The 4 major product operation routines behind the popularity of "Story of Yanxi Palace"

I had lunch with my colleagues last Friday. One of my colleagues, who was usually very happy at mealtime, just casually ate the food in the bowl while his eyes were always fixed on the mobile phone screen. I curiously asked her what she was watching so intently, and she said: "Story of Yanxi Palace". The female lead is so smart, and coupled with the double-speed playback and barrage, the experience of watching the drama couldn't be more enjoyable.

I thought to myself, isn’t this the Qing Dynasty web drama that has been flooding the friend circles recently? Could it be that Yu Ma’s Abao color is going to start attracting audiences again? With such confusion and curiosity, I watched the first 40 episodes in one go, and finally understood the four major product operation logics behind the popularity of "Story of Yanxi Palace".

01 Differentiated product operation strategy: the anti-routine setting of the heroine "Black Lotus"

When we make a product, we first conduct market research to verify whether our ideas are consistent with the market and whether users have such demand; if there is demand, whether there are similar competing products, and whether the market for such products is a blue ocean or a red ocean, as well as the position of our product in the market.

The market for palace fighting dramas is such a red ocean. No matter whether it is "The Legend of Zhen Huan", "The Legend of Miyue" or "The Empress of China", they basically follow this routine: when entering the palace, the heroine is kind and simple. By chance, the heroine was favored by the emperor and successfully became pregnant with the emperor's child. But the good times did not last long. Because the heroine was too favored, she was framed by her closest people and lost her unborn baby. Thus, the disheartened heroine began to transform from a white lotus to a dark one, slaying demons and monsters along the way, and finally became the winner in the harem.

If you continue to use the same routine to create, it will inevitably be forgotten in the market. Before creating "Story of Yanxi Palace", Yu Ma was well aware of the truth. So how to break the deadlock? Yu Ma gave the answer, which is differentiation. The essence of differentiation is to find new categories and spaces, giving users a reason to choose you instead of others.

"Story of Yanxi Palace" creates differentiation through the anti-routine setting of the heroine Black Lotus, which makes the audience's eyes light up. The heroine Wei Yingluo is no longer a naive and innocent girl, but has declared her sovereignty from the very beginning. I will not offend anyone unless they offend me. But if someone offends me, I will kill you, the "black lotus"!

But differentiation is not a panacea. At most, it can make you stand out, but it may not necessarily allow you to break out of the red ocean, because the differentiation that can truly allow you to break out must be based on meeting the needs of target users .

So let’s take a look at how Wei Yingluo meets user needs? She is smart, decisive, loyal and righteous. She knows exactly what she wants and can be willful and free in the way she likes. In contrast to the darkness and difficulties in our reality, her qualities and lifestyle are exactly what we hope for. She does all the things for us that we cannot do in real life, and she satisfies the imagination of most women .

In order to fully mobilize the emotional needs of users, Yu Ma arranged the "Ling Hou CP" (Wei Yingluo and Empress Fucha) line - Wei Yingluo is responsible for expressing freedom and self, while Empress Fucha is responsible for showing order and "other me" (how I should be in the minds of others). This contrast further strengthens Wei Yingluo's differentiated personality.

From this point of view, Yu Ma is indeed a capable person who is very good at observing the market and can fully grasp user preferences and needs.

02 The power of controversial topics: Yu Zheng, who has a tendency to plagiarize; Tan Zhuo, who is known as the "Dying to Survive"; and Wei Yingluo, who looks like Chen Xiao

Before watching a drama: "Even if I'm out of dramas, I won't even watch Yu Zheng's Story of Yanxi Palace!"

After watching the drama: "It smells so good."

Yu Zheng, known as "Yu Ma" in the industry. Whenever he is mentioned, the only three words that come to mind are "plagiarism", "ridiculousness" and "eye-catching". Anyone who has seen it knows that Yu Zheng’s previous dramas were filled with suffocating Abao colors and fluorescent colors, which were very eye-catching. He himself could not escape the notoriety of plagiarism, and after he was sued for plagiarism by Aunt Qiong Yao and lost the lawsuit, this notoriety became even worse.

Therefore, in the minds of the audience, Yu Zheng's dramas have almost been equated with "bad dramas", and "Yu Zheng" has even become a derogatory term . For example, when a drama is rated as "very Yu Zheng", it is most likely to be a flop.

But this time "Story of Yanxi Palace" is different. After watching it, many viewers expressed their feelings of "Yu Zheng's counterattack" and "this is so un-Yu Zheng", which is in conflict with the view of scolding Yu Zheng. The conflict between the two different viewpoints will attract those who have not watched the show to watch it and find out the truth, which brings popularity to the show.

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In addition, Tan Zhuo, who played the arrogant and domineering Concubine Gao in "Story of Yanxi Palace", also played the strong and tender single mother Liu Sihui in the recently popular "Dying to Survive". The "Yanxi" team seized on the contrast between the two personalities and created topics for publicity through forum channels such as iQiyi Movie Tickets, Maoyan, and Douban before the show aired. They took advantage of the popularity of "Dying to Survive Tan Zhuo" and successfully converted some of the "Dying to Survive" movie-watching groups into "Yanxi" sightseeing groups.

There is also the actress Wu Jinyan who played the female lead. A self-deprecating Weibo post during the broadcast triggered a fight between fans of Wu Jinyan and Chen Xiao. The popularity of "Story of Yanxi Palace" was successfully boosted once again.

Whether it is Yu Zheng, who has a "plagiarism physique", Tan Zhuo, who is "the god of medicine", or Wei Yingluo, who "looks like Chen Xiao", these topics have one thing in common, that is, they are controversial. Controversial topics have extremely strong dissemination energy and can often arouse users' desire to express themselves, thereby increasing the popularity of things related to the topic.

03 Traffic fission of “fan circle”: the process of finding incremental growth from existing seed users

Even if you haven’t watched Story of Yanxi Palace, you must know “yxgl”, “Black Lotus”, “White Moonlight”, “Venomous Tongue Bargainer” or have been swiped by the following emoticons :

Screen swiping is a scenario where everyone in your circle joins in the discussion about a certain product/service. Its essence is the result of traffic fission achieved by this product/service. So the question is, what exactly is traffic fission?

In my opinion, traffic fission is a process of finding incremental users from existing users . As people are the sum of social relationships, we can easily leave a product/service, but it is difficult to easily leave our circle of friends and network of relationships. Therefore , the process of traffic fission is actually a process of triggering the connection points around us and then spreading to the entire network of relationships .

Think about mobile games such as " Honor of Kings " and " PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds ", and think about why mini -games such as "Jump Jump", "Pirates Are Coming" , and "The Strongest Bounce" are so popular? It is because your friends keep telling you in group chats and Moments that they are playing XXX, and WeChat will also show you which of your friends are playing XXX. It is telling you what your friends are doing and driving you to integrate into this circle.

So how did "Story of Yanxi Palace" achieve traffic fission? The first is the gathering of seed users of the "fan circle". They use communities such as Weibo, Douban, Tuqu, and Super Star Fan Group as their bases, and by selling the protagonist's personality, every fan can quickly find the fan circle attribute positioning that they are familiar with, such as the mother fan "Chun Fei", the girlfriend fan "Er Qing", and there are also various CP combinations such as "Emperor and Empress CP", "Current Affairs CP", and "Queen Ling CP" for fans to take sides.

At the same time, the seed users of the "fan circle" will create the memes of "Yanxi Palace" every day, including emoticons, stickers, posts, etc., and then distribute them in the above communities . These carefully crafted gags are often very explosive and are even picked up by Weibo celebrities , and have appeared on Weibo's hot search list several times. This high frequency of exposure and sharing has caused the drama to spread rapidly among users, bringing more incremental growth to the drama.

04 Time environment: choosing the right time can achieve twice the result with half the effort

You have differentiated positioning, controversial figures, and "fan circle" fission, but if you want to maximize the fission effect, you still need to choose a good time.

At the beginning of this year, NetEase, Sanlian Weekly, and Xin Shixiang took advantage of the opportunity of returning to work during the Spring Festival (taking advantage of people's anxiety to improve themselves after returning to work) to launch online paid courses, which instantly went viral on WeChat Moments ;

In April, GiftTalk, which had been silent for a long time, took advantage of the Dragon Boat Festival, an important traditional festival, to attract millions of users to participate, and eventually achieved over 100 million exposures on the entire network;

In June, various fun quizzes took advantage of the Children's Day and started to flood the screen again...

A large number of cases have proved that choosing the right timing can achieve twice the result with half the effort in terms of product exposure. Yu Zheng is a man who can keenly sense the direction and opportunities of the TV drama market. An industry insider commented on Yu Zheng that he always knows what the audience wants and quickly puts it into action.

In 2011, he released "Palace Lock Heart", which is also about "time travel" and "succession struggle", before "Startling by Each Step", which was prepared earlier and produced better; now, when the much-anticipated blockbuster "Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace" has been repeatedly postponed, he has made a decisive move and released "Story of Yanxi Palace", which has the same historical background, turning the early momentum of "Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace" into his own use.

It has to be said that Yu Zheng is a businessman who is very good at grasping market trends and opportunities.

Finally, let’s review the four operational logics behind the popularity of “Story of Yanxi Palace”:

• In terms of product positioning , differentiation is created through the anti-routine of the character setting, and at the same time, a virtual self-life is created through the character setting, satisfying the user's fantasy of an ideal life;
• In terms of topic marketing , we plan, utilize and organize controversial characters and topics to attract the interest and attention of the audience and the media, thereby increasing the popularity and visibility of the drama.
• In terms of traffic fission , the essence is user fission . The seed users of the "fan circle" distribute easily spreadable memes such as emoticons, stickers, and posts, thereby reaching more users and achieving the goal of finding incremental users for existing users.
• In terms of time and environment , Yu Zheng followed the environmental power law of the "tipping point", seized the opportunity caused by the repeated postponements of "Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace", and turned the early potential energy of "Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace" into his own use.

All these factors combined made "Story of Yanxi Palace" a huge hit.