How to achieve tipping? What are the three Rules of Epidemic?
Who are the critical roles in the process?
How did the Enlight Media Group tip a low budget Chinese road movie to sink Titanic
and beat the 007?
These are some questions that I was and will be answering by applying the theory MalColm Gladwell popularized with his book The Tipping Point. I strongly recommend the quick summary of the book and the first part of the analysis in my previous blogs, so you can have a better idea about this piece, but the "quiz answers" at the end of this blog post should offer sufficient minimum of the background.
A Guide on How to Make 200 Million Dollars Out of 5 Million - Part I: Miracle Overview & Brand Marketing 101: The Tipping Point.
A Guide on How to Make 200 Million Dollars Out of 5 Million - Part II: The Primary Connectors
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After identifying the primary connectors and examining the early stage of the tipping process in the last blog, I can now move on to talk about the primary mavens and their influences in the film Lost In Thailand.
The film and simply the nickname of it - Taijiong/Lost in Thailand (Yep, it's not the full title, it's a short form of it) - was placed, discussed, advertised, featured in entertainment programs like live shows, in semi-formal programs like local news, in serious programs like finance talks. If there is anything in common between them it is the programs are all popular. The film was, then, literally, everywhere. Why? Li says this film is “really targeting at everyone in the household, and the whole family should go together for a fun time and celebration” airplanes (Li, "Tai Jiong: Sell Movie as a FMCG"). Even though, what happened is that they still attracted only mainly people aged from 20 to 39, it is hard to say it is not the reward for the omnipresence. Enlight Media did not just go for the mavens. They went for all the mavens there were to reach.
Not just all the mavens there were, they went specifically for the strongest ones, and to secure the best result, they tried to make the best content for the mavens to carry. Enlight Media collaborated with the Wanda Group – the owner of China’s largest theatre chain, which acquired AMC for 2.6 billion dollars last year –to produce a series of customized trailers including five movie-watching guides and two customized videos (Cieply, "Theater Deal Links China To Hollywood"). They started display these special trailers in the top 2,000 theaters that had the highest overall box office revenues before the film hit the screen (Li, "Tai Jiong: Sell Movie as a FMCG"). Just a small note, of course the strongest mavens – especially the live shows and talk shows with strong emphasis on celebrities – are salesmen to certain targets because these mavens themselves are influential, trustworthy, or simply followed around.
After identifying the primary connectors and examining the early stage of the tipping process in the last blog, I can now move on to talk about the primary mavens and their influences in the film Lost In Thailand.
The film and simply the nickname of it - Taijiong/Lost in Thailand (Yep, it's not the full title, it's a short form of it) - was placed, discussed, advertised, featured in entertainment programs like live shows, in semi-formal programs like local news, in serious programs like finance talks. If there is anything in common between them it is the programs are all popular. The film was, then, literally, everywhere. Why? Li says this film is “really targeting at everyone in the household, and the whole family should go together for a fun time and celebration” airplanes (Li, "Tai Jiong: Sell Movie as a FMCG"). Even though, what happened is that they still attracted only mainly people aged from 20 to 39, it is hard to say it is not the reward for the omnipresence. Enlight Media did not just go for the mavens. They went for all the mavens there were to reach.
Not just all the mavens there were, they went specifically for the strongest ones, and to secure the best result, they tried to make the best content for the mavens to carry. Enlight Media collaborated with the Wanda Group – the owner of China’s largest theatre chain, which acquired AMC for 2.6 billion dollars last year –to produce a series of customized trailers including five movie-watching guides and two customized videos (Cieply, "Theater Deal Links China To Hollywood"). They started display these special trailers in the top 2,000 theaters that had the highest overall box office revenues before the film hit the screen (Li, "Tai Jiong: Sell Movie as a FMCG"). Just a small note, of course the strongest mavens – especially the live shows and talk shows with strong emphasis on celebrities – are salesmen to certain targets because these mavens themselves are influential, trustworthy, or simply followed around.
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Primary Maven
Role of the New Media
In a time like now, how can one forget about the new media – THE new media. This giant sophisticated campaign was deliberately planned – step by step. “First we seek out to the traditional media to magnify brand awareness,” Li explains why they chose to feature in the most popular three entertainment programs and live shows is because of they are the best and fastest way to create awareness, “but how to make the consumers like you? That likeness comes from interactions, always, so the second step was to go to new media. New media is highly interactive and it builds relationships with the audience. It offers equal conversations between consumers and us.” Thus people saw an enormous tide of new media public relations/marketing movement.
Besides what was mentioned in the last four paragraphs about traditional media advertising, Enlight Media collaborated with 360, one of the biggest online community, and CTrip, the biggest travel agent, for a promotional event selecting 40 audiences for free Thailand trip awards. They worked with the Chinese online payment monopoly Alipay (which is used much more commonly than Paypal in U.S.) for online ads complementing with express online ticket purchasing (Li, "Tai Jiong: Sell Movie as a FMCG"). Of course they were on the Chinese YouTubes. Enlight Media executed bundled advertisements on the biggest video-sharing websites and the biggest online broadcasting websites – extremely commonly used in China – and only on their best positions. Including the trailers they collaborated with Wanda, the director Xu Zheng, who is also the screenwriter and the main actor of this film, directed and produced nine independent trailers/videos apart from the movie just for marketing ("Tai Jiong Creative in Marketing: Starting a Carnival with the Biggest Theater Chain"). According to Evening News, the 40 videos they released online before and while the film was on screen received a total viewership of 200 million in 20 days ("Tai Jiong's Marketing Strategy: More Than Enough Marketing Materials Plus Wordof Mouth”).
Primary Maven Role of the New Media
Not to mention they worked heavily with the Chinese Facebook and Twitter: Renren and Weibo. All the online and most of the off-line promotions were twitted on their official weibo, and in a PRNewswire Asia article, according to Carat China, the digital marketing specialist’s Chinese company, early before Lost in Thailand hit the screen, there were three days where the daily related tweets exceeded 22,000 (Cui, "The Social Marketing Road of Tai Jiong").
From that time they exposed themselves on the social network on, the roles of connectors and mavens change substantially. All the social gravity center people who helped achieve the 22,000 daily tweets are the film’s secondary connectors, mavens, and some of them the salesmen.
In a time like now, how can one forget about the new media – THE new media. This giant sophisticated campaign was deliberately planned – step by step. “First we seek out to the traditional media to magnify brand awareness,” Li explains why they chose to feature in the most popular three entertainment programs and live shows is because of they are the best and fastest way to create awareness, “but how to make the consumers like you? That likeness comes from interactions, always, so the second step was to go to new media. New media is highly interactive and it builds relationships with the audience. It offers equal conversations between consumers and us.” Thus people saw an enormous tide of new media public relations/marketing movement.
Besides what was mentioned in the last four paragraphs about traditional media advertising, Enlight Media collaborated with 360, one of the biggest online community, and CTrip, the biggest travel agent, for a promotional event selecting 40 audiences for free Thailand trip awards. They worked with the Chinese online payment monopoly Alipay (which is used much more commonly than Paypal in U.S.) for online ads complementing with express online ticket purchasing (Li, "Tai Jiong: Sell Movie as a FMCG"). Of course they were on the Chinese YouTubes. Enlight Media executed bundled advertisements on the biggest video-sharing websites and the biggest online broadcasting websites – extremely commonly used in China – and only on their best positions. Including the trailers they collaborated with Wanda, the director Xu Zheng, who is also the screenwriter and the main actor of this film, directed and produced nine independent trailers/videos apart from the movie just for marketing ("Tai Jiong Creative in Marketing: Starting a Carnival with the Biggest Theater Chain"). According to Evening News, the 40 videos they released online before and while the film was on screen received a total viewership of 200 million in 20 days ("Tai Jiong's Marketing Strategy: More Than Enough Marketing Materials Plus Wordof Mouth”).
Primary Maven Role of the New Media
Not to mention they worked heavily with the Chinese Facebook and Twitter: Renren and Weibo. All the online and most of the off-line promotions were twitted on their official weibo, and in a PRNewswire Asia article, according to Carat China, the digital marketing specialist’s Chinese company, early before Lost in Thailand hit the screen, there were three days where the daily related tweets exceeded 22,000 (Cui, "The Social Marketing Road of Tai Jiong").
From that time they exposed themselves on the social network on, the roles of connectors and mavens change substantially. All the social gravity center people who helped achieve the 22,000 daily tweets are the film’s secondary connectors, mavens, and some of them the salesmen.
*** References ***
Li, Hui. "Tai Jiong: Sell Movie as a FMCG." Trans. Jie Luo. The Bund 05 Feb. 2013: n. pag. The Bund. Feb. 2013. Web. 14 Feb. 2013. <http://www.bundpic.com/2013/02/20891.shtml>.
Yu, Yin. "Tai Jiong's Marketing Strategy: More Than Enough Marketing Materials Plus Word of Mouth." Trans. Jie Luo. Evening Times [Shanghai] 04 Jan. 2013, A2 sec.: A2-02. Evening Times. Web. 13 Feb. 2013. <http://newspaper.jfdaily.com/xwwb/html/2013-01/04/content_950598.htm>.
***
QUIZ ON Tipping Point Theory
Q1: Name the Three Rules of Epidemic.
1. the Law of the Few; 2. the Stickiness Factor; 3. the Power of Context.
Q2: Explain who are the three roles in the Law of the Few and how do they function.
1. Connectors; 2. Mavens; 3. Salesmen. Connectors are those people who are the centers of social gravity, who are connected to many people. They can easily get a large proportion of people to know about what's going on. Mavens are the information sources. They are people whom others go to for information and details. They are enthusiastic to share what they know and the only thing a maven does not do is to persuade - which makes one a salesman. A salesman not necessarily persuades people all the time, but what he or she say and how he/she act results to be persuasive and causes actions.
Bonus #1: The total box office revenue for the Chinese comedy Lost in Thailand already reached 20 times its production cost. True or False?
FALSE. Total box office flipped 40 times its investment (production cost).
Bonus #2: It is the first time Xu Zheng (the director, screenwriter, and main actor for Lost in Thailand (a.k.a Tai Jiong, 泰囧)) ever direct a film. True or false.
TRUE.
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