The turning point is coming: What can we do to maintain the popularity of IP?

In 2016, the competition for IP became even more intense. With many popular online novels such as "The Journey of Flower", "The Legend of Miyue", "Nirvana in Fire" and "Ghost Blows Out the Light" being adapted into film and television, animation, mobile games and other works, IP has entered the stage of deep cultivation in the entire copyright industry.

The current IP value bubble has always been a controversial topic. The criteria for measuring IP value include content, adaptation, production, market demand and other factors. Blindly pursuing the so-called super IP will only reduce its value to a simple media publicity gimmick, and even fans will not pay for the IP. For example, the recently released film "Jade Dynasty" by Guo Jingming can be said to have monopolized the IP of the novel itself. A number of big-name stars such as Wu Yifan, Fan Bingbing, and Chen Weiting have all used super IPs, but in the end it still failed at the box office of more than 300 million yuan.

When IP loses its monetization value, what else can we use to keep the IP popular?

Film and TV IP takes the lead

IP is the abbreviation of "intellectual property" in English, which literally means "intellectual property". So far, IP has triggered a boom in the entire industry chain in the fields of literature, film and television, and games.

Take TV series for example, in the list of the most popular TV series in 2015, "Grave Robbers' Chronicles", "Legend of Miyue", "The Journey of Flower" and other works are adapted from well-known online novels. In addition, literary IP adaptation is also a battlefield for producing excellent works, such as "Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace", "The Interpreter", "A Little Farewell", and TV series based on popular game IPs such as "Gujian Qitan 2" and "Chinese Paladin 5".

The two films adapted from "Ghost Blows Out the Light", "Nine-story Demon Tower" and "Mojin: The Lost Tomb", jointly generated 2.3 billion yuan in box office revenue in the Chinese film market in 2015, accounting for 5.2% of the total box office in 2015.

In addition to traditional movies and TV series, online dramas have also become an important part of promoting traditional IP. 2015 was a year of explosive growth for online dramas, with popular online drama IP works such as "Grave Robbers' Chronicles", "Diaosi Men", and "Psychological Crime" constantly breaking new records for online dramas.

iQIYI's exclusive web drama IPs such as "Yu Zui", "My Friend Miss Chen Bailu", and the orthodox mystery drama "The Crime Fighter" have triggered related topics that have directly swept Weibo and WeChat Moments. According to incomplete statistics, the first season of "Yu Zui" has been played 1.327 billion times, and the second season has been played 927 million times. In addition, "Painting Rivers and Lakes: The Bad Guys", adapted from the original animation IP and exclusively broadcast on iQIYI, has exceeded 30 million views in just 24 hours, attracting many followers to pay attention to its domestic animation IP.

According to statistics, the production of online dramas reached 379 series with 5,000 episodes in 2015, of which two-thirds were adapted from IPs. With the increase of phenomenal works and the continuous improvement and integration of various links in the industry chain, paying audiences have reached 17% of the entire audience group, and the number of hits on many popular IP online dramas has exceeded 1 billion times. For example, the total exposure of "Go Princess Go" has exceeded 2.6 billion times.

But strictly speaking, the success of a film or TV work cannot be directly equated with the success of IP operation.

First of all, a so-called IP needs to have a large worldview and story structure, enough characters, and strong imagination and scalability to support IP product forms in various fields such as literature, film and television, and games.

Secondly, IP needs to be supported by enough exciting content and be widely recognized by the audience. In this regard, the story and excitement of the animation IP "Big Fish and Begonia" are slightly weak, while "The Journey of Flower" is enough to support the expansion of IP in various fields due to its ups and downs in the development of the story.

Finally, IP needs time to accumulate and enough fans. From a simple and crude perspective, the operation of IP is essentially the operation of fan economy. The so-called "before broadcasting, it is popular" is because the IP itself has already accumulated a large enough fan base.

For example, the game World of Warcraft, which has a strong fan base and explosive power, sold over 10 million tickets for the premiere of the movie Warcraft before it was released, accounting for 98.2% of the box office. What players watch is no longer a movie, but a souvenir of their youth.

IP enclosure is risky

The first condition for choosing to adapt traditional IP is that the subsequent risks are relatively controllable.

In terms of attributes, IP has unique content capabilities, marketing value of its own topics, continuous personalized interpretation, integration of new technologies, and more efficient traffic monetization capabilities, which can achieve lower-cost dissemination and promotion.

However, we need to be vigilant. As the current capital market is overly pursuing IP concepts and hyping up IP popularity, the capital wave has driven wave after wave of IP enclosure movements. A large number of film and television companies have purchased online novels at high prices and used them to develop "huge profits". An analyst said, "Since 2015, IP prices have been crazy high. There may be a mentality in the market: If I don't buy (IP) now, it may be gone in 2016. The price will rise, and if I keep some in hand, I can resell it in two or three years."

In fact, many IP works do not actually have the same value as their prices. For example, before 2013, the copyrights of many excellent online novels were piled together but no one bought them. The cost of a few hundred thousand yuan could buy the adaptation rights of a so-called "super IP". After 2015, the value of these IPs has increased more than tenfold. Yu Zheng, who holds the copyrights of many novels, said that many online novels he has come into contact with generally start at 300,000 yuan for those that are not ranked; 500,000 yuan for those that are slightly famous; 1 million yuan for new books by well-known writers for movies and 1 million yuan for TV shows; the online copyrights of writers who have successful film and television works are directly priced at more than 5 million yuan per item, and the full copyright of the classic IP "Perfect World" was sold for nearly 40 million yuan.

In the final analysis, the overly impetuous market has driven up the IP bubble and damaged its own value. In the future, the bubble will only burst, and the remaining IP assets will only be able to go the route of high-quality products, or choose to link with other industries.

The explosion of game IP promotes the linkage between film and game

The gaming industry has always been the one with the largest profit margins, and it is even ahead of film and television adaptations in terms of IP adaptations. The mobile game IP boom began to show its power as early as two years ago. With the help of a large number of film and television adaptations this year, the mobile game IP boom, which has already harvested a wave of users, has ushered in a second round of IP explosion.

It can be said that the linkage between film and games is currently the most common operating model for film and television IPs. It not only achieves the continuation of IP popularity, the improvement of monetization capabilities, and the expansion of user groups through cross-border cooperation between the two entertainment forms of film and television and games.

Last year's "The Journey of Flower" was a phenomenal film-game linkage work, creating a myth of 200 million in monthly revenue. It can be said that mobile games made more money than film and television works. As a result, the entire mobile game industry has fully opened up a large-scale film-game linkage. In the current film and television industry, launching mobile games simultaneously has almost become a standard. Recent "Fantasy City", "Nine Continents Sky City", "The Legend of Chusen", etc. are all typical examples of film-game linkage. In the second half of the year, there will be more film-game linkage works ready to go.

However, the form of film-game linkage cannot guarantee the success of IP commercialization. The audience of IP themes, the schedule of film and television series, the overall publicity and promotion efforts, and the quality of the game itself are all indispensable elements. Ignoring any link may bring unexpected consequences.

Many manufacturers only see the profitable side of film-game linkage, but there are many works that fail in film-game linkage, such as Nirvana in Fire. After the mobile game of The Journey of Flower became a huge hit, another game company with a keen sense of smell immediately bought out the mobile game adaptation rights of Nirvana in Fire. However, unlike the popular film and television drama, the mobile game of the same name quickly attracted traffic on the first day of its launch, but fell off the best-selling list within just one week.

Series like "The Legend of Zhen Huan" and "The Legend of Miyue" missed the TV series schedule, making it difficult to form a film-game linkage and thus unable to fully exert the influence of the IP itself. In the early days, many manufacturers made this mistake, which made it difficult for the games to survive for a long time.

More importantly, when the popularity of film and television works fades, IP-adapted mobile games that do not have much content will be weak in the future. Whether it is IP or film and game linkage, they are just means to increase user attention. IP cannot directly change the quality of the game. The final retention rate still depends on the game itself.

The strong rise of Internet celebrity IP

In fact, whether it is game IP, movie IP, or online drama IP, they all belong to different categories on the horizontal axis, and from a vertical perspective, not all IPs can be called super IPs. The latter need to have a large fan base, strong natural traffic, deep content that can be mined, and core values ​​and philosophy.

For example, in superhero stories, each hero represents a different set of values, from Iron Man’s personal enjoyment to his subsequent courage to take responsibility, Captain America’s principled patriotism that does not tolerate compromise, Ant-Man’s civilian heroism that shoulders a heavy sense of responsibility, and Batman’s folk justice born from violence and chaos. Diverse values ​​target different types of people, and can generate a deep-rooted sense of identity among different audiences, which not only has the breadth of dissemination, but also the depth of dissemination.

The new internet celebrity economy that has exploded in today's Internet era currently represents the group with the highest traffic capacity for IP. It is no longer based on users' functional needs for products, but instead on their value orientation and spiritual identification. It forms commercial operations based on social network sedimentation-based community management.

Whether it is the explosion of short videos or the boost of live videos, in the Internet environment, new technologies and new cultures provide natural traffic momentum and fertile soil for the rise of Internet celebrities. Taking live broadcast platforms as an example, Douyu, Huya, Huajiao, Inke, Yizhibo, etc. have become the new battlefield for live broadcast Internet celebrities, and a group of high-quality talent anchors such as Yuan Zheng have been born; and taking Taobao stores as an example, Zhang Dayi, Xue Li, Zhao Daxi, Zhang Linchao, etc., with the model of taking photos of sample clothes, fan feedback, making patterns and putting them into production, and listing them on Taobao, have subverted the traditional e-commerce process of selecting styles, launching new products, and selling them.

In addition, Papi Jiang and Ai Kelili, who are once the most popular, SKM Poyin of Meipai, anchors of Himalaya FM and Qingting FM, up-hosts of Bilibili, Mogujie celebrities, nice fashion gurus, etc., have gathered a large number of fans with their personal charm and character, and thus formed a fan economy and community economy.

However, relatively speaking, from the perspective of the entire IP ecosystem, the sustainability of Internet celebrity IPs is not optimistic. From a commercial perspective, Internet celebrities’ online careers are too short to complete commercial incubation and complete business layout.

The most successful person in the commercialization of Internet celebrity IP is Kim Kardashian, who became famous due to the "sex tape" incident in 2007. She has dated or been married to many men and is a world-renowned American entertainment celebrity, fashion designer, actress, and entrepreneur. The mobile game company Glu Mobile even customized a simulation game for her, "Kim Kardashian: Hollywood", which includes many video segments such as Kardashian's character dating, dinner parties, and undressing. This game has achieved unprecedented success and has long topped the global Apple Store game download list, earning $146 million in revenue to date.

However, many factors, such as Kim Kardashian's unique individuality and the unique openness of the American entertainment industry, have contributed to her success as an individual internet celebrity. This kind of business phenomenon is extremely rare. Most of them try to build internet celebrities into professionals in a specific field, responsible for providing consumers with knowledge and information in the professional consumer field. This kind of precise traffic is becoming a new business entry point because of the effectiveness of conversion.

For example, Xiao Cang (real name Zhang Xiangling) has evolved from an e-sports practitioner to an internet celebrity with 1.2 million fans on the Douyu platform alone through her League of Legends game commentary videos. China's No. 1 e-sports player Sky (real name Li Xiaofeng) even entered the entrepreneurial circle in 2014, founded Titanium Technology, a company specializing in e-sports peripherals, and served as its CEO.

It can be said that internet celebrities who become popular simply by virtue of their good looks do not have much actual commercial value. Only characters with symbolic and value-bearing images can become a breakthrough for achieving commercial growth.

IP is not the savior

Does seizing the IP opportunity first mean success? The answer is no.

The movie "So You Are Still Here" only scored 4 points on the movie reputation website Douban, and its box office barely exceeded 300 million yuan; the movie "Summer's Desire" was adapted from Ming Xiaoxi's novel of the same name, which was deeply loved by fans of romance novels and was successively adapted into comics and TV series. After its release, the box office was extremely bleak; the magical blockbuster "Legend of the Gods" has a super IP such as "The List of the Gods", gathers many first-line stars, and claims to have invested 500 million yuan, but in the end it still got the labels of "God movie" and "bad movie".

Obviously, in the above cases, IP did not play any role in promoting and supporting the industry, and the core competitiveness still lies in the quality of the products. Even if the film is adapted from a popular IP, once the film falls into the vicious circle of empty content and homogenized themes, IP is no longer a magic weapon for success, but can only become an inducement for market bubbles.

Previously, director You Xiaogang (a male director and producer from mainland China) revealed the phenomenon of data fraud in the industry. He said frankly: "It can be said that 70% of TV drama data is fake, there are also a lot of fake box office, and the same is true for online drama click-through rates." He said that the concept of fresh meat or IP is driven by the market and will inevitably experience market adjustments in the end. Judging from the industry's forecast for the later stage of the summer market, the market has become rational about IP. After all, the number of people who watch movies purely for IP is small, and most audiences care more about the story content of the film.

In fact, creating a super IP is not something that can be achieved overnight. It requires years of word-of-mouth cultivation, a complete back-end industrial chain support, and the cooperation of the entire incubation environment.

As a super IP, the Star Wars celebration held in London, UK, sold 2.7 million pounds (about 24 million RMB) in tickets for a single day, not to mention the enthusiastic fans' consumption of Star Wars derivative products. In China, there are news everywhere that the production cost of a certain movie has reached hundreds of millions, but it is rare to hear about an annual celebration for a movie. It can be seen that China still has a long way to go on the road of super IP.

On the one hand, the film and television culture industry in the United States, South Korea, and even Japan is already in the 2.0 era. Film and television and industry have long been deeply integrated, and the profits of derivative industries are ten times that of the film and television industry.

Let’s take the American Star Wars IP as an example. Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which was released at the end of 2015, has driven the hot sales of Death Star T-shirts, font vella’s Darth Vader version of pure natural mineral water, SMS Audio’s limited edition headphones jointly launched with Star Wars, and Moleskine*StarWars themed limited edition notebooks. In addition, there is the BB-8 robot in the play, which is priced at $150, but sold 22,000 units in just 12 hours after its launch. Adidas, Crocs, Nestle, Kraft, Google, Lego, etc., all competed to launch joint cooperation products. In the end, the total box office of Star Wars 7 exceeded $2 billion, and the sales of the surrounding products in 2015-2016 reached $3-5 billion - this is the real power contained in the super IP.

In addition, the characters under Marvel Studios are no less impressive. A series of high-energy comic characters: Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men, Captain America, Thor... So far, Marvel has made its IP copyrights into a world-renowned profit weapon. Its characters have been licensed or sold to many film companies including Sony, Universal Pictures, 21st Century Fox, Lionsgate, etc., and more than 20 Marvel movies have been produced. On this basis, in addition to movies, Marvel's largest source of income comes more from its peripheral industries, including toys and IP product sales. From the beginning to the end, the character product rights have always been controlled by Marvel itself.

The fundamental issue still needs to return to the realization of IP value.

Market feedback shows that young online viewers are not averse to paying online for their favorite video content. In addition to user income from paid dramas and membership systems, online dramas have also begun to explore diversified profit. For example, in addition to hard advertising and implantation, online dramas can also be presented as independent content and exported to TV stations or cinemas to achieve content income, and finally cost income in the form of online drama derivatives and publications. The operating model of IP can make it like a magic cube, through permutations and combinations to achieve continuation and derivation, and also make its value grow exponentially instead of simple addition.

At the Open Ecosystem Conference of Youku Tudou in September, Gu Yongqiang, Chairman and CEO of Youku Tudou, believed that the cultural and entertainment industry is entering a golden age of explosive growth in the next ten years, and content and production have entered a stage of universal participation. Gu Yongqiang made a bold statement last year to invest 10 billion yuan in three years to build three major plans, focusing on supporting self-owned channels. Currently, the total number of Youku self-owned channels exceeds 30 million, and Youku original self-owned channels have earned 300 million yuan in the past year, and dozens of self-owned channels have received investment in the past year.

IP competition barriers lie in industrial linkage

In addition to the handful of super IPs like Star Wars and Marvel that can leverage huge markets, Disney's extremely mature global marketing channels and brand licensing system have also enabled it to remain prosperous for more than 40 years.

Disneyland is a global theme park founded and operated by the Walt Disney Company. It has now become the "aircraft carrier" of the global cultural and entertainment industry: Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, etc., these charming cartoon characters have influenced generations of people around the world. They have not aged with the growth of the post-70s and post-80s. To date, these elderly "old friends" are still "familiar" animation IPs for men, women, young and old around the world.

If it relies solely on ticket revenue, it can only basically maintain the wages of employees, and the part that can be used as profit is very small. Therefore, the ticket economy is not the entire revenue of Disneyland, and it even accounts for only a small part of the total revenue of the park. 60% of the park's revenue comes from secondary consumption such as derivatives. Virtual characters in movies such as Mickey Mouse, Cars, and Star Wars have created the industrial chain of Disney derivatives, which has opened up a series of consumer products such as movies, parks, cruise ships, clothing, publications, musicals, toys, food, education, daily necessities, and electronic products.

After "Frozen" became a global hit in 2014, dolls of the heroine Princess Elsa sold 26 million US dollars in the United States, and the "princess dresses" worn by the protagonists Anna and Elsa in the movie sold a total of 3 million in the United States, with each dress priced at US$149.95. Disney earned about US$400 million in revenue just from selling dresses, while the North American box office of "Frozen" was only more than US$400 million.

It can be seen that the multi-form and diversified ecological matrix composed of brands, enterprises, organizations, and individuals with strong subjective will is the greatest value and competitive barrier of IP to the industry. On the one hand, based on its own content value and fan value, IP can be further transmitted and amplified through new connections, and continuously enhanced and operated; at the same time, in addition to IP, through the continuous superposition of cross-border brands and differentiated content, as well as the sharing of specific consumption scenarios, the interconnection between the two parties is achieved, thereby achieving the goal of lower cost and higher efficiency.

IP stands for high-quality original content, low-cost and high-efficiency traffic control, and strong emotional personality shaping. All three are indispensable. However, the reason why IP has a fan halo is that the IP itself was created by the team at its inception, just like many of Stephen Chow’s movies are super IPs. Although they are nonsensical, how do you know how many retakes and script revisions are behind those funny actions? Just like the popularity of excellent TV series such as "All Quiet in Peking" and "Sparrow", who can comment on whether it is the super IP that made the TV series successful, or the TV series creation team that rebuilt the IP into a household super IP?

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.