The first product manager in the film industry was Guo Jingming

Godard, the master of the French New Wave, might not have imagined that the Internet would create the 21st century and all his fears.

This summer, "Old Boys: Way of the Dragon", "Tiny Times 3" and "See You Tomorrow" have become the best condiments for popcorn in Chinese cinemas. They are all labeled as "Internet thinking". One of the proofs is that according to incomplete statistics from Sina Finance, the box office of these three films reached 200 million, 511 million and 521 million respectively, which is a result that can make many senior directors sweat.

Of course, the happiest people are the producers and investors. LeTV Pictures is one of the producers of the first two films. The performance this summer has made its CEO Zhang Zhao more determined to achieve a box office of 3 billion yuan for the whole year, which will account for 10% of the entire Chinese market.

However, Zhang Zhao is excited amidst his anxiety. On the one hand, as a traditional industry, the Chinese film industry has encountered the same challenges and disruptions as other industries in the Internet era. He hopes that LeTV Pictures will become an Internet company in the film industry. The key is to convert traffic into fans and then users, but BAT, who are skilled in this, have arrived.

According to incomplete statistics from Sina Finance, at the beginning of 2014, Internet companies represented by BAT have entered the film industry one after another. Strategic cooperation, mergers and acquisitions, and financing between the Internet and movies have come one after another. Old film companies are also making arrangements in the O2O field. In the first half of this year alone, the scale of funds involved has exceeded 20 billion yuan.

The Internet era of China's film industry has really arrived...

Guo Jingming is the first product manager in the Chinese film industry

In fact, Zhang Zhao's anxiety stems from two years ago, when he was thinking about where the Chinese film industry was headed in the Internet era. His solution was to build LeTV Pictures into an Internet company, and he began to work hard on O2O in 2012.

Because in the new context, a box office of 3 billion for an Internet company means more of an audience capacity of 100 million, or the number of moviegoers, which means that it has 100 million offline audiences in cinemas, rather than simple financial data.

The film industry model in the Internet era "can create value without famous directors and stars", "Old Boy" is an example, including "Tiny Times". "I don't need to pay high salaries to famous directors. We can create IPs ourselves to tap into the deep user value of IPs." Zhang Zhao said, and in his opinion, Guo Jingming is the first product manager of the Chinese film industry.

Before the release of the Tiny Times series, some people predicted that the box office would show a decreasing trend of "400 million, 300 million, 200 million, 100 million", because from the perspective of the traditional film industry's business model, Tiny Times had a strong negative reputation and fewer and fewer people would watch it. When filming the third and fourth Tiny Times series, Guo Jingming also found Zhang Zhao to discuss how to shoot the next story.

"We know that the entire business model is based on the fan economy, so the way we communicate with fans is to let them tell us what they are dissatisfied with in the first and second parts. It turns out that they feel that it is not 'Tiny Times' enough, no one mentioned any values, or that the structure of the story is incomplete. So we followed the fans' opinions, which is to create a more niche demand for this group of fans," said Zhang Zhao.

According to a survey by Sina Finance, in June 2013, the first film in the "Tiny Times" series was officially released and closed with 484 million yuan. The next film "Tiny Times 2" grossed 289 million yuan, and as of now, the cumulative box office of "Tiny Times 3" has exceeded 500 million yuan. The basis of these box office is 24 million readers of Guo Jingming's novels + fans of stars such as Yang Mi = 100 million potential viewers.

Zhang Zhao concluded that the success of "Tiny Times 1" and "Tiny Times 2" is the integration of fan economy and O2O (online + offline) business model, while "Tiny Times 3" is a successful case of Internet IP (intellectual property) + fan economy + cinema social networking + O2O marketing.

Of course, for practitioners and audiences who pursue film art, the good news is that not all directors have the ability and willingness to become product managers.

"Product managers are responsible for the results and user experience. In comparison, it doesn't matter whether these people know how to make movies or not. Their task is to create product experience and user experience. I am an investor and I use this platform to help them implement products and operate them." Sina Finance learned.

Zhang Zhao's definition of transformation into an Internet company is that LeTV Pictures may create more traffic in cinemas in the next 3-5 years. "For example, it may become 5 billion in 2015, 7 billion, 8 billion or more in 2016."

Fan economy becomes the focus of film companies

Like Tiny Times, fan economy and online video marketing are the key to the box office success of Old Boys Way of the Dragon, written and directed by Xiao Yang. In the words of producer Ke Liming, this film is a small business, there are no big stars, and the publicity and promotion costs are pitifully small, so a lot of publicity is necessary.

Colin Ming's solution is viral videos and entertainment marketing.

Of course, Chopstick Brothers and the MV of "Old Boy" became a hit on video websites four years ago and have accumulated some fans. According to Sina Entertainment News, before they went through many twists and turns to bring the big movie to the screen, due to their low popularity, it was still a problem for the director and actors to make headlines.

It was originally scheduled to be released on May 1, but the lack of attention became a constraint and had to be postponed. Ke Liming chose to create new words and events to awaken the old boy. He also made four videos to structure the movie step by step. Unexpectedly, the first divine song "Little Apple" that was released became a hit on the video website.

Sina Finance learned that according to statistics, 20.87% of the audience mentioned movie-related content when mentioning "Little Apple". This shows that the contribution of "Little Apple" to the movie box office is obvious.

In addition, Colinming also chose to cooperate with Yulebao and raised 20 million yuan through this product, but more importantly, it achieved the conversion of 2 million users and acquired resources.

Wang Xudong, director of the academic activities department of the Chinese Film Critics Society and producer, believes that based on director Xiao Yang and his Chopstick Brothers duo with Wang Taili, some of the content previously posted on online videos has constructed the interaction of the movie "Old Boy" under the premise of cultural consumption. The interaction between their characters and themes, and the interaction between works have become a very important cinematic mark of the film.

Of course, as the undisputed entertainment empire at the moment, Huayi Brothers has also been busy in its layout of the Internet, or rather, it started very early.

Investing in Shanda Games and purchasing Yinhan Technology not only brought good financial returns to Huayi Brothers, but also enabled them to gain traffic and fans.

"Time and Space Hunter" produced by Yinhan Technology is the first mobile game in China with a monthly turnover of over 100 million yuan. "Gods and Demons" launched in November last year has also achieved a monthly turnover of over 50 million yuan. In the first half of 2014 alone, Yinhan Games has achieved a turnover of 800 million yuan. These are the box office foundations for the upcoming film "Gods and Demons" of the same name by Huayi Brothers.

In Wang Zhongjun's view, the core of Huayi Brothers' Internet entertainment sector is games, new media and fan economy.

Zhang Zhao believes that the next step in the Internet fan economy will focus on in-depth fan movies, such as "bullet screen" screenings, which provide vertical and in-depth services for fans, and this depth also means increased stickiness. At the same time, how products of the same nature and fan groups interact and socialize with each other is also a new research direction.

"So we asked Wu Yifan to sing "Time Cooks Rain" to let his fans interact with Guo Jingming's fans. In the future, in the era of mobile Internet, how users behind each mobile IP interact with each other is an important topic."

Does the return on investment for movies in the Internet context have to be very high?

Wang Xudong also recently put forward the concept of "Internet generation" to make a realistic analysis of the film industry. That is, in the context of Internet society such as Sina Weibo and WeChat, the new changes in the film industry in terms of content, dissemination and other aspects have greatly driven the development path of other consumer fields such as online literature, online video, e-commerce, and performances.

Seizing the opportunity, Zhang Zhao revealed that the fourth part of Tiny Times will be released during the 2015 Spring Festival. "I hope the box office of the four episodes will exceed 2 billion yuan."

Compared with traditional industries, the film industry has undoubtedly achieved "huge profits" in a structural way. Zhang Zhao also believes that "the return on investment in movies is still very high."

As the curtain rose on the film industry in the Internet era, Sina Finance learned that Zhang Zhao said that one of his goals in recent years was to "invest about 1/10 of the box office. In other words, the box office investment ratio is 10 times." He revealed that the previously released "Boonie Bears and Raiders of the Lost Ark" had an investment of 10 million, but the box office achieved 250 million.

However, as a director of Ruyi Films, independent producer Ke Liming, who has invested in "Old Boy" and "So Young", believes that the film industry is a high-odds industry. But "as an independent production company, focus can reduce risks."

"As an investment management company, the producer's responsibility is to get investors to pay and for the director to realize his dream. And making two series of movies is enough."

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.