The 2023 National Day Campaign： Is it true health preservation or hidden mystery？

Special feature of 1905 film network After the strongest summer file in the history of 2023, it ushered in the lowest-key National Day file in history. The five main films were booked early, but they promoted the premiere ceremony and roadshow with a "low-key posture" during the golden announcement period. It should have been a colorful announcement war but collectively started "subtraction". Now the National Day file has closed. Whether the films are really healthy or hidden, let’s reveal it in depth!

Characteristic announcement and active roadshow

In 2023, the National Day file was a low-key marketing battle, and major films got together to open a road show and extreme screening. In the announcement, they found their own characteristics more.

For example, this film has some blank spots in the feature film due to deletion and other reasons. Watching a movie is like a fill-in-the-blank problem. There is a movie where the audience fills in the blanks after watching the movie, and then they have to find the answer to this question. Then there are some viewers who may have seen the answer before watching the movie and want to find the text of the movie. "Rock-solid" buried some suspense in the film, and then in the road show, to uncover this suspense, there will be a complementarity between the film and the announcement.

Like "Ex 4", in addition to the normal emotional marketing and punchline marketing, there is another feature, that is, it is more social topical and pays attention to a marriage and love problem in contemporary society. It has been ten years since the first film "The Former" was released. In fact, during this decade, China’s concept of marriage and love has changed greatly. Therefore, the arrival of the single society may be a social topic that Previous 4 pays more attention to. Unconsciously, it has formed a topical film, which allows parents to watch movies more, and may have more understanding of their children, including young people’s self-reconciliation when watching movies. This may be the effect of its social topicality.

In terms of roadshows, especially these five head films are also very positive. During the National Day file, the film’s main creators are still running roadshows hard, and they have to run a city almost every day. In addition, these films of the National Day archives, which were integrated into the media by the movie channel, were also broadcast live by the whole media, such as the 11-hour premiere live broadcast of "Former 4", which created 25 million+views on the whole network and brought 40+ hot topics.

The documentary live broadcast of the movie channel recorded that the film creators went to various cities to meet the audience. From day to night, they recorded the real state of the creators in a very vivid way, and at the same time, they brought out many hot topics and some new things that the actors were on the set at that time, so that the audience could learn more about the film.

Late Pre-sale and Silent Tik Tok

The overall publicity rhythm of this National Day file seems to be quite different from that of previous years. In the "golden paving period" recognized by marketing, almost most of the fixed-file films have more or less "lost their voices".

First, this year’s pre-sale and screening are much later than in previous years. The pre-sale opening time of the National Day file is 0: 00 on September 26th, and the pre-sale opening time of the National Day file from 2019 to 2022 is basically in mid-September. This year’s pre-sale rhythm is the latest in the past five years. The delay in the pre-sale time naturally affects the rhythm of the announcement of new films, and because of the short pre-sale time, the pre-sale box office is also difficult to be used as a promotional selling point.

In addition, there is basically no large-scale screening of the films scheduled for the National Day, which weakens the pre-publicity preheating effect of the films. Only "It seems that there is not so much blood boiling" started screening in early September, but it did not form an effective word-of-mouth fermentation, but consumed the audience’s enthusiasm for watching movies in advance. Delayed market feedback and lack of enthusiasm caused by delayed opening and pre-sale have brought some negative effects on the overall box office.

The second is the "dumb fire" promoted by Tik Tok. In recent years, the film marketing in Tik Tok has become a general trend, and Tik Tok has firmly become the first platform for film publicity. However, this National Day file does not seem to be able to undertake the general trend of the summer file. The performance of several head films is less than expected, and the number of fans on the platform does not exceed one million.

Previously, some short acting videos released in advance by some movies attracted the praise of many netizens and became the first wave of the film’s popularity. In the recent short video of "Rock-solid", there are also a lot of similar live footage videos about acting portrayal, but the comment area is mostly negative feedback.

In fact, similar problems didn’t appear until "Rock-solid", but the audience suffered from homogenization, performance and making a mountain out of a molehill in short video marketing for a long time. One or two times may impress the audience to buy tickets, but if every film is the same routine, it will naturally be aesthetically tired.

Film marketing is the icing on the cake of the film. Only by finding the high-quality content of the film or mobilizing the public’s desire to discuss can we really attract the audience to the cinema to watch the feature film. At present, the post-screening stage is still an indispensable part of film promotion, and fighting for the long tail after screening is also a difficult problem that filmmakers need to think about.