Exclusive investigation ｜ Gains and losses from 400 million forecast to 800 million miserable marketing

Special feature of 1905 film network On August 31st, the single-day box office and film arrangement rate occupied the top three for 10 consecutive days, and fell to the fifth place on the closing day of the 2022 summer file.

After more than 50 days of release, the box office suddenly broke through 40 million, and the cat’s eye was predicted to be 100 million. The amazing counterattack of "Into the Dust" is a case worthy of analysis this summer.

In the nearly one month after the release of War of Tomorrow, the box office changes and industry disputes caused by its "poor marketing" are also worth reviewing. In 1905, the film network interviewed the relevant workers in the cinema, film promotion and short video marketing, and looked back at the "selling miserable marketing" of "Tomorrow’s War".

The "Misselling Story" in Tomorrow’s War

Spread out the timeline after the release of "Tomorrow’s Battle", how to implement miserable marketing? How does the box office follow the changes? Everything is clear.After the first weekend of the film’s screening on Tanabata, the box office plummeted. Cat’s Eye Professional predicted that the cumulative box office of the film was once adjusted from 552 million on the premiere day to 490 million.

The film is in a hurry and must hold the battlefield for the second weekend. On August 13th, The Battle of Tomorrow, the official website of Tik Tok released a short video of "The world is so cruel, and ten years’ hard work just doesn’t pay off", which portrayed the road show scene as a lonely man who failed at the box office. He wiped his face with a paper towel with bitter music and words, and spread it in tears. The number of video praises soared to 1.38 million, surpassing the popularity of all previous short videos.

The effect was so remarkable that the film began to concentrate on marketing to sell bad spots, and successively issued sensational short videos such as "Louis Koo’s speech made people cry, and I can correct the bad parts of the film", "Louis Koo has done his best, and only he knows how difficult the process is", and the propaganda points also included contents with moral kidnapping meaning such as "taking a 96-year-old grandfather to brush" and taking an 80-year-old father to support Louis Koo.

Perhaps Louis Koo himself didn’t want to sell badly, but the film side formed the "tragic" atmosphere of "Tomorrow’s Battle" and Louis Koo through the emotional rendering of short videos. Seeing this, the distressed fans quickly gathered their support, and the box office of the film fell for 13 days on August 14, and it rose for four consecutive days from August 15, and the total box office broke 400 million on August 17.

The disastrous marketing of "Tomorrow’s Battle" has prompted netizens to question the stealing of box office in Tik Tok. On August 19, the film published a letter to fans, saying that "after verifying that a merchant’s public account in Jiangxi illegally sold tickets, he received feedback on other issues of movie tickets."

This letter directly promoted more netizens to collect "evidence" of stealing the box office, and claimed that the capital suppressed "Tomorrow’s Battle", and even derived it from the accounts of Hong Kong stars, asking why they didn’t help Louis Koo with publicity, and farce was frequent.

Those who have been affected by stealing box office remarks have issued statements and sent lawyers’ letters to protect their rights. Misselling marketing gave birth to chaos in the industry, and the box office forecast of "Tomorrow’s Battle" rose to 805 million by August 22.

Manager Xie of Chongqing Baisha International Studios told us that many people don’t come to the cinema to watch movies several times a year just to support Louis Koo. "There are still a few people who say that it doesn’t matter whether the movie is good or not, that is, to support Louis Koo is all guided by public opinion, and there are more women in their thirties."

"Some people came to the front desk to ask about stealing the box office, asked if we were issuing tickets regularly, and told us not to put the tickets into other movies. One person also asked what the QR code on the ticket meant. I taught her to scan the code with her mobile phone. The 8 digits on the ticket are the code of the cinema, which is the regular ticket. "

Nowadays, viewers can check by scanning the two-dimensional code of movie tickets, and the ticketing system is strictly monitored. It is difficult for cinemas to count the box office of A movie as B movie.

Mr. Chen, the head of Yuemu Studio in Fuzhou, Jiangxi Province, was the "victim" of this box office theft incident. "Because the producer is my brother, I made a title hall to support his new film. Some netizens posted an article in the headline to dry the ticket stub and said that Broken Bridge stole the box office of Tomorrow’s Battle. He was obviously misleading the audience. The film is normally shown as "Tomorrow’s Battle" as shown in the movie ticket, and there is no relationship between the title of the cinema and the name of the film. "

Although the problem of handwritten tickets still occurs from time to time in some theaters, it is still a rare special case, but some netizens still magnify the mistakes of individual handwritten tickets and misunderstandings about the title hall on the short video platform.

"Tik Tok’s topic about stealing the box office is that there is traffic, and users are particularly sensitive to this." Mr. F, who has been engaged in Tik Tok marketing for a long time, believes that "the participants who stole the box office topic this time knew the truth but deliberately poured black water, created a topic, and brought traffic to their personal accounts, and the film side could not control it."

"Is Louis Koo’s next film going to sell badly?" A series of public opinion about stealing box office and moral kidnapping caused by the snowballing of Tomorrow’s Battle has been resented by many people in the industry, which not only hurts the same film, but also hurts the public’s trust in the film industry.

Gains and losses of selling miserable marketing

Selling miserable marketing is nothing new.Misselling is a common propaganda strategy after the film enters the market, including writing an open letter requesting more films, kidnapping nationalist feelings with the slogan of "supporting domestic production", or playing the card of creating bitterness to incite the audience to enter the cinema to support the film.

In 2015, only 1.5% of the films were released on the first day of release, and the May 1st film was about to drop by 1%. The director issued a letter to the audience, which wrote tragically, "This may be the best time for commercial films or the worst time for serious films." Call for "my audience, please support me!" After the letter was sent out, it did achieve certain results. From May 3, the film’s arrangement rate rose to the highest of 3.2%.

A more successful case was in 2016, when producer Fang Li knelt down and kowtowed to the cinema manager for the live broadcast of the director’s legacy, which shocked the industry. This embarrassment caused the proportion of the film to soar from the lowest 1.1% to the highest 11.3%, and the film jumped from a million box office to over 86 million box office.

In addition to minority literary films, commercial blockbusters will also use the means of selling miserably to gain attention to varying degrees.

At the beginning of the release of the Spring Festival movie in 2021, the box office was strongly suppressed by six competitors of the same category. The director issued a cry that "the film arrangement was too bad" and begged the cinema to squeeze one or two golden fields or not to completely cut the number of "Crowd".

In 2013, the box office was urged in a big way in the name of "owing a movie ticket to Master Xing". In 2019, this emotional routine obviously failed.

There are not a few examples of selling bad rollover or poor results, and 2017 is the most typical one. The film’s propaganda team tried to copy the model of "A Hundred Birds at the Phoenix" and begged for the box office, but painting a tiger was not a dog.

At that time, the film had already made more than 30 million box office. The "flash kneeling" not only had no sufficient reason, but also failed to be understood by the audience, and it was not helpful to the film arrangement and box office growth. In the end, the film got more than 60 million box office steadily, but it was criticized in public opinion, which reduced the goodwill of the outside world to the film, and lost both the wife and the soldiers.

In 2021, the performance of the National Day box office was not as good as expected, and the director rushed off to sell tickets in Tik Tok, where he was cut off by many netizens and still insisted on live broadcast for 12 hours. Such a tragic live broadcast did ferment the heat, and many netizens were moved by the director’s persistence, but this move did not affect the trend of the box office.

The domestic sci-fi animated film released in this summer’s file is shaking in the official.Rushing out of the earth to direct the roadshow is so sad.Topics, such as "The road show cinema is empty, the animation director strongly supports it", "The animation director apologizes on the street, ashamed of the 6-year commitment to the team of 1,000 people", "Guo Man really loves to see the director choking, China animation has to move forward" and other short promotional videos with the nature of "selling miserably" are still difficult to save the box office.

Not every movie is suitable for selling badly. Either the foundation of the film should be hard enough to hit the audience and pay the bill, like "A Hundred Birds at the Phoenix"; Either there are stars like Louis Koo, who have high popularity and goodwill in the country, which can make the audience feel pity and sympathy for them; Either, like "The Intruder", there is a dispute between commercial films and art films, and there are enough controversial topics to attract more target audiences, otherwise the success rate of selling badly is not high.

According to the observation of the online blogger "Movie Box Office", "No one kidnapped the audience in the previous pile of" selling miserably ",and even some of them didn’t. These films just called on everyone to give them more opportunities and ask the cinema to arrange more films, but they never forced anyone to watch them. You know, there are many films that occupy the moral high ground (the director has fulfilled his promise and donated all the proceeds), but no one has been kidnapped morally."

Although "Battle of Tomorrow" was a successful selling strategy, on the vibrating platform with "information cocoon room", some fanatical netizens who lacked rational judgment and users who deliberately helped to improve their self-flow denounced the phenomenon of stealing the box office and "going out for war" to kidnap their peers, which made the film black, and the film side also needed vigilance and introspection in propaganda and guidance.

Like "Hidden into the Dust", it takes a long time to ferment with good content.

Up to now, the forecast of Cat’s Eye Professional Edition for the total box office of War of Tomorrow has been lowered from 805 million to 681 million, and the overall box office curve continues to decline.

Obviously, the miserable marketing of "Battle of Tomorrow" has a quick and short-term stimulating effect on the box office growth, and it is a one-time deal, but it is not the driving force for the overall box office to last for a long time. There is still limited space for the actual effect of selling badly on the box office.

General Manager Chen, the head of Yuemu Studios in Fuzhou, Jiangxi, said, "We have not made any major adjustments to the film arrangement of Tomorrow’s Battle, because the attendance rate is still higher than that of New God List: Yang Ji and Moon Man, and its film arrangement has recently ranked third and fourth in our studios." He thinks, "Tomorrow’s War" basically started to fall after Moon Man’s first wave of box office harvest. Its overall performance is still average. "

"In fact, our family is not very obvious. The number of people watching Tomorrow’s Battle is still not as much as other movies, but it is a little more than at the beginning." Manager Xie of Chongqing Baisha International Studios also gave such feedback. He thought that this wave of marketing was terrible, mainly urging Louis Koo fans out.

Ms. E, the film promoter, revealed that a cinema film project she was in charge of recently had planned to let the director broadcast live and sell tickets. However, considering the expression of the film itself, using sad marketing may be met with public opinion, so she dared not do it. "The operation of" Tomorrow’s Battle "is a bit self-satisfied. It has always made artists sell badly. It is better to attract attention from the plot. Selling badly, especially in Tik Tok, the box office conversion is not high."

According to the latest "Analysis Report on the Development of Short Video Industry in China in 2021", the number of short video users reached 934 million in 2021, a record high. Therefore, the main battlefield of film marketing is also increasingly biased towards short video platforms. Putting KOL, operating officer number and starring number, and collecting second creations are the three major marketing directions.

Ms. E said that the collection of second-generation short videos is the key content of their marketing work in Tik Tok now. "The film has not been released yet, and some second-generation materials will be given. When it is released, it will be given in all directions. Tik Tok audiences prefer to watch the second-generation editing and commentary content of the film itself, and this is the case with the box office counterattack of "Hidden into the Dust". "

After "Into the Dust" was launched, a large number of original users in Tik Tok created it again through the film material. The realistic depiction of poor life and sincere love of poor and kind people in northwest rural areas touched the core users in Tik Tok, namely the sinking market groups in second-tier and below cities.

"Don’t mention love, but love is like bone marrow; Every sentence is bitter, but it is bitter out of the sky ","Life is the heaviest, but it is full and loved; I have been asking for it all my life, but I am warm and loving, and other netizens have re-interpreted golden sentences frequently, completely igniting the film’s popularity.

According to Mr. F, who is responsible for the marketing of the film Tik Tok, "Now the high-profile praise and topic content of" Hidden into the Dust "are mainly released by peripheral accounts, and" Tomorrow’s Battle "is mainly from the accounts of Guan Yao and Louis Koo." Comparing the Tik Tok hot search list, we can also see the difference between the two: the hot search topic of "Hidden into the Dust" is "The bitterness hidden in the dust.”、“How strong is the stamina of hiding in the dust?”； The hot topic of "Tomorrow’s War" is "I was moved by netizens who supported Louis Koo.”、“Louis Koo said he couldn’t fall.”。

"Tomorrow’s Battle doesn’t have so many content bridges or golden sentences that can make everyone feel the same way. In the early stage, it didn’t play much role to play the first sci-fi hardcore mecha film in Chinese, because the quality of the film was not high, and Douban scored 6.4. Later, the propaganda point turned to the direction of how difficult it was to make movies, how hard Louis Koo worked, and the people in the industry supported it. It did play some roles, but it was still difficult to extend the circle. The key is to look at the word-of-mouth of the film. "Hidden into the Dust" is to ferment with good content, and the Douban score has risen to 8.5 points. " Mr. F said.

Selling miserably is a common means of publicity and marketing, and it often becomes a desperate strategy for the film to return to the box office. However, selling badly should not be willful and exaggerated, otherwise it will overdraw the credibility of the film and the audience’s trust in the film.

After all, the temporary benefits will be short-lived, because the marketing will hurt the development of the industry, and the consequences will be difficult to make up. Only by creating stories and expressions that the audience likes can the film have more tap water and repeat customers. Returning to the level of content quality is the right track of marketing.