The evolution of TV series marketing: In addition to posting stickers, brands must also learn to change topics and find empathy

At the beginning of 2023, the TV series "Knives Out" brought everyone a wonderful performance, and also attracted many brands to conduct marketing. The path of "starting with the plot and ending with social media" has become a new strategy for TV series marketing that brands can rely on. This article analyzes some successful cases of social media marketing with the help of TV series in the past. Let's take a look.

At the beginning of 2023, the "phenomenal" drama "Kuang Bi" brought a "thunder" to the film and television industry. Not only did its ratings and reputation "soar", but it also became a hot search every day, driving nationwide discussion.

As a co-brand of the drama, Nien Ji Am has become one of the biggest beneficiaries with the drama's popularity. It has taken advantage of the various hot topics caused by the plot through brand pre-embedding and hot topic accompaniment, and has "eaten" a wave of traffic.

In fact, the successful cooperation between Nin Ji Om and "Kuang Biao" is not an isolated case. Looking back at the brands that were previously popularized by "Cang Lan Jue" and "The Silent Truth", both Mo Xiaoxian and Tailing Electric Vehicles have achieved the explosion of voice and increase of product sales through social media.

Against the backdrop of “reducing costs and increasing profits”, the past simple brand implantation thinking has gradually become outdated, and the path of “starting with the plot and ending with social media” has become a new drama marketing strategy that brands can rely on.

1. The evolution of TV series marketing: Topicality becomes the “trigger” for TV series to become a hit

In the past two years, the drama marketing environment faced by brands has undoubtedly changed. According to the "2022 First Half Drama Market Sponsorship Report" by Endata, due to market uncertainty, brands are more focused on top dramas.

Well-known film critic Li Xingwen also pointed out that with publicity funds becoming increasingly scarce, few projects are willing to take "risky moves". Word-of-mouth marketing and social hot topics are increasing, while purely entertaining and "eye-catching" content is decreasing.

The increasingly recognized logic of drama marketing is to seize points that may be perceived by everyone, create topics or make short videos to spread "virally". This is also a common path for most dramas to become popular, completing the fermentation of their own topics on Weibo and breaking the circle of the drama.

It can be seen that as the social platform where drama marketing is most likely to "go viral", the topicality of Weibo has become the "trigger" for the drama to become popular. As the drama continues to become popular, various topics derived from the content of the drama give brands the opportunity to expand their voice. For example, in "The Silent Truth", the co-branded brand Mo Xiaoxian used clever voice to turn the audience's negative complaints into positive ridicule, and in "Cang Lan Jue", the official Weibo account of Tailing successfully topped the Weibo hot search by saying "striving for the audience to shoot a sequel".

2. Shift in implant logic: from one-way transmission to two-way empathy

As brands pay more and more attention to the operation of social media platforms, the "brand implantation" model has also changed and innovated.

1. Make good use of the "empathy" effect, and use the plot and stars to help you promote popular products

The essence of drama marketing is to create brand value. In the past, the traditional "patch" model played a role in establishing a preliminary cognitive impression, but facing today's young people, just making patches is not enough.

At this time, it becomes very important to understand the concept of "empathy" in brand film and television marketing. The core idea is that brand words are like a person's name. What is important is not what the name is, but what kind of cognition will appear in consumers' minds when they think of you.

When applied to the field of drama marketing, marketers need to solve the association from drama content to the brand.

High-quality drama marketing can use the characters and content of the drama as a bridge to allow users to identify with the brand's connotation.

If "stickers" are a one-way marketing mentality, then "empathy" is the pursuit of two-way empathy with the audience, and the key lies in the audience's sense of participation. In plain words, communication must make the public remember something, and what can be remembered must be content that leaves a deep impression and generates feedback.

For example, during its collaboration with "Cang Lan Jue", Tailing Electric Vehicle created representative terms for itself such as "the first-class Cang Lan person" and "the world's best vehicle" based on the content of the series, and triggered users on Weibo to follow suit and make fun of the memes, and the brand name was also engraved in the minds of the audience.

When the series was approaching its finale, Tailing noticed netizens' enthusiasm for the extra episodes from Weibo, and revealed the news of the extra episodes through its official Weibo account while the audience was reminiscing about the series. This caused a huge storm in the "Jueren circle" and attracted netizens to watch, thus becoming the number one hot search.

Netizens have been calling for the brand, and comments like "I bought a bell immediately after watching the video" have emerged in the comment area. It can be seen that by satisfying the audience's emotional appeal for the drama, the brand can gain the "empathy" effect from the audience.

2. Find the "fulcrum" to leverage public opinion and turn brand "crisis" into "opportunity"

A phrase that marketing practitioners often say is "make marketing activities topical", but how do you make them topical?

Clour believes that on the one hand, it is necessary to find the right window to amplify the volume, such as taking advantage of hot spots to implant and output brand information;

On the other hand, we need to "get involved" and find "a little effort to achieve a great result" traffic operation methods. The popular "Silent Truth" a few years ago provides some references.

"The Silent Truth" is a modern suspense drama. Everyone is highly focused when watching the show, but is often interrupted by advertisements interspersed in the show. Complaints about this have become a hot topic on Weibo, and even the original author of the novel couldn't help but express "discomfort."

Among them, "Mo Xiaoxian", who received the most criticism, quickly responded on Weibo: Combining the content of the film and television drama, he expressed his attitude towards the incident in a relaxed and humorous tone, and @ed other cooperative brands of "The Silent Truth".

This behavior not only attracted the attention of a large number of netizens, but also attracted many netizens to comment and interact, which gradually reduced everyone's negative emotions towards it and formed spontaneous secondary dissemination and positive ridicule.

Later, @莫小仙 further applied netizens’ perception of the brand to product perception, successfully turning a “public relations crisis” into a “brand opportunity.” It can be seen that the traffic from complaints is also traffic, and it all depends on how the brand side grasps the context.

3. Extension of empathy: Social insights facilitate collaborations, helping brands achieve both brand and performance

The above mentioned are the marketing measures that brands took when they participated in TV series in the early stage and followed the rhythm of the series. But for those brands that did not participate in the early stage, how can they catch the express train of the hot series? "Dream of Hualu" gave an answer in this regard.

Last year, when "Dream of Splendor" was on the air, #Dream of Splendor Cultural Confidence# and #Tea Culture in Dream of Splendor# became hot searches, sparking discussions about Chinese tea culture. The character @掌柜赵盼儿 in the play also discussed tea and tea ceremony with netizens on Weibo.

In this kind of interaction and discussion, Heytea launched customized new products in cooperation with Dream of Red Mansions. It also specially designed decoration, products and experience based on the elements of the series, and invited Liu Yifei, the actress who plays Zhao Paner, to visit the store. With the dual effects of the plot and the stars, the audience not only deepened their brand awareness of Heytea, but also brought real sales conversion.

It can be said that for hit dramas like "Dream of Red Mansions" that are based on traditional Chinese culture, brands need to find an embedding point that suits them and integrate their products or brand image into the soft culture derived from the drama. On the one hand, the joint name allows the brand to increase its awareness and premium, and on the other hand, it relies on social media to complete the fermentation of brand products and then drive sales.

3. Brand marketing needs to “seek change” and be deeply integrated with content

From "Dream of Red Mansions" in the middle of last year to "Kuang Biao" at the beginning of this year, many popular dramas reflect that entertainment works are quietly recovering. "Yu Gu Yao" starring Xiao Zhan has even attracted 1.87 million fans in its super topic before it even aired.

Brands also need to seize the first wave of dividends from future hit dramas fermenting on social media platforms. By participating at the right time, they will surely achieve certain results in terms of volume and sales.

The more core point is that brands need to realize that drama marketing is actually always seeking change. Only by changing concepts, starting from the consumer's thinking path, and constantly exploring and trying new methods can the brand's film and television sponsorship achieve twice the result with half the effort.

Whether it is "empathy" or "sympathy", the purpose of marketing actions is to create channels for communication and interaction with the audience, and thereby influence their perception of the brand. Therefore, it is necessary to change the "implantation" thinking and instead use the "integration" thinking to feel the audience's preferences. This is the most effective means of gaining insight into the marketing code of the drama.

As the drama supply market gradually recovers, we have reason to believe that the drama marketing market will continue to heat up, and brands should seize the opportunities therein and fight a beautiful turnaround in the "year of recovery."

Author: Ji Nan

Source: TopKlout (ID: TopKlout), a self-media ecological observation account that combines good-looking and informative content