Returning youth from first- and second-tier cities made "I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s" break through the circle and appear on the hot search lists on multiple social platforms, on par with Lunar New Year movies. The full text of
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Author | Luo Lizuan Jia Yang
A short drama that became a hit during the Spring Festival. This is "I Became a Stepmother in the 1980s" that has been pushed to many people's Douyin, Little Red Book, and Weibo information streams. You can call it bloody and earthy, or you can call it retro and classic. In short Even people who claim to never watch mini-series still watch it with gusto. Of course,
is also very successful from the data point of view, with more than 20 million subscriptions in a single day. In addition, the series has more than 400 million views on Douyin, and the number of likes for a single episode has exceeded 1.5 million.
Since the past two years, the Spring Festival has been the breaking point for micro-short dramas. This year, more young people returning to their hometowns from first- and second-tier cities have made the film "I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s" break through the circle and appear on the hot search lists on multiple social platforms. It is on par with Lunar New Year movies, and even Overwhelmed by long videos. It can be said that this is the first step for micro-short dramas to enter mainstream movie viewing consumption.
A short drama that breaks through the dimensional wall
"It feels like a quarter of the people on the homepage are watching "I Became a Stepmother in the 1980s"" "I was a little embarrassed at first, thinking I was the only one watching a simple short drama. Later I found out that everyone else in my circle of friends was watching it.” On social platforms, “I Became a Stepmother in the 1980s” became a rare micro-short drama that many young people who returned to their hometowns from the city for the Chinese New Year watched it to the end.
In terms of plot, "I Became a Stepmother in the 1980s" is still a neat micro-short drama. The heroine travels from modern times to the 1980s. She is an adopted daughter in the city by mistake. After her biological daughter returns, she will marry a big pig farmer to complete the marriage contract set by her biological parents in the countryside.
000 The retro background setting of the 1980s, the traditional performance of micro-short dramas that repeatedly "slap you in the face", and the fact that the husband of the pig farmer is also a handsome "tyrant" who gives money to the heroine whenever he disagrees with her. Attract the audience to keep watching.
This is the first short drama that Xiao Li, who usually works in Shanghai, has watched. Xiao Li's family has to visit different relatives' houses during the Chinese New Year, but as a junior, she doesn't have much room to interrupt. Most of the time, she spends her time watching short videos on Douyin. Xiao Li has seen clips of many short plays on Douyin before, but what particularly caught her attention this time was that "the male protagonist is very handsome."
is different from the previous micro-short dramas. The lead actor Su Yunhe has a celebrity face and looks like a mixture of Xiao Zhan and Huo Jianhua . It has also been trending on Weibo. It can be said that it has achieved the first breakthrough between traffic pools. lock up. What attracts Xiao Li to continue watching is that the actor Teng Zewen who plays the heroine Si Nian is also very beautiful, and the acting skills of the male and female protagonists are both online and will not make the audience feel embarrassed.
"Although I know it's all a routine, I just get sucked in." This is the first time Xiao Li has spent money on a micro-short drama. However, what made her angry was that a day later she discovered that someone had already uploaded the entire episode on station B, "spending money in vain." As you can see from the search results, a single episode of this series has hundreds of thousands of views.
According to the statistics of micro-short vertical media new players, "I was a stepmother in the 1980s" was the first place on the Internet on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, and it was also the second place in the third week of February (Spring Festival holiday). A special situation was that too many people recharged the game "I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s", which caused the server to crash and many users to refund the money, which affected the final income.
In Xiaohongshu, there is also a myth about "I became a stepmother in the 1980s". An industry short drama producer @王云霄 shared that the drama took 10 days to shoot and invested 80,000 yuan in the later stage, which brought in 20 million daily recharges. The post-production period here should refer to the post-production stage of film and television production.
However, Mandy, another producer who works for a leading short drama company, told us that with the current industry development, the investment in "I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s" could only be in the millions, or more.
She gave an example, which is the urban emotional micro-short drama "Twenty-nine" that actor Yang Rong previously participated in. The filming was all modern scenes. In theory, the cost is lower than that of period dramas, but it also cost 300. 10,000 budget (of course, the price for mature actors to appear will definitely be more expensive).
Moreover, according to The Paper, after the popularity of micro-short dramas, the daily salary of the leading actors has almost increased by 3-5 times, and the production cost has also reached 6-10 times of the original. There are many micro-short dramas with a budget of 600,000-800,000 yuan. yes. This also means that as investment costs increase, micro-short dramas need to attract more people, and success cannot be achieved by just shoddy production.
In addition, due to the fleeting trend of micro-short dramas, the industry is producing according to an extremely tight shooting rhythm, and script production is also strictly limited to payment points and the rhythm is clear, so the shooting time is 7-10 days, which is a normal production schedule. Therefore, in order to win in this super-volume rhythm, in addition to continuing to increase investment costs, production companies have also reached new heights in production and content. Premium quality has become an obvious trend.
"Also, even if we want to save money, the audience is tired of the previous routines. In fact, the audience is the most likely to be tired of the old and new," Mandy explained.
New Success Formula
According to the hot weekly short drama list (February 12th - February 18th) released by Xin Wan Er and dataeye, on this list during the Spring Festival, "I Was in the 1980s" which was launched on the 13th "Stepmother" ranked second, with a heat value of 20.14 million.
According to Xinzhier, if the caloric value is converted at 70%, it is roughly equivalent to the actual consumption, so the streaming cost of "I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s" in the first week was about 14 million yuan (only on the Douyin platform). If further rough calculations are made, based on the fact that streaming accounts for 80% of paid revenue, the recharge revenue of Douyin platform in the first week of "I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s" may reach 17.5 million.
This drama is still not up to the level of the top short drama " Wushuang " in terms of absolute amount of income, but its degree of breaking out of the circle is staggering.
"I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s" and its producer Fang Zhangwan represent a new formula for success after supervision has tightened significantly and the level of competition has deepened in all aspects-female videos and refreshing articles + controversial leverage marketing (celebrities Face, actor black and red marketing, original IP) + full platform flooding. The
short drama has been popular for a year, and the content iteration speed is faster than that of online articles for several years. According to statistics from the short drama study room, the ratio of male and female short dramas in the initial period was 7:3, because male channels have a high frequency of hits, a long running cycle, and many investors. However, as short dramas come into the regulatory spotlight, the risks of male channels becoming more exciting (bloody violence, political involvement) have become greater, and the number of female channels has begun to increase. In Dataeye's latest short drama weekly list, the top 50 male and female channels are evenly split, and the top 4 channels with the highest traffic are all female channels.
is a novel agency and new media advertising company established in 2014. It focused on WeChat traffic in the early days and entered the short drama industry in 2022. Zhangwan had previously focused on male channels, but after developing a style of playing cool dramas for female channels, it became more and more popular. In the second half of last year, it began to become a regular on Douyin's weekly short drama list.
In the past three weeks, "Mr. Pei thinks that the father is more important than the son every day", "Such a mysterious person", "Mr. Li, you have the wrong wife", "Go to the place where you are" and the latest week's "I" produced by Zhangwan "Being a Stepmother in the 1980s" continues to dominate Douyin short drama rankings.
maximizes traffic, which is what these dramas have in common. For example, the original IP of "I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s" comes from Tomato Novels, which already has a wide range of fan traffic of the original work, and it appropriately presents the original work's exciting rhythms of not being sadistic and not internally consumed, outsmarting the best relatives, and running a business. , there are no sadistic elements that are common in female porn dramas, only the pleasure of making the breasts unblocked. The male and female protagonists are both very good-looking, and their costumes are very contemporary. This has raised the level of competition.
's use of factors outside the drama for marketing is another example of its low-cost experience in attracting attention and improving ROI. Xu Mengyuan, the heroine of "Mr. Pei Thinks of Father Every Day", has had scandals with male stars and has become a major marketing gimmick for the series.The male protagonist of "I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s" looks like Xiao Zhan and Huo Jianhua, and his appearance is marketed as "a sea of people". Even his controversial private life, which is suspected of being secretly photographed, has become the focus of black and red marketing.
For short plays, an entertainment product, how to make the audience "pleasant" in content production is only part of competitiveness. Ingenious materials and cost-effective investment are sometimes the core of competitiveness. The gamers’ quick adaptation to changes in traffic rules and regulations has made them survivors who can carve up traffic. The direction of
supervision is to contain and encourage at the same time. The platform has taken over the responsibility for review. For example, Douyin’s new policy is that short dramas will only be allowed to be released after being reviewed by the platform; advertisers must have three certificates, which suddenly removes the agency investment ecological card. Kuaishou has stopped the delivery of third-party mini programs.
The original consumption habits of the audience for short dramas rarely cross platforms, and the channels are relatively fragmented. According to statistics from QuestMobile, in the short drama industry in November 2023, the total monthly active users of Douyin mini programs were 83.24 million, the app was 31.96 million, and the WeChat mini programs were 12.29 million. The exclusive rate of Douyin mini programs was 91.4%.
So the big trend is that platform short dramas are moving towards a closed loop. Just like they once brought merchants into the platform, the internal cycle of e-commerce is repeated in the short dramas. "I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s" is a typical case that stands out from the drastic fluctuations in regulations and industry trends.
Zhangwan is very courageous to explore the distribution strategy and changes according to the times. According to appgrowing, in its hit short drama "Dirty Maid" in October last year, all the projects were released using quick apps and most of the ads were placed on Tencent. An official account of the series was tentatively opened on Douyin, which can be watched for a fee within the account. This attempt is called account-drama linkage in the industry.
However, compared with its mini program channels, the payment situation of Douyin’s official account is not very good, and the accumulated over one million fans are not effectively used. The application of drama linkage in the single-episode payment model needs to be further explored, but there are already successful cases in the brand implantation naming model (Han Shu-Jiang Qi).
In the project "I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s", Palm uses Kuai App + WeChat Mini Program + Douyin Mini Program for distribution. Among them, Kuai App is the largest distribution channel and main stream, accounting for 77.73% %, and the big investment becomes a huge amount/Qianchuan. The two largest publishers that
has close cooperation with are Fanhua Theater (Beijing Dianzhong Kuaikan) and Qukan Theater (China Radio and Television Media). One is a major investor in Judao/Qianchuan, and the other is a major investor in Tencent Advertising. To a certain extent, it helps Zhangwan expand its audience across channels and disperse channel risks.
's distribution strategy adopts its usual mass material flooding method. The amount of materials in the first week reached more than 7,000, which is in sharp contrast to most of the industry's low-material-concentrated distribution method.
Palm’s streaming method makes its business return model theoretically close to the average level of the entire industry.
Micro-short dramas are the real lipstick
I believe that after "I Became a Stepmother in the 1980s", more and more micro-short dramas will appear in the circle of friends of young people in first- and second-tier cities.
When micro-short dramas were not so popular, producers would create user portraits for their dramas, including young users under 18 years old, security personnel, cleaning staff, nannies, etc. In short, those who have limited free time and entertainment methods People with limited use.
In the second half of last year, a producer who was filming a micro-short series said that there was no need for such precise user portraits, and that the entire sinking market was his target user.
It is these users who used one minute of time and one yuan to recharge, which supported the market size of micro-short dramas of nearly 40 billion last year.
This is different from the sinking market in our impression. Especially when the economy is not booming, why are middle- and low-income people willing to spend dozens of dollars to watch a micro-short drama?
From the demand side, the lipstick effect is the biggest driver of micro-short dramas. Ordinary consumers will not just keep their wallets closed, but will look for products that are not expensive and can soothe people's hearts. It’s just that lipstick can no longer shoulder this important task. Last year’s Double 11, online sales of the beauty category only increased slightly by about 2%.
Compared with traditional movies and dramas, micro-short dramas are a brand new product.One minute for one episode, one hundred episodes for one hundred minutes, which seems to be about the same size as a movie. However, many short drama practitioners told us that the narrative method of short dramas is completely different from that of movies. In order for users to click on and charge money, there must be a click and a hook in just one minute.
In other words, the core value provided by micro-short dramas is enjoyment. This kind of spiritual lipstick with the lowest time cost and controllable money cost is a spiritual comfort with extremely high ROI for users. This is an era of fragmented information, and users’ time and attention have already been fragmented.
From a supply-side perspective, the success of micro-short dramas is most similar to that of Pinduoduo. In the past two years, Pinduoduo has benefited from the inventory clearance dividends in the supply chain brought about by overcapacity, and its performance is unparalleled among e-commerce platforms.
Internet literature and Internet celebrity resources, as the upstream and downstream of drama series and movies, have also been severely oversupplied. As the most important film and television promotion platform in China, Douyin has nearly 200 film and television accounts with more than one million followers. In terms of IP, according to the "2023 China Online Literature Overseas Trend Implementation" released by China Literature last year, the total number of Chinese online literature works reached 34.5884 million, with a year-on-year increase of 7.93%, which means that there are millions of new online works every year. Birth.
In December 2023, a total of 49 dramas were recorded and announced for the filming and production of TV series across the country. Even if Dahe Movies is included, it will not consume so much IP and film and television traffic. After
experienced the industry reshaping at the end of last year, new entrants no longer only focus on the sinking market, but expand their target users to one billion short video users.
Regarding the future of short dramas, iiMedia Consulting predicts that the market size will exceed 100 billion yuan in three years, equivalent to the size of two movie markets.
Perhaps, micro-short dramas will soon be as permanent on mobile phones as online articles and online majors, completely changing our movie-watching habits.
