Short dramas go abroad, sinking without borders

Short dramas have been booming in China recently, with unexpectedly fast-paced plots that are fascinating. Short drama producers are also beginning to not only be satisfied with the domestic market, but also try to go overseas. Is the "earthy" culture going global? Let's take a look!

In 2020, an application called Quibi, which claims to be the short video version of Netflix, came into the public eye.

With nearly 1.8 billion in financing, participation from industry giants, and targeting the market gap of "high-quality short dramas", Quibi is jokingly called a product "born with a silver spoon in its mouth."

According to media reports, Quibi's marketing budget in the first half of 2020 exceeded 120 million US dollars, which even included luxurious advertising time during the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards.

The next scene after the grand debut was a rapid fall. After its release at the end of April, Quibi's downloads quickly dropped from 300,000 on the first day to less than 100,000. In June, the average daily downloads could not even maintain the low level of 10,000.

In 2023, the unfinished business of boutiques was continued by sinking. ReelShort, a live-action short drama app launched by Crazy Maple Studio, an overseas subsidiary of Chinese online digital publishing company, has soared in popularity in the North American market and has even been called the next TikTok.

According to mobile data analysis platform Diandian Data, on November 12, ReelShort jumped to the top of the list of free entertainment apps in the iOS category in the United States; as of December 6, it ranked 18th.

(Source: Diandian Data)

The popularity of short dramas is happening simultaneously at home and abroad. The scripts follow a similar pattern of cool writing, and the industrial chain structures of the two are basically the same: upstream content creation, midstream content shooting, and downstream content distribution.

However, the overseas expansion opportunities currently observed in China are mostly at the upstream content creation level, with online literature experience to inherit. Compared with the explosive growth of domestic micro-short dramas, overseas expansion may only be considered to be in its infancy.

1. “Tuwei” goes global, 2.0

"In order to raise medical expenses for my sick mother, I agreed to my stepmother's request and married a notorious playboy instead of my stepsister."

The above plot is from ReelShort's hit short drama, "The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband".

From the platform’s existing inventory of short dramas, we can extract some plot keywords: overbearing president, werewolf, vampire… If you know something about the online literature industry, it’s not difficult to find that these are common themes for overseas online literature.

(Source: ReelShort)

The online literature that was first exported overseas has become the main source of texts for short dramas that are currently exported overseas.

Data released by the Online Literature Center of the China Writers Association showed that as of the end of 2022, the overseas market size of online literature exceeded 3 billion yuan, with a total of more than 16,000 online literary works exported overseas, and more than 150 million overseas users in more than 200 countries and regions around the world.

According to the list of short drama apps that have been launched in overseas markets compiled by AppGrowing, we can see that many apps have a "web literature background". The rich library can provide IP resources for their cross-border short dramas, and directly adapting the scripts from popular books can also reduce the cost of trial and error to a certain extent.

In addition to adapting existing online articles, the production method of original scripts also follows the experience of online articles that have been exported overseas. According to practitioners, there are roughly two types of script creation for short dramas that are exported overseas. One is that domestic authors output Chinese scripts according to the themes specified by editors, and then translate and localize them. The other is that editors check the story outline and let overseas authors directly output English scripts.

The core of both creative paths is "editorial review". Editors decide the subject matter, outline, character setting, and story direction based on market preferences. The author will have a set of quantitative indicators, such as whether the plot needs to be reversed within a specified number of words, and how to integrate designated elements and popular characters into the narrative.

Text and short videos are presented in different forms, but they carry the same story core. The domestic online literature industry has promoted the birth of "database writing", finding common "cool points" in huge amounts of reader feedback data, and selecting elements and characters to arrange and combine to meet different reading needs.

Online literature exported overseas has proven that global consumers have similar tastes. This type of plot design, which is considered "metaphorical" and "earthy" by the mainstream, combined with the expressiveness of short videos, is enough to make it an extremely attractive entertainment.

Another advantage for domestic manufacturers is that there is a certain "time lag" between overseas story consumption and domestic consumption. The online literature industry, including social media, has some similar jokes about overseas products, such as "articles that cannot run data in China still have a chance to become hits overseas" and "what is popular in Europe and the United States now is what was popular in Jinjiang ten years ago."

Based on the huge audience base, the iteration speed of domestic content consumption is extremely fast. The "cool points" and "explosive points" produced by online articles and short dramas all come from the experience summarized after countless feedback screening and data testing.

(Source: ReelShort)

This experience can be directly applied at this stage, so we can see some familiar Chinese expressions in popular short dramas going overseas. The content section "Love After Marriage" on the ReelsShort official website is a simple translation of the old Chinese stalk "first marriage, then love". Many dialogues in the drama, which have the unique sense of drama and virality of Chinese-style refreshing texts/refreshing dramas, also have the shadow of text translation.

2. Outside the comfort zone

There is a relatively sufficient supply of IPs for overseas short dramas, but there are still some uncertainties in the industry when it comes to the film and television adaptation and monetization process.

(Source: Pacific Securities Research Institute)

"It's up to the individual to decide how to be generous or frugal." This is how Liu Wen (pseudonym), a practitioner of overseas short dramas, evaluates the production process.

There are three main ways to produce short dramas: filming and producing in China; filming overseas and completing post-production in China; and hiring a foreign team. Liu Wen also crossed over from overseas online writing to short dramas. Her team is mainly responsible for content creation and filming, and the finished products are purchased by the platform and then put on the market.

"The biggest cost is in filming. A short drama has 60 episodes, and each episode is about one minute long. The production cost in the United States is about 100,000 to 200,000 US dollars, while in China this figure can be reduced to 100,000 RMB."

Liu Wen told Ginkgo Technology that the biggest problem with domestic productions is that they cannot find professional actors, and they can basically only hire foreign models.

In order to balance cost and quality, Liu Wen's team is currently filming in Thailand. "It takes half a month to finalize the script, one week to prepare, 10 days to shoot, and 20 days to post-production. In total, it takes about two months from project establishment to finished product."

The production cost is still within the controllable range, but there may be more unknowns in the distribution link. "Taking into account the cost of streaming, it is hard to say whether you can make money," Liu Wen said.

Taking the distribution of domestic short dramas as a reference, according to China News Weekly, in the overall cost investment of short dramas, the budget for operation and streaming is much larger than the budget for content production. Almost all micro short dramas will spend 80%-90% of the limited cost on streaming. A hit like "Wushuang" spent more than 80 million yuan on streaming alone. According to data disclosed by ByteDance, the recharge turnover of the micro short drama industry in 2023 reached about 18.3 billion.

In an interview with Independent Overseas Consortium in April this year, Jia Yi, CEO of China Online, also talked about the challenges of content distribution. "A story may be really good, but to which type of users do you promote it? And how do you promote the right story to the right users?"

Compared with traditional TV series, the information flow product attributes of short dramas make them highly dependent on investment and strive to be "seen" by consumers. According to AppGrowing International data monitoring, ReelShort began to buy large-scale traffic in July, with an average daily dual-end delivery of more than 400 sets. After October, the number of daily delivery was even higher, and the daily delivery once exceeded 1,000 sets.

Compared with the domestic average of 2.7 short dramas released every day, the inventory of top ReelShorts is still in double digits, and overseas manufacturers are in urgent need of expanding their content reserves. Investing heavily in acquiring customers may produce quick results, but there is still a long way to go in terms of subsequent retention.

3. Tiktok is unavoidable

The so-called sinking entertainment mostly refers to this type of entertainment that is almost "at your fingertips" and can provide instant satisfaction at a very low cost.

The market generally regards the rise of TikTok as an important reason for Quibi's fall. At that time, Quibi insisted on the paid boutique route, and naturally lost to TikTok, which fully embraced Generation Z and encouraged sharing and fragmented consumption. Now, short drama apps that are thriving in the same track also have to face competition from TikTok.

Both short dramas and short videos have the attributes of information flow products, and there is no clear boundary between them. The consumer mentality of the two is also very similar, both are for obtaining audio-visual sensory stimulation and short, flat and fast instant satisfaction. This means that short drama apps and TikTok are competing for the same audience.

The most obvious advantage of TikTok is that it is free. ReelShort is not cheap. If you pay to unlock content in the app, you can watch about 60 episodes of short dramas for $15.99, which is at most the length of a movie, but the price is much more expensive than a movie ticket. Moreover, TikTok has a fairly rich content supply. Taking the popular movie slices as an example, in order to adapt to the consumption trend of short content, Paramount recently uploaded 23 clips of its famous movie "Mean Girls" to TikTok.

When well-made TV dramas are also being released in a fragmented way and for free, is the exclusive content of short dramas still the best choice for entertainment and cost-effectiveness? I am afraid it is difficult to draw a conclusion. If manufacturers follow the trend of domestic short dramas and move towards the direction of rolling production and rolling costs, the industry's investment logic of low cost and high return will be affected, not to mention that overseas production costs are more difficult to control than domestic ones.

2023 is the year of going overseas. E-commerce, logistics, games, and short dramas have all regarded overseas as growth engines, among which "sinking" is the keyword mentioned by all industries. The overseas short drama trend proves that the universality of sinking demand is not only reflected in price. The emotional resonance of "cool" and "excitement" is universal to all mankind. However, from the current development point of view, short dramas have just completed the first stage of demand insight. Similar to all overseas industries, they still have to find a long-term way in the test of "localization".

Author: Wang Yelin

Source public account: Ginkgo Technology (ID: yinxingcj), bringing you the best business people and stories.