The new gameplay of video websites from the popularity of "The Return"

A video website opened an "eco-store" on Tmall. If you are still stuck in the inertial thinking of copyright wars and traffic wars among video websites, this seems to be irrelevant news. But one company has pioneered this new way of playing, taking advantage of the recent Mother's Day and the emotional blockbuster "Coming Home", selling movie tickets in advance before the premiere, and staged a counterattack preview performance. Many people may guess that LeTV, which plays with ecology and was considered "unprofessional" in the early years, always does unorthodox things.

In fact, if we point out the names, everything may be possible. In the video website game, LeTV has taken a different path and is the only company that has not been "kept". When Alibaba acquired Youku, the industry commented that "the ecological war has begun", but before the words were spoken, LeTV began to show its cards.

Deeply manage users and share the fan economy

The term "fan economy" is very popular now. LeTV's expansion from a video website to LeTV TV smart TV, LeTV Pictures and other industries is actually a practice of sharing the fan economy. To share the fan economy, the first problem is to solve the problem of the number of fans. Because whether it is playing the ecological chain or simply selling advertisements like Youku and iQiyi, without a large number of users and highly active fans, no matter how rich the back-end business is, the user bottleneck will become a bottleneck.

Back to LeTV's opening of an "eco-store" on Tmall to sell preview tickets for "Coming Home", this time it is playing the emotional marketing card, and the ultimate goal is to create a large fan circle and guide users into LeTV's ecosystem to become living water. However, LeTV also understands the truth that "marketing without emotional appeal is hooliganism", so it took advantage of Mother's Day, a "love-flooding" stall, the star influence of Gong Li, Chen Daoming, Zhang Huiwen, Yan Ni, Zhang Jiayi, and the explosion of "Coming Home", to attract a large number of users.

Speaking of the drama "The Return", movies are becoming more and more down-to-earth. The current era is an era where losers recall their childhood and return to simple emotions, so there are songs like "Where Has Time Gone" that are very popular. "The Return" also has a clear historical background, so after LeTV's Tmall ecological store launched the preview tickets for "Family Returns Only Love Lasts Forever", they were sold out in a few days. You can also watch it in the theater 5 days in advance, which also caught up with the time when young people accompany their parents to watch movies. The timing is well controlled. Presumably, laughing and crying, crying and laughing, can allow LeTV to capture the hearts of many users and convert them into loyal fans.

In fact, this is also a reflection of Internet thinking. How to better manage users is more worthy of attention than how much goods are sold. To use the now popular O2O term, this time LeTV opened a store to sell tickets, watch movies online, and held meet-and-greet sessions with many first-line celebrities. To put it bluntly, they are all adding fuel to the "fan effect", allowing users to feel "privileges" and "patents" and gradually form a sense of belonging. This marketing method brings fans stickiness and activity far higher than simple touch.

Collaborate with other industries to increase value

After talking so much about marketing, if you understand LeEco's ecosystem, you will know that this is a process of "injecting water" into the ecosystem. The users who are attracted will settle in it and become the payers of income and services. This is the way to play the ecosystem, and it is a high-level model that must be introduced after the Internet enters the deep waters of competition. As the first video website to enter the e-commerce platform, LeEco has achieved the cross-industry synergy effect of "e-commerce + video + entertainment", which brings the overall value gain of LeEco's ecosystem.

Here, LeTV did not regard Tmall as a simple channel, but took advantage of Tmall's advantages and influence in terms of brand, resources, etc. to become a "reservoir" for converting users, which can also be seen as a springboard, in order to make LeTV's ecosystem work, especially in the early stage, this choice is more important. Although LeTV also has LeTV Mall and LeTV TV stores, their positioning is different. The former plays a dual role of "fan acquisition + product sales", while the latter is more of a channel for shipment. But both are important components of LeTV's "content + application + platform + terminal" ecosystem.

Ecology is a vertical shaft, which integrates the industrial chain vertically, one link after another, and is articulated together to form a large network composed of various nodes. Users and traffic are fully connected, and the parent-level products incubate a series of related businesses and services, which can be highly integrated, and the value realization model is no longer a single-plank bridge. In other words, this way of playing is like an octopus. It is easy to form a "monopoly" and barrier effect in a certain field. It is also a "positive superposition" system that maximizes benefits. Once it is played well, at the critical juncture of the Internet's overwhelming power, it is easy to subvert an industry with a fulcrum.

By integrating the vertical industry chain, we are entering the competitive arena of the video industry.

To be honest, all the bigwigs in the Internet industry are good at setting up plans, but LeTV's ecological plan seemed unreliable at first. But now it seems to be the "most reliable" and clearest, which is the model of vertically integrating the industrial chain.

Take the opening of an ecological store on Tmall as an example. In terms of film, television, sports, entertainment and other content, LeTV has massive program resources, distribution and broadcasting channels. At the same time, it has LeTV TV, LeTV Box and other products covering the relevant home Internet territories, as well as LeTV Pictures, the acquired Huaer Film and Television and other film and television shooting and distribution platforms, plus the e-commerce "LeTV Mall + LeTV TV + LeTV Ecological Official Flagship Store", from content production, content distribution and promotion, content broadcasting, user introduction and other links, forming a vertically connected industrial chain.

At present, each link has been initially matured and has formed a certain scale. For example, in the first quarter of 2014, LeTV TV Super TV maintained the first place in online sales for three consecutive months (Q1), with a market share exceeding the total online market share of the three major foreign brands 3S (Sony, Sharp, Samsung). One out of every five TVs purchased online is a LeTV TV; iResearch IUT report shows that in the last week of March, the average daily coverage of LeTV Mall ranked 14th among B2C malls, and the weekly coverage ranked after Tmall, JD.com, etc.; the film and television and entertainment content resource reserves are at the forefront of the industry.

After the official launch of LeEco Ecosystem, it will not only produce a film and television work, but will also penetrate into a wider range of industries including artist brokerage, copyright authorization of works, and development of derivatives. It will be possible to leverage an industry with a fulcrum, or even to subvert it. In short, LeEco's launch of the sale of film and television derivatives has truly realized the closed loop of the industrial chain, attracting fans through emotional resonance, activating and precipitating loyal users through O2O, and making the entire ecosystem a source of living water. After completing the rolling expansion and accumulation of users, with the help of cross-industry amplification on external platforms such as Tmall, it will be connected to the ecological system, forming a diversified income model covering advertising business, smart TV, e-commerce, derivatives and other businesses, and providing users with a one-stop service experience. Compared with video websites that are still competing in the red ocean and whose profits are unpredictable, LeEco's business model is more reliable and has the ability to grow.

Of course, we can also imagine that if it is placed in the current scenario of new business models such as C2B and crowdfunding, the ecosystem with massive users, diversified puzzle business matrix, and the right to speak in the industry chain will become a gold mine to be mined, with the ability to reconstruct the film and television industry chain. In the future, we can explore innovative business models such as user participation in film and television scripts, production, shooting, distribution, and promotion. By then, the entire LeTV ecosystem can be revitalized or continuously increased in value, which is also the "high-level model" that Internet companies have been pursuing. Moreover, this ecological layout and gameplay are also the implementation and practice of Internet thinking, truly realizing the native gene based on information flow, the operation model based on big data, and the business chain expansion logic centered on user needs.

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.