©️Mirror Entertainment
Text by Gu Zhenguan
Judging from the hot search engine data, "Love as Camp", which Douban scored 4.4 points, has 60 hot search terms related to the title of the drama. If you add the male protagonist Shi Yan The number of single hot search entries for the heroine Zheng Shuyi has reached nearly 100. In other words, the series has received an average of about three hot searches every day since its launch. It seems magical, but it is not uncommon. After all, there was a series that had more than 200 hot searches in half a month after it was aired.
The tradable nature of hot searches on Weibo, as well as the usual marketing techniques of buying hot searches in the entertainment industry, are already tacitly understood by the public. In a purely commercial context, this is a voluntary business between both parties, but from the perspective of social impact and value orientation, using hot searches to provide strong exposure and soft promotion for low-scoring dramas will have a positive impact on film and television. The outside world will naturally have a public opinion on whether the misguided behavior caused by the industry ecology and audience perception is reasonable.
Once upon a time, hot searches on Weibo were indeed a channel for the public to obtain high-value public information. However, when the word "business" is added to the front of hot searches, everything changes.
Weibo hot search, a marketing hotbed for low-scoring dramas
A series of problems existing in "Love as Camp" are exactly the same as "My World's Fireworks" that previously caused huge public controversy, that is, career becomes a vassal and embellishment of love, The serious male gaze, outdated views on love and values, etc., all reflect the backwardness of the IP’s own values, as well as the derailment between the content creative team and the audience. For a drama like
, public opinion on Weibo is completely different from that on other Internet platforms. Douban's rating of 4.4 is the most intuitive statement from platform users; search for "Love as Camp" on Station B, and the videos with about a million views are almost all about complaints and discussion of values; when searching for keywords on Douyin, the related topics are Videos such as "Vicious Plot" and "Complaining about Love Views"; when searching related questions on Zhihu, the answers are almost all negative.
However, most of the Weibo hot searches generated during the broadcast of "Love as Camp" were positive topics, such as #爱为camp时 feast的狠爱向#, #爱为camp微博开分8.7#, #与爱为 Camp的妻# and so on. Although there are also negative hot searches such as #爱为 Camp的女主三级# among them, the number is very small. On Weibo, "Based on Love" gained popularity that was seriously inconsistent with its quality, and the public opinion atmosphere was too "quiet and peaceful".
This is not a problem reflected in the drama "Camp with Love". In the past year or two, the public has become more stringent about the quality of film and television works, and their tolerance for low-quality content has also become lower. However, this does not seem to have affected the marketing trend of these dramas on Weibo. They can still be frequently searched for, and with the help of The praise from marketing accounts guides public opinion and gains popularity.
Click to enter the hot search topic #爱为campwedding#, and you can see that the top ones are almost all blog posts by Weibo influencers, marketing accounts, and fans of starring actors, and there are very few real tap posts. For users who have been around Weibo all year round, it is not difficult to distinguish in most cases what is a hot search topic that naturally triggers widespread discussion, and what is a hot search topic officially concocted by the Weibo platform and the series, especially for those who For dramas such as "Camp with Love", where public opinion on the entire network is extremely polarized.
Of course, there are also public criticisms of "Love as Camp" on the Weibo platform, but these voices are more like a spiral of silence in this huge public opinion field. In contrast, under the dominance of the hot search system, they occupy the commanding heights of public opinion. Forward marketing. It is difficult for the outside world to determine how many of the nearly 100 hot searches related to the drama are purchased or rushed. However, the tradable nature of Weibo hot searches has been a tacit understanding among the public in recent years.
In the past few years, hot searches have always played the role of "marketing tools" in Weibo's commercialization system. For example, the demonstration of search advertising on Weibo's official website is Weibo hot searches. Naturally, this refers to not only hot search positions that are clearly labeled as advertisements. After all, users rarely click on hot search ads with the "recommended" icon.
Judging from the cooperation reports between Weibo and Schwarzkopf and other brands, Weibo has a very mature process for commercial operation of hot searches. Weibo can use past big data analysis to help brands plan hot search topics and gather them Platform experts contributed to the popularity of the topic, and Weibo did not shy away from it and took the initiative to use it as its own marketing case to display on the official website.
However, what more intuitively illustrates the tradable nature of hot searches on Weibo is an old news from the early years and a news from this year. Singer Li Ronghao once posted on Weibo in 2017: Is it embarrassing? Hahaha, suddenly the fifth most searched song became Li Ronghao’s ballad and his acting skills. In order to let more friends see the MV of the ballad, the record company bought the fifth most searched song. The location, the huge cost, and the good intentions made me very touched. "
In June this year, the official account of the game "Backwater Cold" was banned during the public beta of the mobile game. Later, the official account issued an article stating that the reason was that "the amount of advertising placed on Sina was suspected of not meeting Sina's requirements." According to the picture attached to the official account, Look, when the game staff chatted with the person with the note "Weibo Top Sales", the latter proposed "In June, we will start buying brand advertising and sending services to boost rankings, with three levels of 5 million, 8 million, and 10 million." The marketing company’s cost for hot searches is RMB 20,000 to RMB 30,000.”
Judging from comprehensive information, the current hot search business on Weibo can be roughly divided into two major forms. One is that entertainment companies, artist management companies, etc. directly cooperate with Weibo; The second is to use third-party marketing companies to compete on the list. Previously, 21st Century Business Herald broke the news and mentioned that the advantages of using the official Weibo channel are speed and stability, and topics can be stably rotated on hot searches for 24 hours. From observation , the advantage of using third-party ranking channels is low cost, but the disadvantage is that the success of ranking is uncertain, and the time on the list is relatively uncontrollable. After
hot search became a business, celebrities, film and television works, etc. became popular However, nowadays, the dependence of high-quality film and television works on Weibo hot search marketing is decreasing, while the dependence of low-scoring works on hot searches is increasing. But to this day, how much gold does Weibo hot search still have? There needs to be a question mark.
Credibility is lost due to excessive commercialization
In business terms, Weibo hot searches are nothing more than free commercial cooperation between a seller’s market and a buyer’s market. However, hot searches naturally have the ability to provide news of high public value. Responsibility. Under this premise, whether the unrestricted traffic and commercialization of Weibo hot searches is reasonable in today's environment and the current development status of the film and television industry is another matter.
In the final analysis, The film and television industry has always been an industry where content creators interact with audiences and constantly seek a balance. The top-down content output of creators will affect the audience's aesthetics, and the audience's bottom-up feedback will also force content creators to adjust their direction. , improve quality. Therefore, in the face of low-scoring dramas such as "My World's Fireworks" and "Camp with Love", audience feedback is crucial.
But as "Internet infrastructure", as a public domain in all fields As an information platform, Weibo is running in the opposite direction of public opinion and has lost its positive value guidance. Furthermore, it provides a hotbed for general marketing for low-scoring dramas, and promotes dramas through soft promotion and strong exposure of hot searches. The spread of influence is even fueling the momentum of such dramas.
For viewers, carefully packaged hot searches will inevitably affect their objective judgment of the content, and some wrong values guidance in the drama will have a negative impact on the Internet. For some young users who are in the formative period of their values, this is not a good thing either.
Obviously, many people are now suffering from the Weibo marketing of low-scoring dramas. A survey of more than 1,000 respondents conducted by the China Youth Daily Social Survey Center and the Questionnaire Network showed that more than 40% of the respondents believed that the currently hotly searched movies and TV dramas were not worthy of their reputation, and 75.5% of the respondents expected to crack down on various Form traffic fraud and control excessive marketing of film and television dramas.
For the film and television industry, publicizing high-frequency hot searches and forming "hidden rules" will undoubtedly damage the industry ecology. Just like the large-scale purchased games in the game industry, hot searches will also become a business. This has spawned a number of “buying movies and TV shows”. This kind of false prosperity will not only squeeze the living space of other high-quality dramas with low-frequency marketing, but also bring misguided guidance to the industry. For example, in recent years, many dramas have been warming up for hot searches during the production stage, deliberately concocting various Social topics, famous lines and scenes.
Looking back, the absence of values in the commercialization process of Weibo is not new today. First, the fandom can become the most controversial special group on the Internet, and can develop into what it is today, just like Weibo. Inseparable relationship.
Objectively speaking, the alienation of star chasing is affected by many factors, such as the great wave of the development of the entertainment industry, the careful promotion of entertainment industry capital, the "upgrading" of celebrity management teams' fan management skills, etc., but when it comes to the influence of Internet platforms on The existence that has the greatest influence, then the answer from the outside world will mostly point to Weibo.
As the earliest Internet platform where celebrities are stationed in bulk, Weibo has naturally become the main gathering place for celebrity fans. In the past few years, the likes and comments of celebrities on Weibo, rankings on star power lists, super popularity, and related topic readings and discussions Volume, hot searches, and square footage have all become tools for the fan circle to quantify celebrity data and equate it to the celebrity’s commercial value. At the same time, these are also one of the keys to intensifying the confrontation between major celebrity fan groups.
The star power list once launched by Weibo is the epitome of the platform’s fandom, and even intensifies the evolution of the fandom. Although the list has been offline now, the fandom ecology has been solidified. In addition, after Wang Yibo endorsed Redmi, a cooperation report between the brand, celebrities, and Weibo mentioned that "hot search topics lead fans to discuss in real time." After Yang Chaoyue became the Clinique ambassador, the same cooperation report mentioned "official WeChat click "Like fans' supporting behavior and stimulate fans' sense of honor", from which we can see Weibo's "fancy manipulation" of the fan circle.
In the past few years, celebrities have been overturning in various ways, which has also caused the public to become more and more resistant to the celebrity group. However, nowadays, the hot searches on Weibo are still full of celebrity news, and there is very little high-value information in the hot searches on Weibo. There are so few, and users can only complain, "Can you please stop buying it?" Although Weibo's hot searches have been corrected many times, if the underlying business logic remains unchanged, the status quo will continue, because it is the celebrity group that needs exposure the most, and the main business supporting Weibo is advertising and marketing.
As for whether the platform’s “entertain yourself to death” atmosphere will improve in the future, the answer may be pessimistic. In the development of the fan circle, in the marketing of celebrity groups, and in the high-frequency hot searches of low-scoring dramas, Weibo has shown more of an embracing attitude. The platform has gained considerable economic benefits and a steady flow of traffic from it. As for its far-reaching impact, Weibo seems to have given little thought to it. It is not easy to increase the popularity of
hot searches, but it can be done easily to reduce the credibility. In the past, Weibo was a comprehensive trend indicator for the entire network and an efficient channel for the public to obtain public information. However, when hot searches became a business, what the public saw all year round was that the vast majority of entertainment hot searches were mixed with a small amount of public information. 's hot search list. There is nothing wrong with the commercialization of Internet platforms, but if commercialization loses its scale, the problem will become obvious.
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