Douyin, Kuaishou, B2B and Weibo are all very popular. Which one is better at social media entertainment marketing?

In the contemporary era of TV dramas, the main battlefield of entertainment has shifted from long video platforms to social media. If you want to understand the entertainment marketing methods on different platforms, this article provides specific strategic guidance through multiple case comparisons.

It doesn't matter. You can watch the drama on any platform except the long video platform on the days when it is not updated. On Weibo, you can chat with the characters in the drama online, and on Douyin, you can see the behind-the-scenes footage outside of the filming. It doesn't matter if you don't like the development of the drama. On Bilibili, you can see more open plots.

In today's world, the main battlefield for public opinion on TV dramas and entertainment is no longer within long video platforms, but on social media.

The five major platforms included in the research of Clour’s "2022 Film and Entertainment Social Content Marketing Trend Insights" are Weibo, Douyin, Bilibili, Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu. Data shows that from January to July 2022, the scale of Weibo's film and entertainment content far exceeded that of other platforms, but there was a negative growth of 25%; Xiaohongshu, on the contrary, had the smallest content scale, but a growth rate of 167%; Douyin was also relatively outstanding, with a content scale second only to Weibo, and a growth rate of 78%.

Even when facing the same new and large entertainment market, there will be some content differences between the entertainment content of different platforms, and along with the differences are the marketing strengths and weaknesses of the major platforms.

1. Tik Tok: On the long-term battle of movie marketing

Every profession has its specialties. If long videos have been deeply involved in content production for many years and have the vision and experience gained from reading, then short videos are the main battlefield for the practice and exploration of "film and television comprehensive communication."

You can even find the development history of movie short video marketing strategies on Douyin.

For example, the most classic sentimental film "cry-cry movie" marketing method was born in 2017. In December, the romantic film "Ex-Files 3" was released. In order to attract ignorant men and women to the cinema to commemorate their "ex", the film used the sentimental breakup clip "eating mangoes" to spread virally.

Then came the "earthy love talk" method - "Time Raiders", which was released in May 2018, spent a lot of money and resources on spreading "earthy love talk" on TikTok before its release.

As of this year, Douyin's film marketing ecosystem has become very competitive. In other words, the previous successful cases are almost absolutely outdated today. Douyin users are no longer convinced by the old ways. The new marketing rules must be sufficiently consistent with the content of the film and be able to arouse people's curiosity.

There are those that are released first and then make efforts - as the box office hit of the summer season, "Gone Girl" actually seemed a bit tepid at the beginning of the Dragon Boat Festival, but entering the summer season, with the efforts of Douyin's marketing, "Gone Girl" is not a movie on Douyin, but a "prescription for treating love brain."

Relying on the anti-love-minded topic that is close enough to the younger generation, "Gone with the Wind" successfully achieved viral spread and eventually won a box office of 3.4 billion, becoming the first "blockbuster" movie of the summer season.

There are also those that have been prepared for a long time and will be unveiled after their release - "All or Nothing", which just started its preview this weekend, has been marketed on Douyin for nearly two months. The corresponding marketing points have evolved from Jin Chen's sexy dealer dealing cards online to Douyin users actively imitating Wang Chuanjun's worship of Buddha in the movie.

In contrast, the preview of "All or Nothing" performed extremely well, even beating "The Meg 2" to win the weekend single-day championship.

The way Douyin participates has also quietly changed. According to Maoyan Professional Edition, Douyin Culture (Xiamen) Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Douyin, has co-produced a total of 48 works, of which 15 were produced in 2023.

Take the 2023 Spring Festival as an example. Among the seven works released during the period, Douyin Culture participated in the co-production of 4 of them, including "The Wandering Earth 2", "Red River", "Boonie Bears 9" and "Swap Life". As we all know, the biggest winners of the Spring Festival are "The Wandering Earth 2" and "Red River". It can be said that it is a win-win situation for Douyin.

But it is also a long-term battle. From a certain successful case to becoming a standard in film marketing and then to joint production, with the advantage of the tilt of attention resources, Douyin has taken the road of distinctive film marketing step by step since 2017.

2. Bilibili: Creation and “creative death” are both secondary creation

If Douyin is the main battlefield for movie marketing, then the film and television area of ​​Bilibili can be said to be the back garden for drama marketing.

This is completely different from movies which mainly rely on "viral spread" to convert box office revenue. Since film and television dramas have a long broadcast time and the plots are always developing, they require a long-term, changeable and constantly updated public opinion ecology.

When it comes to ecology, it is the counterpart of Bilibili. Since the film and television area was divided into separate areas, Bilibili has begun to have its own special "status" in the public opinion field of TV series.

Once upon a time, a large number of secondary creations or good reviews from bloggers in the film and television area would make a drama sweep the B station, which means that a drama has gained a certain amount of "tap water" through word of mouth to a certain extent, and has great potential to become popular. In the past, there were "Soul of the Town" and "The Untamed" as candidates for gay dramas, as well as dark horse dramas such as "The Imperial Coroner".

The collective bad reviews from the UP hosts in the film and television area, also known as "team building", can hardly escape the label of "bad drama". "The Deer and the Cauldron", "Legend of Fei" and even "The Gentlemen of East District 8" have all deeply experienced such "group ridicule". For example: Lao Xie, Lu Wen, the three generations of deer people, and Kai Xin Zui Pao, who became popular in the early days with their "spicy and poisonous" style of bad drama reviews, have successfully reaped the dividends of many film and television dramas.

But after reaping the benefits, the up-hosts began to be gradually "recruited".

While dramas are still being mass-produced, the top UP hosts in the film and television area have begun to selectively remain silent - the ancient idol dramas "Dream of Red Mansions" and "Chang Yue Jin Ming" have both caused controversy over the plot or character settings, and team building in the film and television area has never started. In contrast, the UPs either give awkward praises or remain silent.

Sharp comments have left the stage, and what is more popular on Bilibili now is in-depth interpretations of dramas that incorporate knowledge of humanities and social sciences, and are closer in length to medium-length videos.

Representative cases include "Invisible Foot Binding, Getting More and More Outrageous" created by "Communication Liu Yang" during the period when "Dream of Hualu" was not released; "From Villain Philosophers to Vicious Female Supporting Characters, How Did the Spiritual Core of Xianxia Dramas Die?" produced by UP Master "Attack of Kong Kong" during the period of "Changyue Jinming". However, no matter how the form changes, it still belongs to a certain type of B station's secondary creation ecology.

The pace of secondary creation is no longer limited to the time-stamped editing of film and television drama clips or matchmaking. If the drama is not to their liking, B station users will create their own - "Qinqin, Brother Can Also Be a Firefighter" edited using Wei Daxun's other materials, "If Xu Qin Was Played by Na Ying", "If Song Yan Met Park Yeon-jin", "Let's Listen to Crazy Critic Su Mingcheng's Evaluation of Song Yan and Xu Qin", etc.

In the entire entertainment ecosystem, "secondary creation" supports the long time of waiting for updates, and to a large extent helps a project to go viral, either positively or negatively.

3. Weibo: “China’s Time-honored Brand”

While other platforms may come and go and constantly change, Weibo has always been at the center of the entertainment industry. If a TV series has not experienced the baptism of hot topics on Weibo and has not been widely reviewed, it will always feel that it is still a little distance away from becoming a "hit".

Unlike other types of platforms, Weibo's unique square attribute ensures that any type of content can be spread on Weibo. As the grassland where all sparks start a prairie fire, Weibo is like a unique topic "amplifier".

Many marketing points that have generated topics on other platforms will eventually ferment on Weibo, the largest topic field. Whether it is a TV series, a movie, or even a secondary creation, similar topics need to be circulated across the entire network through cross-platforms to achieve resonance among users from different circles, and Weibo often plays the role of this transportation hub.

An ordinary day, another day of opening Weibo to eat melons

The short videos on Tik Tok and the popular secondary creations on Bilibili will eventually be uploaded to Weibo by netizens or bloggers, and then presented to more people through the hot search screening mechanism.

To some extent, Weibo is the one that defines the rules of marketing. The multi-dimensional fermentation of Weibo topics + hot search lists helps to quickly build up discussion, and it is often the place where people inside and outside the industry can quickly judge whether a drama is popular or not.

This is related to the fact that Weibo has been deeply involved in the entertainment industry for many years and has the broadest and most vertical entertainment audience. It is also related to the fact that Weibo may be the place closest to celebrities on the Internet.

Although it is unrealistic to expect Weibo to be like it was in its heyday, with a large number of celebrities able to speak freely, the celebrity resources accumulated by Weibo over the years can indeed achieve real-time and in-depth interaction during the marketing of movies and variety shows, giving birth to a unique off-screen role-playing gameplay.

Before the show was aired, the show created Weibo accounts for multiple characters, including @掌柜赵盼儿@皇城司顾千帆@厨娘孙三娘@琵琶大师宋引章@探花欧阳旭@梦华录半遮脸, to warm up for the upcoming show and to pave the way for character account marketing. When the show is aired, the character accounts will post original Weibo posts based on the development of the plot.

In addition, when the update is launched, in the "Live Hot Chat" section launched by the upgraded Weibo topic page, on the update day of "Dream of Red Mansions", character accounts will also take turns to be "on duty" in the live chat, highlighting a deep interaction.

For Weibo, this is already a mature way of playing. Fans are willing to participate, and it is easy to generate more topics to help the marketing of the series. Following the same method, this year's "Longing" also follows the same set of tactics. The protagonist's Weibo account was created before the series was updated, and it was updated along with the broadcast of the plot, and there was also a duty to chat with the protagonist.

The characters in the play have entered the real world, have online accounts, interact with netizens on a daily basis, publish materials from a personal perspective, help enrich the character's personality, and bring users a cross-dimensional immersive viewing experience. The orderly interaction between the character accounts, relying on the character's identity to do business generously, enrich the character relationship line, and increase the user's emotional investment through interaction and sugar-spreading. Through the interaction of the characters, many hot topics are derived.

Weibo, a time-honored product of entertainment marketing, will not be able to find a meal replacement in the short term.

4. Xiaohongshu and Kuaishou: Watching the fish in the pond from afar

Not all social media can share a piece of the entertainment marketing pie.

As mentioned above, according to the 2022 Film and Television Entertainment Social Content Marketing Trend Insights, Xiaohongshu has the smallest entertainment content in 2022, but its growth rate is as high as 167%. However, unlike Kuaishou, Douyin and Bilibili, the former three have their own investment and exploration in entertainment content. Not only do the platforms have self-made content, but in terms of entertainment marketing, at least the relevance is much higher.

Unlike the mature commercialization of grass-roots content, Xiaohongshu is still like a hotbed for cultural and entertainment marketing. But for users, Xiaohongshu may be the paradise closest to real comments - when the series "My Human Fireworks" was broadcast, Yang Yang's upright sleeping posture once caused a wide range of discussions, and the source of this screenshot was from Xiaohongshu.

Unlike Xiaohongshu, which is still at the forefront, Kuaishou entered the market a step late.

In 2021, Kuaishou poached several people engaged in film marketing from Sina Weibo, including several people from film marketing agencies, intending to engage in film entertainment marketing. Its main film and television works include "My Sister" and "Fast and Furious 9".

However, with Douyin as its competitor, Kuaishou, which had invested a lot, was not the main marketing battlefield for the short video of "My Sister". "My Sister" failed to be a hit, and Kuaishou once wanted to bypass domestic films and focus on importing foreign films, but the platform users and the audience of imported films did not match as expected. Even though "Fast and Furious 9" finally sold nearly 1.4 billion, Kuaishou's movie short video marketing was still catching up with its competitors.

Competition does not mean passively following competitors. It is more important to find a unique positioning in the market. For entertainment content, Kuaishou chooses to focus on two tracks: celebrities and short dramas.

In addition to superstars such as Jay Chou and Jackie Chan who have exclusively settled on the Kuaishou platform, Kuaishou also has a total of more than 2,100 celebrity accounts and is accelerating the establishment of its own celebrity ecosystem. In terms of short dramas, as of the end of 2022, the total number of views of Star-level short dramas has reached more than 50 billion, and there are more than 100 short dramas with annual views exceeding 100 million.

In fact, the entertainment content on various platforms is not limited to just one form.

The entertainment content on Douyin is not limited to movies. You can also see the leaks and highlights of TV dramas and movies that you can see on other platforms, clips recorded by the official or audience at music events, and information released by entertainment marketing accounts... You can also see them on Douyin, but Douyin has made movie marketing more interesting. The same is true for Bilibili, where secondary creation is everywhere, but Bilibili users are particularly good at it.

It is precisely because of the unique attributes of the platform users that the platform has become unique in the entertainment and public opinion field and has its own unique status in the arena.

In the martial arts world, it is obvious that Xiaohongshu and Kuaishou are still in the process of brewing their own special "martial arts secrets".

The so-called "secrets" are related to the intentional cultivation of the platform, but the final formation still depends on the attributes and orientation of the platform users themselves, focusing on an intentional two-way choice. B station users love to create ghosts and animals, and imagination and knowledge are the ultimate content orientation, while Douyin users and Weibo users are keen to watch the fun.

However, contemporary Internet residents no longer live in isolation, and the walls have long been torn down. It’s just that people prefer to go to Bilibili to read their brains, and are more willing to watch fun on Weibo and Douyin. In the end, it is the platform positioning that matters. Perhaps Xiaohongshu and Kuaishou still need to find their own positioning before they can join this game.

Author: Xiang Xiang; Editor: A Bi; Operation: Xiao Bing Bing

Source public account: Wenyu Talk (ID: wenyuTalk0506), records the ups and downs and changes of big entertainment, and respects all reasonable and legal free expressions.