Is the movie box office controlled by TikTok?

Does Douyin's reputation affect movie traffic? Does Douyin's marketing affect movie box office? What is the connection between short video promotion and movies?

"Two couples were retained by Yu Fei, but the most regrettable relationship between Lin Jia and Meng Yun ended completely. When I saw the line 'We all want a he (happy ending), but be (bad ending) is the norm', I couldn't help crying."

One weekday evening, Lingling saw the promotional video of "Ex-Files 4" and chose to go to the cinema alone. "Ex-Files 3 is the only movie I watched with my ex. "Ex-Files 4" is here, and I have to say goodbye to my lost youth." She sighed.

Although the National Day holiday has ended, several films released during the National Day are still working hard on marketing, trying to push the box office up. The main creators have held large-scale activities such as visiting buildings and live broadcasts, and the film companies have been constantly releasing promotional materials on major platforms. Some films can even maintain a material update speed of nearly ten pieces per day on Douyin.

Meng Meng, who works in film promotion, said that there is still some time before the next batch of hit new films are released, and these films can be sold again during the National Day. Short videos are their most important marketing position, among which Douyin is the top priority. "Compared with Kuaishou, Video Number and other platforms, Douyin has a larger number of users and is more overlapped with the movie audience." Meng Meng said.

Many producers, cinema and marketing industry practitioners also told Dingjiao that Douyin has become the main venue for film marketing this year. Representative cases are that the two dark horse films of 2023, "All or Nothing" and "Gone Girl", became popular on Douyin, attracting wave after wave of audiences, and the final box office revenue exceeded 3.5 billion.

However, as more and more film producers saw the power of short video marketing and began to make great efforts, the content became more and more "weird".

For example, they would extract some clips from the movie to attract the audience by "interpreting the edge", or create "dogs crying" and other eye-catching scenes to gain traffic. This also caused short video marketing to backfire, and some netizens complained that the "shills" they invited were more interesting than the movie, and short video marketing was more ruthless than the "Myanmar North Scam".

Why is short video marketing so popular? Is it good or bad for the film and television industry? Will there be another myth that uses TikTok to become a box office dark horse?

1. After watching the short video, go to the cinema.

After the National Day holiday ended, the movie "As Solid as a Rock" is still actively marketing itself and has released a lot of "revealing content" on its official Douyin app.

"Zheng Gang not only has a lover, he even doesn't let go of his lover's niece. Zheng Gang and Xiao Wei are actually lovers." Lala was shocked when she saw this clip on the official Douyin account of "Solid as a Rock". "Some netizens commented that Xiao Wei might be Zheng Gang's illegitimate daughter." This made her curious about the scale of the film and she contributed a movie ticket.

Today, the video has received more than 200,000 likes and the number of views is still rising.

Many industry insiders told Dingjiao that many films have benefited from Tik Tok's marketing dividends this year. This trend was already very obvious during the summer vacation, and the National Day vacation was just a continuation.

They all mentioned that the good box office performance of movies like "She's Gone", "All or Nothing", "The Legend of the Gods Part I: Chaoge Storm" (hereinafter referred to as "The Legend of the Gods"), and "Octagon Cage" were all boosted by Douyin, and many marketers even directly called them "Douyin movies".

He Miao, a senior marketer, revealed that the marketing of TV series, movies and variety shows now attaches great importance to Douyin, and the effect is very direct. Posting short videos on Douyin can directly increase the number of people who want to watch the movie. This is her personal experience. " Once a video goes viral and is on the Douyin hot search list, the number of people who want to watch it will directly increase from a few thousand to tens of thousands. "

Judging from the overall data, the box office trends of these films known as "Tik Tok movies" are positively correlated with the number of Tik Tok topics on the list and the length of time they remain on the list, with more than 200 hot topics on Tik Tok.

How does short video marketing help audiences go to the cinema?

He Miao revealed that short video marketing generally focuses on four aspects: behind-the-scenes, actors, plots, and emotions. Among them, actor-oriented and emotional content are the two dimensions with relatively good feedback in short video marketing this year.

First, let’s look at the two films that are recognized by the industry as the ones that have benefited the most from TikTok’s dividends - "Gone with the Wind" and "All or Nothing". They both bundle social topics and use emotions to attract the audience's attention to the content.

Although the public has mixed reviews on "She Vanished", the combination of hot topics such as anti-love brain, the Thai pregnant woman falling off a cliff case, and freak show, coupled with the film's curious scenes, made "She Vanished" quickly break through the circle, creating an abnormal scene of "reputation continues to decline, while box office sales grow against the trend." Maoyan data shows that "She Vanished" has been on the Douyin topic list for a total of 274 times, and has been on the list for a total of more than 800 hours.

"All or Nothing" also captured the audience's emotions by taking advantage of the "Northern Myanmar Fraud", a topic of national concern.

In the official Douyin account, there are many videos about the fraud team's magical brainwashing slogans and a clear division of labor system. In particular, the short video of actor Wang Chuanjun shouting "If you want to succeed, you must go crazy first" not only made the film popular, but also made the marketing team change their strategy, focusing their publicity on the fraud boss played by Wang Chuanjun, and ultimately the popularity continued to increase.

As of now, the film has been on the list of 230 topics on Douyin. Although this number is less than "Her", it has surpassed the others in terms of duration on the list, reaching 963 hours.

Let’s take a look at “Fengshen”, which is very representative in its rise to fame through short video marketing.

Unlike "Gone Girl" and "All or Nothing", "Fengshen", which lacks social topics, took many detours in its publicity. For example, in the early stage, the crew had been promoting the attentiveness of the costumes and makeup, which was complained by the audience as "not letting go of the airs" and not down-to-earth. It was not until the later stage that the film crew targeted short videos and created hot topics such as Hakimi, U23, and Proton Group, which greatly increased the topic of "Fengshen".

Among them, the actor-oriented "male beauty" topic such as Proton Group quickly opened up the sinking market for "Fengshen".

According to Dingjiao, among the 555 works released by the official Douyin, there are no less than 50 videos that directly name the entire Proton Group and the Conferred Gods Men's Group, not including videos of individual members of the Proton Group. The Proton Group's "hormone videos" appeared many times when introducing the Proton Dance, showing famous scenes in the film, and exposing the actors' training scenes. More than a month after the release of "Conferred Gods", the film crew also released a video of the Proton Group running on the beach just after entering the camp. The number of likes for these videos starts at 100,000, and the highest is over 800,000.

Today, the film's influence on Douyin exceeds that of "All or Nothing" and "Gone Girl", with a total of 403 topics on the list and a cumulative time on the list of over 1,000 hours.

As cinema practitioners who directly reach the audience, they also agree that TikTok marketing has an impact on movie box office.

Manager Tao of a cinema told Dingjiao that they would schedule films based on the popularity of Douyin. " In the early stages of scheduling, when the reputation of the film has not yet come out, the film that ranks higher on Douyin will be given a larger share of the schedule. "

2. Why are everyone competing in Douyin marketing?

In fact, the film leveraged short video marketing to leverage high box office sales. It became famous as early as when Yu Wenwen ate mangoes in "Ex-Files 3", and it has also become a standard for film promotion in the future. Why has it been mentioned repeatedly this year?

This first requires understanding how important publicity and promotion are to a movie.

Although the most important thing for film and television works is the quality of the film itself, compared with TV series and variety shows, movies pay more attention to publicity and promotion. "It is a To C business, directly facing the audience rather than the platform, so publicity and promotion and film production are both important." said senior producer Damai.

He revealed that commercial blockbusters place particular emphasis on publicity and promotion. For example, for a top commercial film, the publicity and promotion costs can even account for 50% of the production costs.

Specifically, this year, all the companies are competing for publicity and promotion because of the overall characteristics of this year's film market - the volume of films is concentrated in the big schedule . The number of films released during the May Day, summer vacation and National Day this year is more than in the past, and the types are also richer.

"With more films, the ability of the publicity and promotion team will be tested. Whoever does a good job in publicity and promotion will be the first to attract the first batch of audiences. This year, the performance of many films exceeded expectations, and many of them achieved box office success through publicity and promotion." An industry insider believes.

A marketing person also said that the publicity and promotion expenses given by the film company this year were not less than in previous years. Senior producer Guan Er estimated that if the top films were not divided into different types and the focus was on the overall top films, the publicity and promotion expenses would be about one-third of the cost.

According to practitioners, publicity and distribution refer to both promotion and distribution. Promotion mainly refers to exposure, which is usually done by marketing companies. The content involves four dimensions: traditional media, new media, word-of-mouth maintenance, and short video marketing, mainly focusing on online channels. Distribution can be simply understood as negotiating with theaters about scheduling and roadshows, which are usually handed over to companies with channels such as Maoyan and Tao Piao Piao. Some film companies also have their own distribution departments. Promotion and distribution complement each other. He Miao revealed that the investment costs are about half each.

However, short videos are an important channel for both promotion and distribution.

The reason behind this is, first of all, because there are more and more channels, the original marketing effect has been greatly dispersed, and it is necessary to find a platform with larger traffic and a wider audience.

If we classify the promotional materials for movies, they can be roughly divided into two parts: online and offline. "Online mainly refers to pictures, texts, videos, and live broadcasts. For this part, the main online channels that everyone is familiar with are Weibo, WeChat official accounts, Douban, etc., and now there are Douyin, Xiaohongshu, video accounts, etc. As for offline, although there is not much change, it is still in the form of main creators visiting buildings, flash mobs, street interviews, etc., but this part of the material will also be extended to online release, and there are still more channels." Da Miao said.

As the number of channels increases, the influence of each channel is also declining.

As the producer of the film, Damai admitted that he did not want to spend too much publicity on Weibo, "This platform has been occupied by fans." "The credibility of Douban has also declined," said Sisi, a marketing staff member. During a major period this year, he wrote more than 50 five-star reviews for a top blockbuster, and the entire company has thousands of reviews in total. They also monitor the reviews on various platforms that are not conducive to the reputation of the film in real time, and use their connections, reports and other means to delete posts and control reviews.

More than one marketing person said that the film company often asks for more publicity, “Let the film reach more people.” This makes short video platforms, which have a huge number of users and occupy a lot of users’ time, the best marketing position at the moment. He Miao revealed, “Some well-known short video marketing companies in the industry now have their work scheduled until next year.”

Among the many short video platforms, each company has focused on Douyin because of its good input-output ratio.

Damai said, "Tik Tok not only has a large number of users, but also a large proportion of young people, which has a high overlap with the movie audience. In addition, its algorithm is precise, which can ensure the effectiveness of the materials and is more conducive to the spread of viral videos. Relatively speaking, Kuaishou is more down-to-earth."

Nowadays, Tik Tok is considered by practitioners to be the most labor-saving and effective way of movie marketing.

"The production cost of a Douyin short video ranges from several hundred to several thousand yuan, and a video will be posted at least 300 times. Roughly speaking, 300,000 is the basic investment. Although this price is higher than other platforms, the effect is better." He Miao said.

Da Miao, who is engaged in film marketing, told Dingjiao, "Currently, the total publicity expenses of a movie (including art films) on the market mostly range from 1 million to 20 million+, and the investment in blockbuster movies in important periods will be higher. Among them, the money spent on Douyin is relatively large." There have also been media reports that currently about 30% of the marketing budget of mainstream theater movies is invested in Douyin.

3. "Fraudulent marketing" is having its backlash.

Short video marketing has become popular. As more and more people join in, the content becomes more and more controversial, and doubts gradually emerge. The most prominent problem is that it is accused of "fraudulent marketing."

First of all, the marketing video is inconsistent with the actual story of the film.

For example, "Burning Winter" itself is an art film, but in order to cater to the more down-to-earth style of short videos, it was promoted by the film company as a love triangle story, and the slogan "A must-see romance film for the Chinese Valentine's Day" was shouted out, causing many viewers who went for the fantasy to feel cheated.

Secondly, some roadshow videos are too outrageous and show obvious signs of being staged.

For example, when the short video of "Parma: A Dog's Tale" was released, many netizens complained that it was "awkward". At the screening of "Tea, No. 2 Middle School", the production team arranged a scene where a worker watched a movie on his computer while working and then cried. "Tea, No. 2 Middle School's promotional method" became a hot search, and many netizens pointed out that it was obviously staged.

This also exposes a major problem in current film marketing - lack of creativity and excessive pursuit of dramatic emotional marketing.

More than one industry insider said that emotional marketing has been favored by film producers in the past two years, and short video users are also very fond of it.

This has led to the homogenization of promotional content. Once a film’s promotional video becomes popular, other films will begin to imitate it, and even go to even greater extremes.

"In one film, there is an actor crying on the spot, while in another film, they would like to have twenty actors crying. It is not enough to have people crying, but cats and dogs must also cry. The short video marketing nowadays is outrageous." Elephant, who works in marketing, can basically see this kind of thing at every movie roadshow. He said that most of the time he is not aware of it, and the film company will take the initiative to arrange it.

Although everyone knows that such "fake" videos will be exposed as more and more viewers enter the theaters, and will easily suffer a backlash in word of mouth, many people still accept this method. "The main task of film marketing is to let the audience know about the film and use various methods to attract everyone to watch it," said an industry insider.

However, audiences who have been deceived by short video marketing time and time again are not so easily fooled.

For example, when faced with the video of the director of "Backon Bear: Mission to Mars" handing out flyers on the street during the National Day holiday, many netizens said that they were not impressed by this pitiful marketing. In addition, the recent three-piece set of movie promotions, "Huo Siyan sheds tears, Wu Jing visits the set, and Zhang Yimou is shocked", became a hot search, and netizens pointed out that the promotion was weak.

Some fans also began to feel disgusted. As a fan of Zhu Yilong, Miaomiao is increasingly fed up with the routine marketing of short videos.

Recently, the movie "The Mistake by the River" starring Zhu Yilong was scheduled to be released, and the official began to vigorously promote it through various channels. Miaomiao saw that the screen was flooded with content about Zhu Yilong's "explosive acting skills" and "professionalism", and felt that it was too much. She added that before a certain movie was released, she saw more than ten videos every day saying "someone rolled down a cave 17 times in a scene." "Nowadays, the routine of movie promotion is the same. The leading actor goes to make a movie, not to experience disasters. If this kind of thing is said too much, even fans will have doubts."

Even some people working in the marketing industry feel lost. Sisi said, "Now the threshold for film promotion lies in technology and connections, such as whether you have a sense of the Internet, whether you have customers and media resources, but there are fewer and fewer creative contents."

He Miao also feels deeply touched. "Many of the popular short videos on Douyin now are content that was popular before and then made a comeback, which will weaken the appeal to the audience."

Although he agreed with the statement that "movie box office depends on TikTok", he also admitted that even if they signed an exclusive cooperation agreement with TikTok and agreed that the first release rights of promotional materials would be on TikTok, they would not give up other channels.

*At the request of the interviewees, Lingling, He Miao, Damai, Da Miao, Sisi, Da Xiang, and Miaomiao are pseudonyms.

Author: Xingxing, Editor: Fang Zhanbo

Source: Dingjiaoone (ID: dingjiaoone)