Brand-made skits are more effective than product placement

As an emerging content marketing method, brand-made short dramas are gaining favor with more and more brands. From Mixue Ice City's "The Snow King's Time Travel Diary" to short drama attempts by brands such as Meituan and McDonald's, this short video content with a concise and compact plot not only provides an entertainment experience for the audience, but also creates a new channel for brands to communicate with consumers.

The popularity of short dramas has remained high since the Spring Festival. Now, even brands are starting to get into the short drama market.

Recently, Mixue Bingcheng launched a series of short dramas titled "The Snow King's Time Travel Diary", which attracted the attention of netizens on major platforms with its short and concise size.

"The Snow King's Time Travel Diary" is on the short drama hot list. In the official Douyin comment area of ​​Michelle Ice City, many fans were shocked that Michelle Ice City filmed a short drama. However, Michelle Ice City is not the first brand to create its own short drama. Meituan, McDonald's, Tai Er Pickled Fish and other brands have also launched short dramas, creating extremely high playback volume.

With a duration of two to three minutes and a simple and addictive plot, the homemade skits not only create fun for fans, but also allow brands to find new value in content marketing.

01 More direct skit marketing

The series of short plays "Snow King's Time Travel Diary" launched by Mixue Bingcheng is divided into four parts. The Snow King travels through different scenarios as the "Snow Dance King", "Snow Butler", "Snow Special Assistant" and "Snow Group Pet".

Like most short plays, the story of the Snow King is based on the theme of Mary Sue domineering CEOs. Whether it is the "Snow Dance King" who travels back to the 1980s to prove that breakdancing will become an international event in the future, or the "Snow Butler" or "Snow Special Assistant" who transforms into an NPC of a wealthy family, or the protagonist "Snow Group Pet", they are all common Mary Sue plots.

But unlike previous brand-customized short dramas, the appearance of the Snow King, the IP image of Mixue Bingcheng, in the short drama is not a simple product placement, but a more direct brand exposure.

The short series is only four episodes long, but the brand's content layout is obvious.

From the Snow King dancing to the "Mi Xue Bing Cheng Sweet" theme song to the reveal of the Mi Xue Bing Cheng jelly prize medals, the brand evoked the brand impression in consumers' minds through classic elements in the first two episodes, making people realize: "Mi Xue Bing Cheng also makes skits."

In the last two episodes, the brand used Mary Sue clips to illustrate the cooling and thirst-quenching properties of classic lemonade products, and achieved the transition from classic products to new products, introducing the new product Jasmine Milk Green in the last episode.

The short dramas launched by brands such as Tai Er Pickled Fish and McDonald's are also more based on the brand context itself.

In the article "Short plays, theme stores, premieres, Tai Er has mastered short plays + marketing", Ju Fengying deeply discussed why Tai Er Pickled Cabbage Fish chose short plays as a marketing format. While creating emotional value for consumers and shaping a younger brand image, Tai Er Pickled Cabbage Fish also conveys the product's freshness, unique massage technology and production process through the wonderful combination of the domineering plot, talk show actors, and short video creation masters.

Coincidentally, McDonald's also chose to join hands with a talk show actor and invited Tong Mo Nan to start a time-travel story from a talk show actor to a McDonald's employee. The audience was attracted again and again by the opening line "My name is Tong Mo Nan, I was reincarnated in McDonald's, guess what, it's endless." In this time-travel journey, Tong Mo Nan played the NPC role in the domineering president literature, and also used the professional complaints of the talk show actor about the domineering president to highlight the brand's high-quality service and freshly made meals.

02 From TVC to short drama

It is not only the major catering brands that rely on short and fast-paced plots to create selling points.

The platforms are not to be outdone. Local life service platforms Meituan and Ele.me and e-commerce platforms Tmall and JD.com have also launched short dramas to emphasize the platform benefits. Among them, Meituan and Tmall also chose the pleasing Wang Tianfang to cooperate and create works based on the comedian's funny characteristics.

Judging from the number of views of self-produced short dramas launched by major brands, this form of marketing is obviously efficient.

Judging from the number of views and likes on the Douyin platform alone, the brand-made short dramas have achieved good results. The number of likes has increased from a few hundred or a few thousand to no less than 40,000, which is enough to prove the appeal of the content to platform users and brand fans.

Likes of branded short dramas on the TikTok platform

In addition, in addition to social media platforms such as Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Weibo, the broadcasting platforms for these short dramas have also added channels such as brand mini-programs to attract traffic through content.

The popularity of "Rebirth: I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s" during the Spring Festival this year confirmed that short dramas have become a popular form of entertainment on short video platforms. The fact that brands are focusing on short dramas is undoubtedly one of the hottest marketing methods in 2024. TOP Jun believes that this choice is based on two reasons.

From the content point of view, the short dramas released by brands are more vertical and more interesting.

The creative frameworks of Mixue Ice City, Tai Er Pickled Fish, McDonald's, and even Meituan and Tmall are all overbearing CEO literature, which is "earthy" but enduring. Whether the main actor is the protagonist of the short play or the NPC, it does not affect the excitement of this unique overbearing CEO system.

However, the core of the video released by the brand has been replaced with the emphasis on communication memory points, using the high density and strong stimulation of the skit information to "hedge risks" against the audience's resistance to advertising, allowing users to accept the "advertising" elements in the skit more naturally.

In terms of effectiveness, the branded short drama not only achieved a significant increase in the number of short video views and likes, but also received good feedback from consumers.

The "2023-2024 China Micro-Short Drama Market Research Report" released by iMedia Consulting shows that more than 30% of micro-short drama users watch them every day, the overall stickiness is high, and netizens watch them frequently.

Data source: iiMedia Research

Short plays have a large and stable audience base, providing a broader marketing field for brand short plays. While the audience is immersed in the plot of the short play, they also focus on the fact that the brand officially releases the short play. They are not only surprised by the brand's young discourse system that follows the trend, but also pay attention to the co-actors of the brand short play. With multiple factors superimposed, the short play marketing outlet has also been firmly grasped by the brand.

03 From implantation to self-production

On the two major platforms of Douyin and Kuaishou, many brands have discovered the marketing value of short dramas early on and started the road of customized brand short dramas. Among these short dramas, product placement is the main form. However, the brand-made short dramas since this year have a unique flavor.

Compared with product placement, the "advertising" in homemade skits is straightforward but effective.

In the past, platform-produced dramas still focused on plot content, but brand-produced short dramas emphasize the characteristics of the brand itself on the basic framework. Compared with short drama placement, brand-produced short dramas can convey brand information more directly and efficiently, and quickly capture the attention of potential consumers.

In addition, brand-produced skits focus more on the enjoyment of a wide audience and tend to prefer comedians when choosing partners.

Kuaishou Star Theater has launched several short plays in collaboration with celebrities, which have achieved good broadcast results. Inviting comedians adds a touch of "down-to-earth" flavor compared to celebrities. For example, "Industry Dark Light" Tong Mo Nan and "Prickly Rose" He Guangzhi are both popular talk show memes. Combining them with products greatly enriches the fun of the short plays and makes the selling points easier to remember.

Brand-made short dramas have the characteristics of short duration, fast pace, rich information, and continuous explosive points. Compared with traditional TVC, they can quickly capture the user's attention. Brands can harvest user attention from short drama marketing and obtain more direct conversions through brand accounts, but TOP Jun still has a question mark on whether this marketing method can last.

Short drama marketing is essentially content marketing, using an anchor point to achieve the effect of "a little effort to achieve a great result". However, homogeneous content will always cause aesthetic fatigue. When users' "viewing volume" reaches a certain level, short dramas still need more creative content to output information.