Text | Shi Yedong
Not only do I watch movies, but I also trade stocks. Those who are familiar with me should know that I am known as a famous contrarian indicator in Beijing. I am good at buying high and selling low, chasing up and down, buying whoever is down, selling whoever is up, and controlling ups and downs can even be accurate to the minute and second.
This is also why I say that the marketing of "The Last Night of the Earth" (hereinafter referred to as "Earth") is a dimensionality reduction blow, because from my experience of losing money accurately in stock trading, the marketing announcement of "Earth" is a small and broad-based marketing campaign. Many people do not understand the behavior of financial thinking because they have not been repeatedly cut as leeks. Although there are many disputes, from the point of view of income, this is the best choice for the "banker" to use the least money and get the most income in the shortest time.
The reason why Poison Eyes (ID: youhaoxifilm) never wrote "Earth" is because no matter from which dimension a comment is made on this matter, it is easy to cause a lot of wrangling and debate, so we can only simply put some data to make a rough analysis and guess." Earth" marketing event.
First of all, the first controversy is whether this kind of marketing method is right or not, and whether it should give audiences in third- and fourth-tier cities a very literary and personal film that is separated from the content and dislocated. This question is like whether durian is delicious or not. It is an unanswered question. You must at least let more people try it before you can know if everyone thinks it is delicious and whether it is suitable for eating now. For Bi Gan and "Earth", in the third- and fourth-tier cities, 5% of the people became more interested in literary films and Bi Gan after watching the film. I think it is a good result.
Judging from the audience data distribution on Top Movies Think Tank, on December 31, the audience of "The Last Night on Earth" accounted for 10% of the audience in first-tier cities, 47% in second-tier cities, and 43% in third-tier and below, which is basically close to the national average for films. level. However, this has already shown that a large number of audiences from third-, fourth-, and fifth-tier cities have flocked to the theater. If you compare any literary and artistic film, the number of moviegoers in first-tier cities may exceed 30%, while the audience in third-tier cities and below is pitiful.
The main audience of literary films is in first-tier cities, and it is too risky to rely on audiences in first- and second-tier cities for tens of millions of dollars. Jia Zhangke's "Children of the Rivers and Lakes" only sold 70 million, and no matter how hard Bi Gan's film was marketed (it doesn't matter how good the quality is, but the style), it would not be able to sell 200 million. Therefore, if it is separated from the content attributes of the movie, from the perspective of business and revenue, this is a commercially successful attempt at controversy.
The aesthetic standards of most moviegoers in China are still relatively elementary, so it’s a good idea to try, but this time, it’s a bit like drinking poison to quench thirst, which may drain Bi Gan’s reputation in the hearts of young people in small towns. Regarding the questions of "Should" and "Right or Wrong", Mr. Chen Lizhi from Matt Marketing expressed his opinion from the point of view of a professional marketing person. I think it is very good. You can read his article "The Last Night of the Earth" "What's wrong?", I won't discuss it here.
The second, for us, the core controversy is whether "Earth" bought the box office or not, and how much. Screenwriter Li Zhenghu gave a photo of the empty scene, and the filmmaker responded and gave a reply, but I don't quite believe the reason for "debugging the smell device and importing the script".
Regarding the matter of buying the box office, here we first need to explain a concept to outsiders. Now, a movie with a little publicity cost should spend a certain percentage of the publicity cost to buy a certain number of movie box office, or leave it to the theater to do it. Gift tickets and other activities are more common things. Because now the movie schedule depends on the pre-sale situation. Buying some whole scenes or buying some corner seats to make the pre-sale look better and increase the rate of filming has become a kind of "clear rule" that many films are now announced. "Instead of unspoken rules.
In the past year, many movie fans have reported to us the problem that different movies are full but empty when purchasing tickets, but we have not written about it. Two or three years ago, this was a rarity, but now if you want to write about it, you have to write about every movie, because almost all movies will buy some more or less, or do some activities.
Almost all of them will be bought, which does not mean that "Earth" will buy them. We don't make a statement on this, and we will take some screenshots to see the data.
We will not pay attention to the pre-sale of over 100 million in the last few days of the movie. This data will not have too much water, because the film party or the publicity party will not spend tens of millions to do this. As far as I know, the overall publicity and distribution cost of "Earth" is not too much, maybe 20 million. Excluding the various channels that have been seen, there is not much money left. You know, this movie didn't even do a roadshow.
So how do you get the most out of the least amount of money? From the perspective of stock trading, of course, it is to invest in the early bottom. Let's take a look at the pre-sale for the first two days.
"Last Night on Earth" started pre-sale on December 9th, and started to blow up the cinema manager's circle of friends on the afternoon of the 11th, because there were a large number of full houses in third- and fourth-tier cities at that time, and the pre-sale approached two Ten million. A theater manager told Du Mou, "This ticket is obviously wrong in our studio. Now I don't know if I dare to open the show. If it doesn't open, it will definitely be sold. Open it, I am afraid of refunding the ticket." This was also a lot of people in the circle of friends at that time The questioning voice of the theater manager.
In those two days that were full or nearly full, they mainly appeared in third-, fourth-, and fifth-tier cities, such as Qiqihar, Xinxiang, Baoding, Weifang... Many movie theaters were full of scenes without even a single seat left. . Let me tell you that this is all bought by the audience. When there are 20 days in advance, when there are still seats in other movie theaters, they are willing to sit in the corner of the first row, because they have received Douyin's "crossover" "One kiss every year" marketing, do you believe it?
Usually, the main audience cities for literary films are in Shanghai, Beijing and other places, and the first-tier cities contribute the most to both the box office and the number of people. When the pre-sale was close to 20 million on December 11, we went to check the box office of the first-tier cities. When a large number of third-, fourth-, and fifth-tier cities are full, there are not many pre-sale results in first-tier cities. For example, almost all Wanda in Beijing, Wukesong Yaolai Studios, which has been the national box office champion for 8 consecutive years, Paragon Studios and CGV Studios in downtown Shanghai, etc., have sold a few tickets sporadically.
Of course, this can be explained. It can be said that the main marketing direction, such as Douyin and Weibo, is aimed at people below second-tier cities, so they are also the first ticket buyers.
Below we put some interesting screenshots. On December 11, I watched Jinyi Cinemas in Beijing Chaoyang Joy City. At 2:30 in the afternoon, the non-gold movie viewing sessions were full. The other at 7:15 pm only sold two tickets, and the one at 9:40 pm sold half of it.
What's more bizarre is that in the Evergrande Studios Jade Huating Store in Qiqihar, the two main "One Kiss New Year's Eve" movies at 9:40 p.m., one was almost full, there were 13 tickets left, and one was almost full. No one bought, only 14 tickets were sold, which is not very reasonable from a probability point of view.
At that time, I chatted with some friends of Xuanfa, and the reply I heard was that if the box office was not bought, the theater manager could close the refund channel if he doubted it.
The matter of closing the refund channel has to start with the refund incident on May 1, 2018. A certain film bought a large number of tickets in advance and locked the venue. On the night of its release, thousands of movie theaters across the country refunded tens of millions of box offices, and some movie theaters refunded tens of thousands of tickets. The studio manager was immediately stunned when faced with this kind of coquettish operation: You Bought the box office to support the screenings, and back a little bit before the release. Everyone was happy with the past routine. What are you doing this time when you buy 40 and return 20? After that, the studio managers were "bitten by snakes once, and afraid of ropes for ten years", and some theaters have not yet restored the refund channel.
And this time there is this kind of reply of "if you are worried, you can close the refund", I think it can be guessed because the result is relatively confident, that is, the invested money is not planned to be recovered, because it uses a small amount of money. , I saw reasonable results and publicity volume in the first two days.
Then we move on to the next guess, returning to the dimensionality reduction attack of "Zhuangzhuang" mentioned at the beginning of our article. In layman's terms, the relatively fast "Zhuangzhuang" generally chooses the target first, repeatedly buys in batches when no one pays attention to the low position, and then starts to release good news, and starts quickly with less money when the amount is small. Continuously pulling up the daily limit attracts more people's attention, and then when retail investors enter the game, they secretly ship while pulling up to achieve the optimal income they want.
By analogy, on the 10th and 11th, the pre-sale box office will be raised, and with the marketing of Douyin, it is a time to buy at a low price, release good news, and then start to pull up the stock price. The pre-sale of tens of millions of 21 days in advance is comparable to the performance of "Monster Hunt 2". This time period used a small amount of funds to release the greatest volume, and instantly attracted the attention of the studio managers. After getting a reply that "you can close the refund channel if you are worried about refunding the ticket", the studio manager can boldly put it on the stage, because someone pays the bill, they will make no loss, and then the pre-sale of a literary film also breaks a record 20 million yuan 20 days ahead of schedule. . It can also be seen from the pre-sale of the film on Tao Piao Piao Professional Edition , until the two days before the release, the pre-sale increased the most on December 10 and 11, both of which exceeded 9 million, until Christmas and It was only close to and surpassed this single-day pre-sale figure before the release, which did not match the marketing and ticket-buying index of third-party agencies.
Third-party marketing/ticket purchase index + changes in pre-sale box office (data source: Taopiao Piao Professional Edition)
After that, it was a simple snowball. The whole people began to participate in a marketing carnival. No one cared whether the taste was suitable or not. In the end, the pre-sale can make a literary film costing tens of millions of dollars back to its original price. Not for?
After the screening on the 31st, I asked a person in the theater chain "Earth" about the real situation of their theater screenings. Their theater chain has theaters in first-, second-, third-, and fourth-tier cities across the country. The answer I got was, "There are some empty venues after buying tickets during the day, and there are also some nights where there are big differences between the attendance and the full ticket sales. It can be seen that there are certain traces of operation, but no large-scale refunds have occurred . " This person was reluctant to release screenshots of our conversation due to privacy concerns.
Another practitioner told me that he also visited some movie theaters after the screening. Judging from the results from his side, many shows were full, and there were not so many people coming, especially the small movies in small cities. hall.
As for the 4% refund rate, it is not a very high number compared to the Spring Festival movies and the May 1st movie "The Next Us", because I heard that many viewers saw half of the tickets go out and asked for refunds, so I I think this is a reasonable refund range.
In the end, there is not much information that we can confirm. One is that the pre-sale data on the 11th, the location of the full show, and the distribution of seats are unreasonable to a certain extent, and the second is that some theaters and small and medium-sized theaters have seats that do not match the pre-sale. condition. The rest are all my doubts and speculations. I don't mean to criticize the announcement of the film, and I don't think this is "another disastrous announcement of "Love Apartment" as others say, "Love Apartment" is a strategic choice , and it must have caused the film to suffer a lot of box office losses; "Earth" is more likely to achieve a result that the film may not get until it is released in one night. Of course, the specific response is subject to the response of the film party and the announcement party.
The announcement of the film is said to have been made by Taihe, Huace Films, and Herui, but as of press time, Dumu has not received any reply to the above-mentioned questions. Taihe said that it did not know about the promotion and marketing; Herui said that the publicity department was on vacation, and it was inconvenient to accept interviews; relevant parties of Huace said that the main marketing promotion was not on their side and could not respond to the interview outline.
I'm also a little confused.
(Jiang Yuqi and Zhang Ying also contributed to this article)
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