Marketing Promotion: Why didn’t “A Bucket” go viral?

Jia Zhangke's short film "A Bucket" shot with the new iPhoneX was officially launched. Although Apple's official WeChat account quickly reached over 100,000 followers and caused some excitement in the circle of friends, it did not achieve the same screen-sweeping effect as Chen Kexin's "Three Minutes" last year. Why?

Before answering this question, let’s briefly review how “Three Minutes” dominated the screen last year.

1. Why did “Three Minutes” go viral?

1. Spring Festival travel is a big deal

Among the six methods of screen swiping, two are important things and hot topics. The editor believes that the success rate of important things is much higher than that of hot topics.

Therefore, when we choose to leverage the momentum of communication, if we are faced with important events and hot topics at the same time, I suggest that you choose important events without hesitation, although hot topics may also be upgraded to important events.

The Spring Festival travel rush is a big deal for the Chinese people because it is the world's largest annual population migration, involving 500 million Chinese people.

What I particularly want to emphasize is that last year, Apple released “Three Minutes” on the first day of the Spring Festival travel rush. This time point is particularly well chosen because this day has the most news and attention related to the Spring Festival travel rush.

2. True story

The content of "Three Minutes" is adapted from a true story, telling the story of a train conductor mother and her son who spent a brief 3 minutes together on the platform.

Yuan Foyu, the former general manager of NetEase's marketing department who had managed many screen-sweeping cases for NetEase, and my good friend and co-founder of New World, Wang Zaixing, both clearly stated in "Screen-sweeping": only real stories and real user insights can go viral. For example, "Buddha" - Wang Zaixing once told me that this was not created by New World, but was the result of observations of this life attitude of the majority of users.

Yuan Foyu even pointed out that 95% of the marketing cases on the market do not come from real user insights, and "real user insights" are one of the two elements of the screen-sweeping theory.

3. Neither Peter Chan nor iPhone X is as good as emotions

Both of them have high attention. Chen Kexin is a famous director, and iPhoneX was also a popular product last year with its selling points such as notch screen and faceIP. However, no matter how famous Chen Kexin and iPhoneX are, they can only attract the first wave of user attention. To achieve fission in the circle of friends, the story told in the video itself must be able to move people and drive readers' emotions.

Peter Chan: Three Minutes

Therefore, "Three Minutes" also conforms to several theories in the uncle's screen-sweeping methodology:

a/ The material is screen-sweeping. A micro-film is originally a video, but it raises the level of short videos to the level of movies;

b/Curiosity. Everyone is also very curious about what level of quality can be achieved by shooting a micro-film with a mobile phone. This curiosity also triggered the subsequent complaints and plot twists.

c/ Sense of identity. The Spring Festival travel rush must be heartfelt, focusing on family ties and the strong emotion of missing family members.

4. Complaints and plot twists

The first wave of screen-sweeping of "Three Minutes" moved everyone, but the second wave started with complaints and even doubts: Was this really shot with an Apple phone? It turned out that the short film used a lot of professional and expensive auxiliary equipment, and these things were only briefly mentioned at the end of the film with "additional equipment and apps used". The plot twist once again helped push the video to go viral.

2. Why didn’t “A Bucket” go viral?

After reviewing last year, let’s analyze this year. In fact, after comparing, you may see some differences. Although Apple continued to choose to release a short film shot by a famous director during the Spring Festival travel rush, the general routine remained unchanged, but there were many changes in many details.

1. It is not the first day of the Spring Festival travel rush

The official first day of the 2019 Spring Festival travel rush is January 21, which is the 16th day of the 12th lunar month, while the first day of the 2018 Spring Festival travel rush was February 1, which is also the 16th day of the 12th lunar month.

This year, the video was not pushed on the first day of the Spring Festival travel rush, but on January 25, which was four days later than last year. Apple actually noticed this problem, so it released a warm-up poster for the short film on January 21. The end result is that it seems that the discussion about this warm-up poster is even more intense than the video.

I have said many times, including swiping the screen, that communication in the mobile Internet era is pulsed, which means that there is no need for preheating. The "What's Up with Peppa Pig" a few days ago is a typical example. The official movie was preheated on Weibo for several days, and there was only one comment, but it did not prevent this preheating short film from swiping the screen.

The Spring Festival travel rush is actually divided into two stages: returning home and returning to the city. Most of the focus is on returning home, and the same is true for "Three Minutes". "A Bucket" tells the story of returning to the city, but it was promoted during the period of returning home. Obviously, Apple chose the wrong time to put its efforts.

2. The authenticity of the story is a little off

The overall level of the film is very high. The combination of the bucket and plastic tape is very realistic. My parents used exactly the same way to pack things for me. The only surprise was that the son finally opened the bucket and saw eggs. It was a bit illogical. If my parents asked me to take something back, they would definitely tell me what was in it, and I would ask too.

Then, the most crucial thing was that when the final emotion was about to rush up to the smiling egg, a group of multiple photos played in a PPT style disrupted all the accumulated emotions, and the picture was very jumpy.

The uncle believes that Apple’s Spring Festival travel marketing this time was very strong and it did a lot of work, but the production of the video itself was not as realistic and coherent as last year.

3. If your emotions fade, great directors and iPhoneXS are useless

Everyone is very curious: Can Jia Zhangke surpass Chen Kexin in level? This is curiosity, but one point is not enough.

Last year's "Three Minutes" was so tense and made me cry. I guess that director Jia Zhangke might not want to make the film too tragic, but he overlooked one point: emotions are not only a routine of screen swiping, but also the primary motivation for users to participate in screen swiping.

Jia Zhangke: A Bucket

So, although he is still a famous director, and although the iPhoneXS is not as stunning as the former, it is also a flagship, but it failed in the emotion of short videos. On the other hand, over-emphasizing Jia Zhangke's IP and excessive marketing and even promotional activities around short videos have become subtractions.

4. Users are too lazy to complain

If the first wave of emotion is not enough to motivate people, you have to rely on other points to attract attention, such as complaining. But obviously, the complaints mentioned above by the uncle cannot bring the fun of complaints to users, and cannot cause a plot reversal. If users are too lazy to complain, there will be no hope of flooding the screen with complaints.

5. The old routines need to be countered

The same routine, from a creative perspective, is not very fresh to users because I am already familiar with your routine. Therefore, the more mature the old routine is, the more it requires anti-routine operations, that is, there are many similarities, but also some differences, some new things that can give users an unexpected experience. In the entire dissemination of "A Bucket", at least for now, it's all old routines.

Source: Wannengdedashu