Picture source @VisualChina
Text | Diving Fish
was always described as a "Buddhist" Xiaohongshu in terms of commercialization in the past. 2023 has experienced a year of rapid development. According to Bloomberg, Xiaohongshu expects net profit to reach US$500 million in 2023, far exceeding the less than US$50 million expected at the beginning of the year. Users who are familiar with Xiaohongshu may also find that it is increasingly difficult to find non-advertising "grass" for and . The commercialization of
has achieved initial results. Xiaohongshu naturally hopes to extend its business to more industries. Just like Douyin has reconstructed all industries with the logic of short videos, Xiaohongshu also wants to take a unique path of its own. Film and television entertainment, as one of the main areas for mass soft consumption, has been regarded as the only path for expansion by major manufacturers.
However, after all, the logic of the consumer goods and film and television industries is different. Although the content attributes of Xiaohongshu are suitable for film and television entertainment, there are many commercial components that do not match . For example, the "crowd anti-funnel model" currently promoted by Xiaohongshu is contrary to the logic of film and television promotion and distribution. The Koc ecology that Xiaohongshu is quite proud of is also creating greater obstacles for film producers to launch.
Little Red Book - Crowd Anti-Funnel Model
Is "making wedding clothes for others" the destiny of the graphic content community?
Xiaohongshu’s confidence
Xiaohongshu’s confidence is not without reason. It is the most common way to deduce commercialization opportunities from the prosperity of the content ecology, and Xiaohongshu’s film and television entertainment content is indeed growing at a high speed.
According to Qiangua data, from January to July 2023, the number of Xiaohongshu film and television-related grassroots notes reached 700,000+, an increase of 130.81% compared with the same period in 2022, and the total number of interactions exceeded 240 million.
Compared with the film and television entertainment content on other platforms, Xiaohongshu has an additional label of "pop culture promoter", and it seems so close to the film and television entertainment business.
Whether it is offline trendy lifestyles such as citywalk and outdoor camping, or online popular memes such as baby food supplements and advice, they all originated from Xiaohongshu and can be called "trendy" among young people.
Xiaohongshu, by using its ability to foresight into popular culture, can indeed help some film and television works create hot spots and become more popular. , such as Sun Yitong's "Jarhead" in "Universe Exploration Editorial Department", unexpectedly became popular in Xiaohongshu. So Xiaohongshu and the film crew held a limited check-in session for the "Universe Exploration Editorial Department" in Shanghai, where movie props were on display to satisfy users' offline check-in wishes.
Little Red Book & "Universe Editorial Department" limited check-in event
The drama market also has similar gameplay. The summer smash hit "Lotus Tower", Xiaohongshu launched an interactive installation exhibition event on the site, and restored it 1:1 offline Lotus Tower also attracted many fans to check in. This way of guiding from online entertainment consumption to offline gatherings can further enhance the cohesion of fan groups and mature IP. is also the advantage area of Xiaohongshu and will not be easily replaced by other platforms.
Little Red Book & "Lotus Tower" interactive installation exhibition event
From the perspective of user ecology, the label of "female" or "feminism" also makes Xiaohongshu increasingly hint at the future development trend of film and television entertainment.
Although the audience for film and television has always been dominated by women, works with female themes have actually only begun to emerge in recent years, and 2023 can be called a blowout year.
According to Maoyan's "2023 Chinese Film Market Data Insight Report", among the top 10 popular movies of the year in Xiaohongshu, there are many works with obvious preferences for female audiences such as "Barbie" and "Twinkle Twinkle Star", which are also on the list with other content communities. Works that reflect differences.
Xiaohongshu’s annual top 10 list of popular movies
There are similar cases in the drama market. "Nine Righteous People" adapted by based on Douban Reading IP, has a Douban score of 7.9, but only 43,000 people have watched it, so it is not very popular. But its original work was inspired by "Fang Siqi's First Love Paradise", which is an ancient female group portrait revenge story, with both plot scale and realistic concern.On Xiaohongshu, #安利九义人的reasons, #九义人人女狠之狠狠, etc. have become hot topics, with a total of 133 million views. Users not only share their feelings about watching dramas under the topic, but also share their thoughts on real-life encounters.
To be honest, most domestic female-themed works still have a lot of room for improvement, and Little Red Book may be a step up the ladder. Since most of the current female-themed works are still created by male film and television workers, they do not yet have a true gender perspective, but are more just reaping the bonus of the theme. Observing user feedback on Xiaohongshu, understands what the real female perspective cares about, so that this bonus will not be a flash in the pan.
is one trick that is popular all over the world?
Trends and women are indeed advantages, but these are advantages in the content ecology. To take the road of commercialization, the business logic must be clearly understood. An important common premise for the commercialization of
content communities is to build a commercial marketing component that makes Party A comfortable, so that Party A can have more visible measurement indicators. After a whole year of research, Xiaohongshu came up with a proud "crowd anti-funnel model".
Yousi, the head of Xiaohongshu’s commercial market, once said that the “crowd anti-funnel model” can help customers measure marketing channels at a relatively small cost. If it cannot penetrate the core group of people, it is likely that there is a problem with the product strength and communication angle, which can be corrected in time.
But such product logic is obviously not suitable for business in the film and television industry. Regardless of the fact that film and television products have been completely finalized in the publicity and distribution stage, its communication path is also contrary to traditional consumer products: not from point to surface, but directly to the public. Only when you see that the public is discussing a certain film and television work will potential audiences be interested in participating and slowly gather "tap water".
In this regard, Douyin obviously has greater advantages. 's "Guidelines on Douyin Drama Publicity and Distribution Methods" revealed that Douyin's strong promotion method is "position management", which means that multiple accounts such as official accounts and celebrity accounts are frequently linked together, and short videos and live broadcasts must also be coordinated. , the more interactions there are, the more topics will be discussed and the popularity will increase. This is a typical amount of thinking.
Also taking "Lotus Tower" as an example, the lead actor set a flag on Douyin, "If the popularity of the main film exceeds 10,000, I will jump to QueenCard." After the popularity really exceeded 10,000, the leading actors fulfilled their promises, and the official account edited these videos into a collection, contrasting the good dancing skills with the uncoordinated limbs, creating a new secondary hot spot.
The creator of "Lotus Tower" jumps to queencard Douyin screenshot
Xiaohongshu's celebrity ecological construction is still far behind Weibo Douyin. With the first-mover advantage and aggregation effect of the Internet, ecological construction does not happen overnight. merit.
In addition, Douyin has also developed the "Douyin Drama Index" and "Douyin Movie Index" mini-programs specifically for customers in the film and television industry to measure the real-time popularity of film and television works on Douyin and facilitate timely publicity and distribution work. Provide basis for adjustment. The construction of these commercial components is a capability that other content communities do not yet possess.
In particular, Xiaohongshu’s commercial ecology also has a core feature - koc has a higher weight than kol. According to the new list "2022 New Media Content Ecological Data Report", the middle and tail accounts of Xiaohongshu accounts account for almost 99.97% of the total number of platforms, of which accounts with 1-100,000 fans account for as high as 91.62%.
This feature is considered an advantage in the traditional consumer goods industry, but in the film and television business, it is very easy for advertisers to be confused.
On Douyin, the filmmakers can only invest in the top spots. If is posted in the live broadcast rooms of Dong Yuhui, Liu Genghong, and Xiao Yang, it can be directly equivalent to hundreds of thousands of movie tickets and millions of audience views. But in Xiaohongshu, it is difficult to judge the expected effect of the launch based on the number of fans of the blogger. Film and television products often do not have a sophisticated and manpower-rich sales department that can allocate the budget to each potential KOC.
Dong Yuhui & "Article 20" filmmakers' live broadcast
On the other hand, what makes Xiaohongshu's film and television marketing enter a certain "inner loop" is precisely the high stickiness of users.The logic of is different from that of merchants. Film and television works are often sources of traffic themselves. This means that even if film and television promotions are not released, KOC himself is very likely to publish relevant content on his own out of the motive of "hot spots" to increase exposure. . Therefore, even if film and television companies recognize the high value of Xiaohongshu as a publicity and distribution platform, highly popular works are likely to achieve considerable dissemination without being released at all, while low-popularity works are likely to have their own publicity and distribution. The budget is also relatively limited. This makes the entire business model of the film and television industry have limited imagination.
It has always been said that Xiaohongshu makes wedding dresses for others, and the same seems to be true when it comes to the film and television industry. Xiaohongshu users may have generated a lot of cultural memes based on film and television content, but in the end their traffic did not stay on the platform but overflowed. For example, "Lotus Tower", which has a considerable long-tail effect, Xiaohongshu organized an offline check-in event for it, but the subsequent profits were not included in it. According to iQiyi’s post-earnings conference call on Q3, it disclosed that its derivatives sales have exceeded 18 million yuan.
Small business as a buffer
From a business perspective, film and television may not be a must-have for Xiaohongshu, but from the perspective of accelerating commercialization, film and television is an excellent buffer. As the most daily cultural consumption of the public, film and television content can naturally alleviate the dilemma of conflict between commercialization and content ecology.
According to Lei Feng.com, Xiaohongshu once set a target of 140 million dau in 2023, but after experiencing growth in the second half of the year, Xiaohongshu dau still did not reach 120 million. According to iiMedia Consulting data, among the reasons why users abandoned Xiaohongshu midway in 2023, 50.6% of users said that the platform had too many grassroots and advertisements, and 50.6% of users said that the platform had too much false information (not ideal after actual testing) ). It can be seen from that Xiaohongshu’s radical commercialization strategy has touched the user ecological red line in the traditional consumer industry.
However, in the business of the film and television industry, it is difficult for users to be persuaded to quit because a certain film and television work recommended by a blogger is not to their liking. On the one hand, there is no need to pay directly for film and television works in the drama variety category, and the unit price of movies is also low, which does not incur huge trust costs. On the other hand, the likes and dislikes of film and television works are also more individualized, and there is no "" Situations of "substandard quality" and "fraudulent effects".
In addition, if we use other picture and text communities such as Zhihu and Hupu as a yardstick, Xiaohongshu’s video transformation has already achieved initial results, which also makes its content ecology more suitable for film and television promotions. According to Cass data statistics, among the Xiaohongshu bloggers with the most followers in 2023, only those who specialize in videos or those who combine videos and text, and almost none who specialize in pictures and text. However, their main tracks are still traditional categories such as plot accounts, fashion accounts, and evaluation accounts.
is similar to traditional picture and text communities such as Hupu and Zhihu. It also intends to get a piece of the film and television industry, but it cannot get in. The failure of the content ecosystem to transform into video is one of the key factors. Most of the videos on Hupu are transferred from Douyin and have no original content; while Zhihu hopes to take the road of knowledge-based videos, but it has been taken over by Bilibili early on.
has no advantages in content ecology, let alone commercial components. Although 's hot search value is not as good as Weibo's and its traffic pool is not as good as Douyin's, only Douban's scoring mechanism has the lowest learning cost, so it has successfully become their first choice to get involved in the film and television business.
Hupu, Zhihu, and even Bilibili have opened ratings for film and television works. Although the number of raters is relatively limited and the authority is far from enough, it is also a good sample to observe the likes and dislikes of users in a specific circle of film and television works. However, unless there is a major public relations crisis, it is still a bit reluctant to attract film and television producers to "move money" on these rating systems.
is not as good as the previous one, but more than the lower one. To a certain extent, the distance between Xiaohongshu and entertainment is the result of its own choice. After entered the entertainment industry with Internet capital in 2017, many national-level apps chose to be launched in variety shows, including Xiaohongshu.According to a report by Lamian, after the release of "Idol Producer", Xiaohongshu's installed base surged by 40% after the third month. Since then, Xiaohongshu has copied similar marketing to "Produce 101". However, this rhythm of being head-to-head with the entertainment industry, which has a strong aggregation effect, did not last long. In the data disclosed later, Xiaohongshu attracted nearly 1,000 celebrities from 2018 to 2019, but the number dropped rapidly from 2019 to 2023. It was reduced to less than 300 people. Making this choice may take into account both community and growth factors.
Everyone knows what happened later. Xiaohongshu is trying to do something different from Douyin, Hupu, and Bilibili. Start promoting people in interest circles and become a popular culture promoter. But time has changed, and Xiaohongshu is now one of the applications with 100 million dau. In this dimension of 100 million users, when thinking about what is "useful" content, the placement may have changed from that in previous years. no the same.
In the face of growth, should Xiaohongshu, the bowl of "baby food supplement" from film and television, eat it? Everyone is waiting for an answer.
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