Another gay web drama has become popular, and the driving force behind it is actually a lesbian social APP!

Two dramas are very popular recently. One is called "Addicted", which has just been removed from the shelves because it was too popular. The other is called "Wrong Gender, Right Love", which has been viewed more than 10 million times in 24 hours, with more than 300 million related topics on Weibo, ranking first on the hot search list. You may already know why these two web dramas are so popular, because of the homosexual themes, but you may not know a lesbian dating app called "LESDO", which has promoted many homosexual-themed movies including "The Wrong Gender, the Right Love", "Yes or No 2.5 (Love If You Want)" and "Xia Xuevian", and has accumulated more than 2 million users for its APP through the popularity of web dramas. Are those marketing communication methods that cannot divert traffic weak? Let’s talk about this today.

Let me first give you some background: micro-movies and web dramas were actually popular for a while in the past few years, but there are not many web dramas as successful as "Diaosi Nanzi" and "Wanwan Expected". I still vaguely remember that a few years ago, if a company shot a web drama, it could still be regarded as a news report. But just when we all thought that the web dramas had rough and lengthy plots and were not as artistically appealing as TV dramas adapted from online novels, two web dramas began to be popular this year, namely "The Rise of Phoenixes" and "Addicted". Coincidentally, after they became popular, they were taken off the shelves by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, and sent a strong signal: Be careful with web dramas that are too explicit!

Especially "Addicted", because of its campus theme, suspected drug-related content, gay plot and overly explicit scenes (PS: I haven't seen it, I've only heard about it), it directly led to the issuance of a "ban". As a result, the day after "Addicted" was removed from the shelves, another lesbian-themed web drama "Wrong Gender, Right Love" became a hit. Not only was it featured on the homepages of major video websites including LeTV, achieving over 10 million views within 24 hours, it also easily sparked multiple hot topics on Weibo. According to incomplete statistics, the three Weibo marketing topics #Wrong gender, not bad love#, #I have a way to seduce girls#, and #Wrong gender, not bad love#, have accumulated over 100 million views within 3 days of being online, and have now exceeded 300 million views. Among them, #wrong gender, bad love# easily ranked No.1 on Weibo's hot search list.

You may ask me three questions: 1. Why is the drama "Wrong Gender, Wrong Love" so popular? 2. What’s the significance of this drama becoming popular? 3. Can the “LESDO” APP promotion method be successfully replicated?

Let’s break it down.

1. Why is this drama so popular?

I think there are several reasons:

1. Homosexual plot. Gay-themed TV dramas and movies are becoming more and more popular in China. As for the reason, I think it has something to do with the massive "invasion" of two-dimensional culture and European and American gay culture from abroad. The post-90s generation has become more and more independent and assertive with the help of the Internet's connection effect. Although it is a niche group, the loyalty is extremely high. In fact, it is not a niche group. If we follow the number of Chinese netizens, the number of Lala users in China is in the tens of millions.

2. The release time is just right to take over from "Addicted". The former was removed from the shelves, and both the video website platform and the hungry consumers needed a web drama of the same theme to fill the slot;

3. KOL and Weibo promotion . There is no doubt that the popularity of the drama on Weibo mentioned above was due to the fact that the drama was promoted by a group of KOLs who have high popularity in the gay community and their segmented fan groups. Eventually, a lot of traffic was directed from social media to video sites. But it seems that other brands find it difficult to achieve such good conversions when making hot topics on Weibo. Why? I will analyze it later.

4. The driving force behind this drama is a lesbian dating app called "LESDO", which already has more than 2 million registered users and vertically covers 10 million precise lesbian populations. This level of "tap water" directly pushed this film with mediocre production level to the first place on Weibo's popular movie list.

2. What’s the significance of this drama becoming popular?

Yes, because it once again verified the model of "user positioning + film and television drama promotion + APP user diversion".

"LESDO" is a lesbian dating app. Due to its specific user attributes, there are not many ways to promote this app itself. Its co-founder and CEO Zeye told me that since the second half of 2015, the team has tried many App channel promotion methods, but found that the cost of acquiring a single user is very high and user retention is relatively low. But the promotional cooperation surrounding lesbian-themed movies helped it find a golden key.

The lesbian market in China started late. At that time, there were no good lesbian-themed film and television works in the country to meet user needs. "Yes or No1" was the box office champion of Thai theaters in 2010, and later gained both fame and fortune when it was paid for distribution on domestic video websites. Later they filmed "Yes or No2". This series of movies is well known to the domestic lesbian community, and the two leading actors have also been invited to "Day Day Up" and "Happy Camp".

When talking about why they wanted to introduce this movie, Zeye said: "The LESDO team took into account the following considerations: 1. Lesbians are a narrow demographic and are very scattered on the Internet, but their cultural needs are extremely strong, and high-quality content should penetrate into this demographic; 2. The lead actress, Tina, is one of the most popular stars among lesbians when we were doing user research. She already has a good fan base and a good reputation in the lesbian community, and she has a T image (although she has not come out in the media). 3. In fact, we were planning to shoot a drama like this at the time. After comprehensive consideration, we decided to do this project first."

After actively introducing the film, LESDO first played it exclusively on the APP. Due to accurate user positioning and the spread of the film through word of mouth, the number of users began to surge. It is reported that the film has been played more than 1 million times within the APP alone, and related topics have been discussed 180,000 times, helping "LESDO" to almost double its user base, and it was also able to make money by charging promotion fees from the film company. After this method of promotion and attracting new users was successful, it was successfully replicated one after another.

From the movie " The Imitation Game " starring Benedict Cumberbatch, to self-produced web dramas such as "Something Like Love", "Mr. X and I", and "Vianney Chan", with the popularity of gay film and television dramas, the number of APP downloads has also increased. "Wrong Gender, Right Love" is the most recent one.

3. Can the “LESDO” APP promotion method be successfully replicated?

In fact, the uncle left a question before, which is the Lala KOL community, because whether it is APP promotion or improving user retention and activity, people are the most critical. "LESDO" started planning this area very early and developed three forms of cooperation: 1. Signing contracts to become its own artists. Of course, such people must have the potential to be trained into stars, and will participate in works produced by "LESDO" and even participate in marketing projects. 2. There is a type of people who are already famous on the Internet, have high looks, and can sing and dance. "LESDO" will pull them into the APP and help them gain more attention. 3. There is another type of experts who are very talented and are discovered in the APP. "LESDO" will regularly commission them to produce PGC content in the APP, such as serialized novels, serialized comics, photographic works, etc., and both the content and the people will gain attention.

At this point, you should be able to understand why "LESDO" can easily create multiple hot topics on Weibo. Compared with the simple promotion of general brands looking for public relations companies to buy some large Weibo resources for reposting, the former is indeed much more advanced. Of course, in addition to channels, content is also critical because it is the vehicle for people to watch, discuss and pass on.

The last question is, can the “LESDO” APP promotion method be successfully replicated? I think it is definitely possible, because the communities or groups of people in the future will be segmented and more vertical, people's labels will become more and more obvious, and there will be more and more apps or communities focusing on and serving this group of people. But sometimes it may be difficult for you to find this group of people. It is no longer useful to place a "missing person notice" advertisement in the People's Daily or CCTV-1. What should you do? You can learn from "LESDO": produce content that this group of people want to watch, cultivate or unite the KOLs of this group, promote it with the help of large platforms, and then establish a "recycling mechanism", or even just pass on the information that can serve this group, perhaps, you may usher in a tipping point.

At present, the valuation of the "LESDO" APP has exceeded 100 million yuan. The only problem to be solved may be the "ban" from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, which has not yet been officially issued. In this regard, Zeye said: "It is an inevitable trend for gay culture and two-dimensional content to enter mainstream culture, and the forms of creation can be very diverse, not limited to online dramas. More importantly, the production of positive and healthy content for gays will not be restricted like some works. For example, last year, the biographical film "The Imitation Game" about Turing (gay), the father of computer, was released in China and received very good reviews. The key is to control the plot."

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This article was written by @万能大叔 and published by (APP Top Promotion). Reprinting this article requires the consent of Top Promotion , and please attach the link to this article!