Mo that I want to eat fish" in "Kuangbao", etc. These topics discussed and imitated by the public have contributed to the increase in the number of viewers or box office of film and television works.

3. Conclusion

In summary, we can basically draw this conclusion: popularity can be created and guided. Film and television works can create popular content on Douyin and use the official and KOLs to promote the content, which can guide the public to discuss and imitate the content, and ultimately make the content related to film and television works become a popular trend, driving the increase of film and television box office.

Recently, Douyin and CCTV6 jointly released the "2023 Douyin Movie Annual Report". The report analyzed the promotion and marketing of high-grossing movies in 2023, and gave ideas on how to promote film and television on Douyin. Click to read the original text to get the report.

Author: Xunkong WeChat Official Account: Xunkong’s Marketing Revelation