"Heart Flower Road" box office breaks 1 billion yuan: a combination of "e-commerce + traditional marketing"

Take "Xin Hua Lu Fang" as an example, its most important bright spot guarantee is through advance screening + pre-sale, at this point, the advantage of Internet e-commerce platform in film distribution has been fully highlighted.

since the National Day stalls led the way at the box office every day, "Love in Love" has maintained a gratifying box office growth all the way. As early as when the film had a high production rate of more than 35% per day (46.64% on the premiere day) and reached 800 million at the box office in 9 days, the producer, Cat's Eye Film (the exclusive online pre-sale platform) and Matt Culture (the media company responsible for the whole marketing of the film) unanimously expressed to I Dark Horse. The box office exceeded the expected 600 million yuan!

after the film was released for 10 days and grossed 800 million yuan at the box office, Wang Yibing told I Dark Horse that all digital copies used for film projection were made with a key, and the duration was usually 30 days. From the point of view of cinema release, if there is still market demand for our film after a month, there will still be a small number of screenings. According to estimates at the time, although the release of the Hollywood blockbuster Guardian of the Galaxy squeezed the schedule of "Heart Flowers" with a production rate of more than 40%, it would not be difficult to maintain about 20%, 25% of the production every day. As the only official pre-sale platform for the film's cooperation, Cat's Eye Film Director Xu Wu also expressed the same confidence: "We thought at the beginning that the National Day box office might exceed expectations, so the result was not too surprising. Because the possibility that the Internet can create will constantly surprise us."

< strong > A successful Internet publicity experiment: "Movie + O2O E-commerce" < / strong >

I have to say that with the e-commerce ticketing platform-Maoyan film joined in the early release, it did have a positive stimulating impact on the arrangement of the film after its release. The attempt of "crossing the river by feeling the stones" was based on the vision of creating box office growth, and finally achieved box office growth faster than expected. The success of this "movie + O2O" model is mainly reflected in the positive word-of-mouth brought to the market by advance screening and pre-sale, which stimulates the market demand, thus stimulating the confidence of cinema lines after the film is officially released.

according to the only pre-sale cooperation platform on the official website, the data provided by Cat's Eye movie to I Dark Horse shows that by the 30th, Cat's Eye had pre-sold 110 million of the box office. As of Oct. 9, the total box office of "Xinhuaolu" has reached 820 million, accounting for nearly half of the country's total box office.

faced with the gratifying box office results, film producer Wang Yibing said to I Black Horse: "at that time, we expected to achieve a box office of 6-650 million yuan during the National Day period, and the result exceeded more than 100 million."

because at present, the revenue of Chinese films is still dominated by the cinema box office, and it is the cinema arrangement that determines the box office, and the greatest impact on the cinema arrangement is the quality of the film itself, especially in the long-term arrangement. Usually, the film side can influence the film arrangement a few days before the release of the film through early publicity and various marketing means, while the longer-term production influence still depends on the word-of-mouth and market response of the film itself. For the cinema line layout manager, the most intuitive is actually to use the attendance rate of the cinema to speak.

I Dark Horse learned from the film that the average attendance of "Xin Hua Lu Fang" during the National Day has always been more than 35%, the highest reached more than 40%, and the average box office output accounted for 55% of the national market on that day. More than 60% of the box office has been produced with a screen rate of more than 30%. From this point, the attendance rate of "Xin Hua Lu Fang" is higher than the average attendance rate.

Wang Yibing, producer of "Heart Flowers", introduced to I Black Horse: "generally speaking, for cinemas, cinema revenue sells a space and time." The cinema is open for 14 hours and 10 halls a day, and it is willing to screen which film can generate more box office. Assuming that the cinema has arranged 10 shows for the film, and the attendance rate for each show is about 10%, it is obviously not happy for the cinema. Cinemas are more willing to arrange shows for those who can create more box office benefits per unit time. "

so, why can "Xin Hua Lu Fang" maintain a high typesetting rate all the way? In addition to benefiting from the traditional issuers (China Film Distribution and Ferris wheel cultural media), the use of Internet e-commerce platform is the icing on the cake. Take "Xin Hua Lu Fang" as an example, its most important bright spot guarantee is through advance screening + pre-sale, at this point, the advantage of Internet e-commerce platform in film distribution has been fully highlighted.

< strong > three screenings: promoting word of mouth and stimulating market demand < / strong >

three large-scale screenings were made before the official release, namely, the first screening on September 17: 300th, the second screening on September 21st: the remaining 800th, and the third screening on September 27th: 16000. Wang Yibing said that such a large-scale screening is the first time in the history of Chinese film. Previously, both sides have considered whether large-scale screenings will affect the box office after release, but the fact is that it is precisely through three rounds of screenings that spread a lot of positive word-of-mouth, giving cinemas great confidence in film production.

Wang Yibing told I Black Horse that the average attendance rate of the film reached more than 75% nationwide during screening, and even exceeded 90% in some areas such as Northeast and North China. According to public data, 3000 cinemas across the country participated in the production during the national time-limited screening (15:00-19:00) on Sept. 27, with the real-time attendance of 54.88% and the highest attendance of 93% in a single cinema. It grossed 28.5 million yuan at the box office in just four hours. "within four hours, the country lined up 16000 shows for" Heart Flowers. "on that day, the national box office market was more than 80 million, and we accounted for 30 percent of the total box office. Generally speaking, the average box office generated by a film during the screening period is in the millions. "

the box office of more than 3600 points of "Heart Flowers" is equivalent to producing 30% of the box office that day with about 10% of the show, which can be regarded as a phenomenal level, so these early market test data have brought great encouragement to cinemas.

< strong > pre-sale: create 110 million yuan at the box office for cinemas in advance, while locking in attendance, stimulating late production < / strong >

for cinemas, it is undoubtedly a good thing for cinemas to have e-commerce to create box office for them in advance. With the box office guarantee in advance, they are more willing to add more to the arrangement of the film after the film.

through pre-sale, in addition to creating box office revenue for cinemas in advance, the advantage is also reflected in the use of data provided by the Internet platform to do further accurate targeted marketing at the interval between pre-sale and pre-release, to feed back the traditional offline publicity and the work of the issuer. The advance pre-sale of the cat's eye for 15 days is also a precedent in the industry, which has also won more publicity cycles for the film side. Cat's Eye has deposited a large amount of user data through click-through and pre-sale activities, which clearly reflect the market acceptance of each region.

"We found that the pre-sale situation in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai is not as good as that in the north, and central China (Wuhan) is particularly good. Taking Wuhan as an example, it accounts for 60% of the entire market. We will give these effective bases to our publicity companies, and they will do some accurate publicity based on the data to strengthen the promotion. In fact, we have fixed votes in Tencent, Youku, Sina and other media. Which regions and cities have high acceptance, we will adopt the method of fixed voting to increase the amount of advertising in this area. At the same time, let our distribution push team go to specific cities and cinemas in this region to do one-to-one communication, and do offline activities and publicity with cinemas. When it comes to the implementation of the link, it is also an important work of traditional distribution. "

< strong > the process of traditional promotion of the Internet < / strong >

previously, some people in the industry believed that the trend of the Internet of film distribution in the future was that the film side would choose the following mode to operate, that is, to choose a financial crowdfunding platform + e-commerce platform (online ticketing) + video website mode. I Dark Horse also discussed this issue with Wang Yibing. He said that when doing the project, he did consider this layout. "We communicated with Yulebao, a financial crowdfunding platform, in the early stage. However, because the intervention of the financial platform often involves the equity allocation of the project, based on the intersection of cooperation at the time node, it failed to lead to cooperation. In addition, we also have exclusive online copyright cooperation with Youku, and Maoyan is the exclusive official pre-sale cooperation platform this time. "

from this point of view, as the online ticket platform is more deeply involved in the production and distribution of the film industry, the contribution of e-commerce online ticketing platform to the box office will continue to increase. Previously, the industry agreed that by the end of this year, online ticketing platforms would account for more than 50% of the country's total box office. In what way? For example, in conjunction with the film side and the cinema line to establish new rules of the typesetting game, and based on O2O online and offline user interaction, the future can better combine fan operations, derivative products, advertising sponsorship, there is still a lot of room for imagination.

< strong > how to add icing on the cake to traditional propaganda? < / strong >

Matt Culture (hereinafter referred to as "Matt") is the marketing company responsible for promoting the whole case of "Heart Flowers". Yue Yang, president of Matt, introduced to I Dark Horse that they were officially involved in the promotion of the film in July. This time, they did not participate in the film investment, but were responsible for the marketing of the whole project with the role of public relations. Matt's previous successful cases include "to Youth", "tiny Times" and so on, so how did they complete the project through a complete set of industrialization planning and implementation process?

apart from the basic publicity actions, the highlight of this project is the delivery of materials for specific groups of people.

< strong > orientation: male movie → (strong relationship movie) < / strong >

numerous examples prove that the crowd positioning of a film almost determines the overall direction of publicity, and then indirectly affects the trend of the box office to a certain extent. This experience comes from the negative textbook "waiting for the Wind" (the literary label is too heavy) and the positive textbook "Kitchen and riffraff" (featuring three male actors with a wider audience as the protagonists, rather than directors with a narrower audience).

generally speaking, the data of the first three months of the film will guide the whole publicity. The marketing company will first make an overall audience positioning of the film based on the market data analysis provided by the data company. At the beginning, Matt struggled with the crowd positioning of the film. Yue Yangyang, president of Matt, said: "We think the best film is a 'strong relationship' film, which can be shared by the whole family."

and the data company analysis obtained by Matt shows: first of all, 80% of the people radiated by director Ning Hao are mainly male audiences, covering people between the ages of 25 and 40, and these people have some attention on the Internet, but the interaction is not strong enough. The performance of the reaction on Weibo is only watching; second, the fans of Ning Hao, Xu Zheng and Huang Bo are highly overlapped, and Xu Zheng has more female audiences because of the success of "lost in Thailand". Matt's first step is to attract the attention of female audiences.

< strong > arouse the attention of female audiences < / strong >

Matt posted a trailer with a female perspective on the video website in July, and held a press conference on "Women's Flowers and Men's Love" hosted by Meng Fei in Beijing on July 20. Ning Hao took the film's eight female actors (Yuan Quan, Zhang Li, Zhou Dongyu, etc.) in this "if you are the one" activity. The release is accompanied by a trailer for the first exposure of "Women's area", which combines comedy modeling topics such as "Avatar", "Kill Matt" and "broken eyebrow makeup" on major media platforms. "what we advocate in the trailer is that this is a Ning Hao" black humor "style film, not only the male audience is worthy of the audience, the film has a large number of comedy elements and highlights worthy of women's attention."

aiming at the overall coverage of the film, Matt cooperated with Sina Entertainment when releasing the ultimate trailer, pushing video materials simultaneously on Weibo and major media platforms. Based on this part of the crowd with weak interaction, the traditional play is done to spread the channel in the form of omni-directional coverage.

< strong > aiming at the targeted launch of post-90s in Tencent space < / strong >

starting in August, Matt will focus all its publicity on post-90s, do roadshows in more than a dozen cities across the country, and cooperate with Tencent Space to combine the hashtag "Sanbike". "Ning Hao + S (the upgraded version of works after" No Man's Land "and" Golden robbery ") and other materials are released and directed to various areas. "according to the topic attention of Ning Hao, Xu Zheng and Huang Bo, we have made corresponding material input, and the effect is more accurate." Yue Yang said.

according to data provided by Sina Weibo, 60% of women began to be transferred after Weibo marketing in July and August, and the film attention index went straight online. Since September, the attention of men and women has been basically the same.

since September, ticketing platforms such as Matt and Maoyan have linked online and offline movies and pre-sales. The offline main battlefield is still mainly guided by "hot search words + topics of the film" and creative publicity activities. For example, the original comedy positioning of the film adds the label of the cure department to attract more people around to pay attention to the film. At the same time, the publicity done by the lead creator "The Voice of China" reached the best part in the campaign effect on August 25th.

in addition, on mobile, Matt advertised related materials on about 65 mobile APP, including Dianping, Didi Taxi, etc., and customized a movie game of the same name with a professional game development team. "We are very interested in the adsorption of mobile products to users, so we choose to cooperate with some active APP, the effect is very good."

generally speaking, the film mainly focuses on word-of-mouth marketing one month before and after it is released. Yue Yang believes that at this time, from the perspective of positioning, it should be to refine the big concept, this part is mainly by watching the audience and the media, film critics and so on as the carrier of communication.