The Year of the Rabbit New Year short film is playing something very new

The Year of the Rabbit 2023 has arrived, and this year's New Year short films are also emerging in an endless stream. This article shares various New Year's short film brand marketing for the Year of the Rabbit, let's take a look.

A wave of Lunar New Year short films is welcoming the Year of the Rabbit.

I still remember the 2019 brain-opening masterpiece "What's Peppa Pig?" and Apple's "Three Minutes," "A Bucket," and "Daughter," which have been shot every Spring Festival since 2018. They have all created social events that swept the circle of friends, so that New Year's short films have become an increasingly normalized marketing strategy for brands every year.

This year's New Year short film is also full of surprises.

As for big directors, Apple's "Passing Five Gates" teamed up with Pengfei to shoot a Peking Opera theme, and the trailer was full of the flavor of "Farewell My Concubine"; Junlebao teamed up with Jia Zhangke to create the heartwarming "Na Fu Jin Bao", and at the end of the film they also invited their celebrity spokespersons to form a group to wish a happy new year; Jindian and Amul invited Jiang Wen to direct his first animated short film, and the creative idea of ​​"going to the moon to pick up Mr. Rabbit home" took off again.

Some brands have also sought external help for joint marketing. Kweichow Moutai teamed up with the "Drunken Trio" Li Dan, Hu Lan, and Cheng Lu to travel through famous paintings, and also planned a lottery for tickets to the Laugh Fruit performance; Pop Mart collaborated with Douyin on trendy blockbusters, and also co-created a series of interactive games called "Summoning the New Year Guardian Angel" with Douyin; Lenovo teamed up with Sony Pictures' Peter Rabbit IP and used the childlike short film "Heartfelt" to "promote goods" for the Lenovo New Year Festival.

It can be seen that it is difficult for today's Lunar New Year short films to recreate the screen-sweeping grand occasion of earlier years, but brands are exploring more diverse marketing conversion methods in short films. The brand Lunar New Year war is shifting from competing in content to competing in marketing, or "returning".

1. Variety show sponsors compete for the Spring Festival period again, taking advantage of the common emotions of the Chinese people

This time, the big sponsor of variety shows has set its sights on the Spring Festival.

Among the brands leading the first wave of Lunar New Year short film marketing in the Year of the Rabbit, we saw Jindian, Anmuxi, Junlebao and other sponsors who performed well in the 2022 variety show market. When Rhino Jun counted the number of variety show sponsorships last year, these companies were among the top spenders.

In the 2022 variety show market, Junlebao sponsored multiple hot variety shows with its multiple product lines such as Youcui milk powder, Jianchun, and Yuexianhuo, becoming a rare high-quality sponsor of variety shows last year. At the beginning of 2023, Junlebao took the lead in cooperating with director Jia Zhangke, who has been in charge of Lunar New Year short films for many years, and occupied an advantageous position in the Lunar New Year battle.

"Na Fu Jin Bao" continues Jia Zhangke's narrative strength of delicately exploring the truth, kindness and beauty of small people. The story of the protagonist Erbao, who lends a helping hand to strangers on his way home on a motorcycle and finally reaps blessings and treasures, once again brings us the section chief's signature warmth and touching moments.

In this road movie story, which Director Jia is very good at, Junlebao products have become an important symbol to advance the plot, cleverly narrowing the psychological distance between the brand and users. At the end of the short film, Yang Mi, Bai Jingting, Zhao Jinmai and other Junlebao product line spokespersons sent their best wishes for the Year of the Rabbit to the audience. This group cloud New Year greeting scene is also a very fresh way of playing.

Capturing the common emotions of the Chinese people remains the core of New Year marketing.

"Go Home Rabbit", created by Jiang Wen for Jindian and Amul, tells the story of a giant parrot carrying old ginger to the moon to replace the moon rabbit that pounded medicine. Although the story is full of absurdity and bizarreness like "One Step Away", its focus still returns to Chinese emotions: the tall and strong rabbit turns into a soft and cute little rabbit when he returns home, which is in line with the old saying - in the eyes of parents, children never grow up.

It is worth noting that Jiang Wen's short film actually hides a lot of marketing tricks. The giant parrot in the film seems to be a metaphor for the Yili Group, the two nipples that she feeds are metaphors for the two sub-brands of Jindian and Anmuxi, and the "Wanfu Jin'an" stickers on every door after taking the rabbit home represent that Yili brings high-quality milk from the prairie to thousands of households.

Speaking of marketing, Apple's Lunar New Year promotions over the years are actually different from other companies. In essence, its annual Lunar New Year short films are large-scale soft advertisements to boost sales of new iPhones in the Chinese market.

This year, Pengfei's film "Passing Five Gates" chose a Peking Opera theme similar to "Farewell My Concubine". As the director of the theater movie "The Taste of Rice Flower", Pengfei, who is good at handling Chinese emotions, can recreate the classic and let Apple's New Year's film return to the screen-sweeping glory of the "Three Minutes" and "A Bucket" era. It is worth looking forward to.

2. Join forces with Xiaoguo, Douyin, and Peter Rabbit to explore new ways of binding marketing brands

Some brands have chosen to stick together.

Today, it is no longer a new thing for brands to join hands with top Chinese directors to make films. Back then, Chen Kexin used an iPhone X to shoot "One Minute", which amazed users. However, nowadays, inviting big directors at a high cost does not necessarily bring stable marketing returns.

As a result, many brands began to look for other solutions.

The liquor brand Kouzijiao took a different approach this year, making use of the drinking personality of the Xiaoguo talk show actors and combining its own brand image to plan a series of Lunar New Year short films featuring the "Drunken Trio" consisting of Li Dan, Hu Lan and Cheng Lu. The hilarious new interpretations of the stories of famous Chinese paintings that traveled through ancient and modern times made many netizens call it "the most creative short film I have seen this year."

Obviously, as a local liquor brand in Anhui, the combination of Kouzijiao and Xiaoguo can be said to have attracted a lot of traffic. The combination of a liquor brand with mainly middle-aged users and talk show culture can also help the brand to expand the consumer market of young people. This planning can be said to kill two birds with one stone.

Pop Mart, the "trendy toy giant", teamed up with the Douyin platform to create a short film titled "Big New Year, Small Excitement" that magnified the companionship of trendy toys for young people and connected it with the reunion of going home for the New Year, which touched the hearts of young people. The phrase "The warm companionship of trendy toys, I Douyin you" made the short film an entry point for Douyin's interactive activities.

In the "Go to Douyin and summon your New Year's Guardian" New Year event, trendy play users can enter the Douyin APP to receive the electronic version of the New Year's Guardian Toy, and can also grab blind boxes, guess lantern riddles, grab exquisite avatar costumes, etc. through the rabbit running game, and have the opportunity to get physical blind box rewards. From all aspects, this is a win-win linkage marketing.

As the Year of the Rabbit approaches, Lenovo China boldly chose to cooperate with Peter Rabbit IP under Sony Pictures and launched Peter Rabbit joint marketing in multiple dimensions. The short film "Heartfelt" tells the heartwarming story of how Rui Rui's grandmother helped her granddaughter find a Peter Rabbit toy. The contrasting narrative style of the short film is very similar to "What's Peppa Pig?"

Obviously, the marketing direction of Lenovo's short film is very strong. Recently, the "Lenovo New Year Goods Festival" discount event is in full swing on various e-commerce platforms, and the Lenovo New Year Goods Festival event page uses a lot of Peter Rabbit IP for visual design. Therefore, the brand obviously wants to use the "Heart" short film to make a name for itself and "bring goods" to Lenovo's New Year Goods Festival.

3. Effect first, hot sales depend on luck

Can the Year of the Rabbit New Year short film still become a hit?

The truth is, the dividends for Lunar New Year short films to go viral may have been fully exploited by predecessors. Back then, the popularity of "Three Minutes" coincided with the technical dividend of the iPhone's performance being sufficient to shoot movie-level images, and "What's Peppa Pig?" was the first to explore the contrast between Chinese rural narratives and contemporary fashion elements.

After so many years of creative involution, it is difficult for today's Lunar New Year short films to produce content that is refreshing to the audience. On the contrary, today's Lunar New Year films cannot escape the usual narratives of rural sentiment, urban-rural contrast, family warmth, etc. The stereotyped window paper-cuts, gongs and drums, and New Year's Eve dinners have caused the audience to feel extremely aesthetic fatigue.

But from the Lunar New Year works released so far this year, Rhino has seen the essence of Lunar New Year short film marketing. In the final analysis, the ultimate goal of brand Lunar New Year short films is marketing conversion and brand sales. Lunar New Year short films are essentially a marketing war, not a content war.

Of course, I am not denying the value of good content. On the contrary, I am looking forward to more talented short film creators opening up new ways to tell New Year stories, and I am also looking forward to high-quality New Year short films to once again go viral on our WeChat Moments.

But I still want to emphasize that the core purpose of brands making Lunar New Year short films is marketing conversion, and achieving marketing results is the bottom line. As for whether the content can create a hit, brands can just take it as it comes.

It can be seen that some brands have already realized this this year, and many brands’ exploration of the marketing conversion of New Year short films is quite forward-looking, which is worthy of industry research and summary.

For example, this year McDonald's invited Shanghai Animation Film Studio, which has recently become popular with the movie "Wonderful Ponds of China", to produce a series of paper-cut animation shorts, and used the animation elements in the shorts on McDonald's products to boost sales. This is an excellent example of how good content has actually benefited product sales.

Starting with Chen Kexin's "Three Minutes" in 2018, the emergence of several popular Lunar New Year short films has led the industry to choose to use high-cost movie-level resources to develop Lunar New Year short films. However, at present, it is difficult to exchange such high investment for high commercial returns. Six years have passed, and perhaps the current brands need to rethink:

How to shoot a high-conversion marketing video at an appropriate cost?

Author: Fang Zheng

Source: WeChat public account "Rhino Entertainment (ID: piaofangtoushijing)"