Lost in Russia, the first marketing hit in 2020

When users across the country were staying at home, Xu Zheng's "Lost in Russia" announced its withdrawal from the Spring Festival schedule and joined hands with ByteDance, and was launched on Xigua Video and other platforms for free, attracting the attention and discussion of the whole nation. It may be a coincidence that the first marketing screen-sweeping event in 2019, "What's Peppa Pig?", also broke out on the eve of the Spring Festival and was also related to movie promotion. It eventually became the most typical marketing case in 2019.

The outbreak forced many films to withdraw from the Spring Festival schedule. On January 23, seven films including "Detective Chinatown 3", "Lost in Russia", "Jiang Ziya", "Win the Championship" (also known as "Chinese Women's Volleyball Team"), "Emergency Rescue", "The Vanguard" and "Boonie Bears" announced their withdrawal from the Spring Festival schedule. Subsequently, theaters in various places also began to announce suspension of business to prevent the spread of the epidemic.

Obviously, the disappearance of the Spring Festival period has a huge impact on the 2020 annual movie box office. According to relevant data, the contribution of the Spring Festival period to the total annual box office has continued to rise from 2.51% in 2012 to 9.5% in 2018, while the Spring Festival period only accounts for 1.9% of the days in the whole year. To a large extent, it can be said that the Spring Festival period activates the Chinese film and television industry.

The fame and fortune of Lost in Russia stems from the failure of the film

Strictly speaking, the collaboration between "Lost in Russia" and ByteDance is not just a simple marketing behavior. Behind it is the future strategic cooperation between ByteDance and Huanxi Media, as well as a self-rescue by Xu Zheng and the producers.

I believe that viewers who have watched "Lost in Russia" know that the quality of Xu Zheng's "Lost in Russia" series of films has declined significantly, and Huanxi Media has signed a 2.4 billion box office betting agreement with Hengdian Film Group. Considering the quality of "Lost in Russia", the pressure is huge. Xu Zheng sold "Lost in Russia" to ByteDance for 630 million yuan in order to terminate the gambling agreement. In essence, this was due to his pessimism about the film itself and he wanted to pocket the money in advance.

Judging from the final result, this operation can be said to be a win-win for all parties: Xu Zheng cashed in, and Huanxi Media's stock price soared; although ByteDance spent more than 600 million to buy copyrights, it was able to effectively attract new users for apps such as Xigua Video and gain network-wide popularity, and also earned the title of "film and television industry reformer"; ordinary audiences also got to watch movies at home for free. The most aggrieved are only the offline theaters, and that is why Wanda, Bona, Jinyi, Dadi and other theaters began to jointly boycott Xu Zheng and Huanshi Media.

ByteDance is harvesting movies and TV series and seizing the theater base

The online premiere of "Lost in Russia" may be a first for the Chinese film industry, but it also happens to touch the cake of offline theaters, because if users watch the film online, they are unlikely to watch the film offline again in the future, which means that offline traffic revenue is diverted to online channels.

In order to protect the profits of offline theaters, the practice in the film and television industry is to give offline theaters a "window period" for release. Only after this window period can movies be played on online channels. The sudden release of Lost in Russia not only took advantage of the pneumonia incident to achieve free viewing during the "zero window period", but also made the ground-based promotion done by many offline theaters before the film's release become "other people's wedding dress", which naturally caused a strong backlash.

On the other hand, it is not difficult to find that ByteDance has always intended to focus on long videos and enter the film and television industry. Xigua Video has been promoting free TV series/movies in its advertisements for quite some time. According to the official account "Shen Xiang", ByteDance has also bought classic TV series such as "Home with Kids", "Fair Wife", "Drawing Sword", and "Iron Teeth and Bronze Teeth Ji Xiaolan". In order to enhance the tone of the community, Xigua Video introduced BBC's "Dracula" for free broadcast. In addition, it is said that Xigua Video is still poaching a large number of UP hosts from Bilibili, and many industry observers also believe that there will be a battle between Bilibili and Xigua Video in the end.

Behind the "Lost in Russia" incident is actually a siege battle between online streaming platforms represented by ByteDance and offline theaters. Many observers believe that ByteDance will become a "changer" in the film and television industry and will lead the "theater and Internet synchronized" film promotion and marketing model, but obviously things are not that simple.

Online or offline, is that a question?

Judging from the situation abroad, Netflix, as a typical representative of online streaming platforms, has tried many times to enter the film and television industry, but has always been resisted by the Hollywood system and theater companies. Some large theater companies have refused to screen "Roma" released by Netflix, and even traditional big directors such as Spielberg and Nolan are dissatisfied with Netflix. The Cannes Film Festival has also fallen out with Netflix.

Although movies released by Netflix such as "Roma" and "The Irishman" have won many film awards, and Netflix has also attracted heavyweight directors such as Martin Scorsese, it is obvious that these movies are usually art films that are well-received but not popular. Martin Scorsese also publicly stated that the reason why "The Irishman" was invested in Netflix was because Netflix was the only investor willing to invest in the film at the time.

Unlike Netflix, which reshaped the American television industry with "House of Cards", the film industry is not so easily reshaped by Netflix. This is also the dilemma that ByteDance faces when it wants to enter the film and television industry through an online streaming platform.

At present, the monetization efficiency of offline theaters for film products is much higher than that of online charging. Now, the total box office of "Wolf Warrior 2" exceeds 5.6 billion, but if it is placed on an online platform for charged on-demand viewing, the revenue will obviously be several orders of magnitude less. We believe that in the long run, online platforms will divert some niche genre film audiences and individual audiences, but they are far from being able to replace or subvert offline theaters.

The reason is not only that offline theaters have better audio-visual experience, but also because offline movie watching is not only an entertainment consumption behavior, but also an offline social behavior. In many cases, it doesn’t even matter what movie to watch, what is important is going to the movies together. This kind of inherent offline sociality is something that streaming platforms cannot provide.

Conclusion

We tend to believe that the free broadcast of "Lost in Russia" is just the product of a black swan event, and the model is difficult to be replicated by others. The fact that "Lost in Russia" chose to broadcast it online for free also shows that Huanxi Media is not optimistic about the film's market competition.

But it is worth noting that Huanxi Media has signed a future cooperation agreement with ByteDance, and seems to be trying to feed the "Huanxi Premiere" streaming platform with ByteDance's traffic. Although I personally am not optimistic about it, once the "Huanxi Premiere" model is implemented, the impact on the film industry will undoubtedly be huge.

In any case, Internet tycoons such as Apple, Netflix, and ByteDance have begun to transform the film industry with huge amounts of capital and traffic.

Author: Spread Gymnastics

Source: Spread Gymnastics (chuanboticao)