
Author | Netscape Internet Editorial Department
"Love Story of Yilan is really so good to cry!"
"Cry while watching, and give me the whole defense directly in the middle of the night …"
It’s hard to imagine that this is the audience’s evaluation of a comedy movie.More and more viewers went to the comment area to take photos of crying and watch "crying noisily". Some people cried nose bubbles, others cried their faces deformed, and a large number of "tap water" spontaneously went crazy on the Internet.
What is even more unimaginable is that,On April 27th, "Yilan Love Story", which was broadcasted by Tencent Video alone, was able to soar by 350% in a single day after it was launched for 10 days, and returned to the top of Tencent’s video hot search list. On the 11th day of its launch, the single-day box office reached the highest value of 1.268 million, far exceeding its initial box office, and it topped the list of movies hot search NO.1 for five consecutive days.At present, the box office of the film has exceeded 10 million, ranking second in the online movie box office list in April.

Box office curve of Yilan love story
You know, for most online movies, the box office in the first week can account for 80% of the total box office, and then the box office will plummet and become less and less. But the Love Story of Yilan is obviously an exception.
It is rare to get out of the long tail rising box office curve by "tap water" after 10 days on the line. Only a handful of movies, such as The Return of the Great Sage, Dying to Survive and Nobody, are unique in online movies. Such cases deserve our further discussion and study.
On May 17th, NetVision Internet × Ruyu Culture jointly hosted an online sharing meeting with the theme of "How to achieve box office counterattack in Yilan Love Story", and we invited.Zhang Yuntian, co-founder of Zhisheng, chief producer of Yilan Love Story, CEO of Ruyu Culture, and Qiu Heng, chief marketing officer of Yilan Love Story.From the perspectives of industry, content, data and marketing, we talked about the content playing and marketing experience behind the box office counterattack of Yilan Love Story. Such experience may bring more enlightenment to the industry.

Content: realism+comedy, inciting social topics and emotional fulcrums
"Laugh and cry …" This is the most authentic and common viewing experience of "Love Story of Yilan" on the Internet, and "crying" seems to be more violent than "laughing". This is extremely abnormal for comedies that always take humor as the first element.
But it is this "abnormality" that has created the counterattack of the box office of Yilan Love Story.In Zhang Yuntian’s view, there may be three main reasons for the counterattack: First, emotional resonance; Second, it has certain social topicality; The third is the interaction between on-site and off-site marketing.

Zhang Yuntian, co-founder of Zhisheng and chief producer of Yilan Love Story
"Everyone has a first love. Are you still in touch with your first love?" "Have you ever made a mistake? Have you ever regretted it?" "If you can choose your life again, will you continue to go wrong?" "Are you cherishing the person in front of you?" Life is always full of regrets, and similar questions are believed to have been asked by everyone. "It’s just that we used movies to incite that emotion and poke the softest part of everyone’s heart." Zhang Yuntian said this.
The Love Story of Yilan is adapted from the national music IP of the same name., tells the story of a business crocodile who accidentally crossed into a parallel world, returned to a small town to live an ordinary life with his first love, and had a series of funny love stories. There are not only thoughts about wealth and love, but also discussions about family education, dreams and pursuits of that year and a new understanding of happiness.
It is equivalent to that "Love Story of Yilan" has already planted seeds in the topical and emotional direction at the beginning of its creation. Once this seed is fermented, everyone will watch the Love Story of Yilan, not just the movie, but their own inner regrets.

But what is even more rare is that the Love Story of Yilan selects the core theme of realism and the most grounded expression.
Zhang Yuntian revealed a trick of internet film creation. "If you want to express something and let everyone have a aftertaste after watching the movie, then keep the core and make the way of presentation as grounded as possible, which is funny and memorable. It is not far from success."
In fact, as a hot comedy brand in the online market in recent years, Zhisheng United has produced many explosive comedies, and most of them discuss social topics and are also related to emotions. For example, My Gentle Dad discusses the affection between father and daughter, Let me have fun discusses middle-aged marriage, and Love Story of Yilan discusses the love of middle-aged men. The next upcoming "Warm Smile" is campus+comedy, which discusses the relationship between teachers and students."We will express the most common emotional elements in the most humorous and grounded way."

If "strong stimulation" is the standard for a film to pass in entertainment, then "strong empathy" is the key to reflect the reality and impress the audience. The Love Story of Yilan has undoubtedly been done.
It takes almost a week for a film to rely on word-of-mouth counterattack and tap water to discuss and share. Judging from the box office curve of Love Story of Yilan, the time node of box office counterattack coincides with the period of word-of-mouth fermentation.
Perhaps a good comedy is just like this, and it can always incite a certain social mood. Affection, friendship, love, happiness, sadness or love for the country, like Dying to Survive and Hi, Mom, also take comedy as the table, realism as the center, and also move people with emotion, making the audience "laugh first and then cry" and willing to spare no effort to "Amway".
Qiu Heng, as the general manager of marketing, also said, "This film has become a carrier of’ crying’ social emotions. In the context of the epidemic, it has touched some emotional points of everyone. Whether it is a cinema or an online movie, there has been no movie that can make people cry for a long time. "

Marketing: from "tap water" to "strong interaction" to arouse the audience’s response
At the sharing meeting, Qiu Heng, as the general manager of marketing, shared several sets of interesting data:
1. There were 25,000+comments in the "Love Story of Yilan" station, exceeding 99% of online movies released by Tencent;
2. The effective broadcast ratio of "Yilan Love Story" by Tencent has soared from about 6% in the first three days to 15% in the box office counterattack, exceeding 99% of online movies released by Tencent;
3. The first vibrato video about "Yilan’s love story is so crying": 70,000 likes, 90,000 forwards and 40,000 comments, and "Sanlian" accounts for a very high proportion.

Qiu Heng, CEO of Entertainment Culture and head of marketing of Yilan Love Story.
Obviously,"Love Story of Yilan" is to attract "tap water" through word of mouth, form "strong interaction", promote high transformation, and finally feed back to the box office in the station.
After the launch of "Love Story of Yilan", there was a lot of crying in the comment area, and all kinds of crying photos were overwhelming, just like invisible hooks, simple and direct, but full of interest, which inherited the audience’s love for the film and even established some emotional connection with netizens, which triggered the spontaneous spread of social media and users, and further deepened the user’s impression of the film in the spread, and finally became a distinctive symbol.

These "crying in the sun" are logical and seemingly accidental, but in fact, the promotion and guidance of "marketing" behind it is equally indispensable. From the marketing link of the Love Story of Yilan, we can also see the whole process of the film’s counterattack.
At the beginning of the film’s launch, the main direction of marketing was to attract people with IP, win with laughter, and move people with emotion. After all, the songs of "Yilan Love Story" are very popular, with a broad audience base and national goodwill. The film itself outputs comedy tonality and fantasy colors, which are also very attractive.
"At about 11: 00 p.m. on the seventh day of the film’s launch, we monitored that there were a lot of hot photos of" Yilan Love Story "crying in the comment area on Tik Tok, so we took out the emotional point of’ best crying’ and did a lot of marketing actions with Tencent video to maximize the topic and emotional point.Qiu Heng said.

Perhaps this is the sensitivity of a professional marketing company, that is, to make appropriate adjustments to the marketing rhythm at any time according to the actual situation, and finally find the most suitable point for amplification, so as to revitalize the whole marketing and achieve the effect of maximizing marketing under the limited resources.
At the sharing meeting,Qiu Heng emphasized, "We have always had the idea that no matter how good the marketing is, it is just icing on the cake, which is particularly obvious in the Love Story of Yilan. It should be that we thank the film for its good reputation and give us the opportunity to play marketing."In Qiu Heng’s view, the box office may be supplemented by marketing, and the traffic can be accurately obtained through channels, but the audience’s recognition of the film is the foundation for the box office to counterattack.
So when it comes to marketing, Qiu Heng said it lightly, but we noticed that,Before and after discovering the emotional point of "crying", a large number of targeted marketing work has been quickly paved and followed up.For example, the maintenance of crying comments in the comment area, the follow-up of official shaking and crying video, the crying in the Zhou Yunpeng comment area, the crying in the Weibo diffusion comment area, the flop in the Zhou Yunpeng airborne comment area, the release of Zhou Yunpeng’s one-second crying video, the crying of real people, the follow-up fermentation of entertainment queen, and the second breaking of defense with unexposed ending, etc., are all hot waves after waves.

"In fact, at that time, we tried to follow up’ Good Cry’ for emotional marketing on the whole platform. For example, Aauto Quicker, Xiaohongshu, Weibo, bilibili, Hupu, etc. all made corresponding launches. We found that Aauto Quicker’s early publicity and solicitation effect was very good. Tik Tok, Weibo and Xiaohongshu, including soul, surprised us in the later emotional fermentation, and then we targeted it on a platform that could arouse more extensive interaction among netizens. Qiu Heng revealed.
In fact, not only the film side and the marketing side, but also the in-station recommendation of the video platform is rapidly following up.Love Story of Yilan was originally an S-level project, but in fact the resources given by the platform are S+ level.After all, the video platform is also willing to give more opportunities for interactive films with high conversion rate.
Through the marketing track of Love Story of Yilan, we can see that the ability of professional marketing companies to grasp hot spots is very important for the adaptability of marketing rhythm and direction, and innovative marketing strategies and more vivid interactive ways are obviously more efficient and dominant than traditional marketing.
From the whole marketing process, the workload of the project "Love Story of Yilan" is 1.5 times or even more than that of other online movie projects such as entertainment culture. There are as many as 25 posters and new media pictures, and the marketing strategy from funny to crying has been adjusted in time. But in the end, it’s all worth it.

Through the slow and steady marketing strategy at the initial stage of its launch, Yilan Love Story took the lead in establishing emotional links with users in Tencent’s video core circle, making them the first users of topic fermentation, and then expanding their openings through all-platform marketing, thus realizing the massive user coverage of the film audience and further expanding the audience circle. By amplifying the emotional point of "crying" and vivid and flexible interaction, Yilan Love Story experienced circle explosion, spread to more people, and effectively guided the hot search in the long video platform.This is not only an extension of the vitality of the film, but also effectively expands the marketing gameplay of online movies.
This set of combination punches comes down,The Love Story of Yilan is not only a one-way "drainage" or "indoctrination", but also an effective guidance to stimulate the two-way interaction between the plot and the audience and form a strong "echo" from the audience.. The crying photos in the comment area are the best proof of the audience’s "echo".This echo from the audience has caused a wide range of spontaneous communication, making the whole marketing more efficient and lasting.
When a movie, even the photos printed by netizens in the comment area, can become an expression pack and is spontaneously spread by netizens, it is not difficult to understand that this work can be countered at the box office.

Online movies enter the "word of mouth era"
In recent months, the "Northeast Element", as a widely accepted regional culture, began to rise in the field of online movies, including the counterattack of "Yilan Love Story", so that many people feel that the "spring" of Northeast comedy has come.
However, Zhang Yuntian did not recognize this."I don’t think it should be said that the spring of comedy in Northeast China has come, but in the big environment, ordinary people need to release their emotions. Good comedies will always be there, and there are many good themes waiting for everyone to explore. Spring has always been there."
Indeed,The spring of good content has always been there, including comedy.The reason why Love Story of Yilan was able to counterattack at the box office was not only because it was a northeast comedy and used northeast actors, but also because of its refined and differentiated content strategy and realistic expression that could incite the audience’s emotions, coupled with accurate and efficient marketing methods, content and marketing interlocking, which created the box office counterattack of Love Story of Yilan.
The unique long-term return cycle of online movies for half a year determines that the content side can constantly tap the long tail of the content, and after the hot broadcast period, it will usher in the second spring or even the third spring of return. But the reality is,Cases like Love Story of Yilan are still very rare.

"Online movies have relatively limited investment in marketing and are not allowed to pull the cycle too long. However, with the implementation of quality improvement and quantity reduction and the new accounting model, I believe that the case of full-cycle marketing will gradually emerge and the life cycle of the film will be further extended. " At the same time, Qiu Heng emphasized that "if a movie wants to achieve a long tail counterattack, marketing is only a means to expand its mouth, and word of mouth is the most critical variable in box office counterattack."
With the development of online movies, a series of actions such as users’ cognition, on-demand, experience and evaluation of online movies are the complete process of trading. No matter which link or level, it is inseparable from the guidance and assistance of marketing, but it needs the foundation of good content.If people’s attention to online movies in the past few years still stays in concept discussion, genre concern and visual wonders, then the box office counterattack of Yilan Love Story seems to indicate that online movies have entered a "word-of-mouth era" and entered a new era in which they can express reality, explore emotions and present value.
Throughout the sharing session, both Zhang Yuntian, as the chief producer, and Qiu Heng, as the chief marketing officer, repeatedly emphasized one word-"emotion".
In the view of NetVision Internet,This is also the greater significance of "Love Story of Yilan", that is, in the past, only the cinema screen could bear huge social emotions. Through "Love Story of Yilan", we found that online movies can also bear social emotions and mainstream values, and become the carrier for the broad masses to release their emotions, even if it is only a part. This itself is the embodiment of the progress of online movies.
Click here to view.→ Online sharing meeting and dialogue record of how the box office of Yilan Love Story counterattacked.
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