LeTV Video Goofy: Will adopt more new cooperation models of "guaranteed + shared"

As an important part of the content side of LeEco's industrial chain and the traffic portal of LeEco's entire ecosystem, LeEco Video has shown vigorous development momentum in the past two years. It has not only repeatedly created good plays that the industry admires, but also has a strong impact on the future development trend of the entire video side. The grasp and the large-scale exploration of new models have also given innovative inspiration and great pressure to other practitioners.

Original title: LeTV spent 15 billion yuan to reserve more than 200 high-quality IPs to

"watch LeTV on a big drama", which is no longer just eye-catching text on large outdoor advertisements. As an important part of the content side of LeEco's industrial chain and the traffic portal of LeEco's entire ecosystem, LeEco Video has shown vigorous development momentum in the past two years. It has not only repeatedly created good plays that the industry admires, but also has a strong impact on the future development trend of the entire video side. The grasp and the large-scale exploration of new models have also given innovative inspiration and great pressure to other practitioners. The reporter had an exclusive interview with Gao Fei, president of LeTV Video, who used this "veteran employee" who had been in the Internet content side for 14 years and in LeTV for 7 years to analyze in detail the secret of LeTV's sudden rise.

Four

years ago,"Legend of Zhen Huan", the popular drama king in 2012, brought nearly 7 billion views to the solo platform LeTV, and was also an important node for making LeTV videos familiar to more users. The price of purchasing "Legend of Zhen Huan" was sky-high at that time. Before that, no online copyright unit price of a drama had exceeded 300,000 yuan, which naturally demonstrated the unique vision of the drama buyer. Not long after,"Legend of Mi Yue" created by the same production team also became a phenomenon-level costume drama in 2015. As the owner of exclusive copyright, LeTV Video's revenue is considerable.

"Exclusive is very important, because now you have relatively few players, so the homogenization risks of the enterprise exist. The first basis for removing the homogenization risks now is self-control. You can do some differentiation yourself. On the other hand, of course, we rely on exclusivity, because I think exclusive only represents the ownership of rights, and exclusive broadcasts represent strategy, so you will see that the volume of exclusive broadcasts will increase in the future. Only solo broadcasting can separate your platform from other platforms through content segmentation." However, Gao Fei's team was not just satisfied with copyright competition based on TV broadcast platforms. He began to envision a longer-term development model: participating in production.

This has to be mentioned that in the first half of 2016, domestic TV series finally received well-known high-ratings and Internet click-through works: "Good Mr." and "Dear Translator". The former has a cumulative broadcast of 5 billion on the entire network; the latter has a total of 3.4 billion views on LeTV's entire terminal.

"Dear Translator" is co-produced by LeTV Video, Huatsekton's Shanghai Theater Core Culture, and Jiaxing Media. They jointly carry out the preliminary development of the project, actor building and subsequent marketing communication. This is different from any previous purchase by LeTV. A big drama is different. Even "Dear Translator" has adopted a series development method. Currently,"Dear Translator 2" is in the preparatory stage.

Gao Fei also revealed that in fact, before "Dear Translator", there was also a TV series "Night in Beautiful Clothes" that was filmed last year that was also produced by LeTV. However, due to scheduling reasons, the time for "Night in Beautiful Clothes" to be broadcast on Hunan Satellite TV will be postponed. "This is equivalent to a very important milestone in the transformation of the role of our previous copyright business team, because in the past, we were still mainly business-oriented, and more about negotiating with producers, how to confirm and how to lock copyright. But starting from these two projects, I actually defined their roles as 'project managers' more Internet-based. Now I am cultivating them as producers."

This will be an important strategic change for LeTV Video for big dramas. "The important thing is that we must participate in investment first, and secondly, we must participate in decision-making. We will generally control the investment ratio between 20% and 30%."

In the second half of the year, not only will there be TV series, but also viewers will also see variety shows produced by LeTV Video that can compete with first-line TV stations. Similarly, LeTV's role in them is not a simple buyer of content or just a participant in a content. Party, but the leader of the project.

Content richness covers mainstream audiences

One of the works that made LeTV videos popular in 2016 was the self-made online drama "The Promotion of the Crown Princess". Faced with the "dark horse" success, Gao Fei seemed very clear-headed. "Water has no shape, and soldiers have no fixed shape. When you summarize it, there are actually some rules. Just like "The Crown Princess", producing another film according to this drawing will definitely not be successful. We have put some effort into studying its success, such as why it is strong at this time point, and future content production and content operation and timing are not simply copying the subject matter, and copying the subject matter will not succeed."

Gao Fei, who has been doing network content management for many years, feels that "content" has certain contingency, but through some systematic settings, it can help prevent systematic risks such as continuous problems. LeTV video has a relatively systematic mechanism to protect it. "Now the production cost of each drama is getting more and more expensive, so we have to be more refined than before, which is a very realistic pressure."

Gao Fei was always asked when the next LeTV video "black horse" came out, and every time he gave the most rational answer: "It must be able to meet the demands of some core users, and this part of the core users has a certain right to speak, he can bring it from communication."

Due to differences in resource hardware terminals, unlike other video websites, mobile users may only account for one-quarter or one-third of LeTV videos, and LeTV members are more for home users, which means that LeTV users are rich in content and broad subject matter requirements. "If we can cover the mainstream population, the span of the mainstream population will definitely be a little wider. We said that there are currently 1.3 billion people in China, but all the people born in the 1990s, including the post-00s, the entire population is more than 400 million people, and there are 1 billion people, their preferences and their needs for spiritual content must also be met, so we actually need to make some reserves for the content needed by the post-80s and post-70s, and even the post-60s and 50s."

Gao Fei admitted that LeTV Video does attach great importance to marketing."In the final analysis, it is still an era of attention economy." However, LeTV's understanding of marketing communication has its own ecological characteristics-only socialization and word-of-mouth communication have self-communication capabilities. "What we need to do is to be able to refine this point, extract it, and then turn it into an exciting point for everyone. I can scratch his sore spots and itching, and he can automatically bring up the communication rate. This is LeEco's thoughts and demands."

More adoption of a new cooperation model of "guaranteed + shared"

At the Shanghai TV Festival, which has just ended, Gao Fei announced that LeTV's video industry had made a pioneering move: spending 15 billion yuan to reserve more than 200 high-quality IPs, saying that in the future, more "guaranteed + shared" will be adopted. A new cooperation model.

"The reserve of IP means that it is a raw material, and we hope that everyone can develop it together. We can cooperate on a project basis. If appropriate, I can have a long-term employment contract, or even say that I will directly turn you into a shareholder. In this way, we can amplify the production capacity of my insufficient content. The self-control I mean mainly in this area. It provides greater flexibility for the operation of the content itself. Because if you follow the TV station, it means that your editing and broadcasting cannot be moved, and self-control does not have this problem. Secondly, I can boldly try many topics that no one has touched before, which provides greater value to the entire industry."

Gao Fei also analyzed the unique advantages that LeEco brings to partners. For example, in "Mr. Good" and "Dear Translator", LeTV's super mobile phones and super TVs were cleverly implanted during the production of the show, and the product functions were perfectly integrated with the plot. Gao Fei said that LeTV Video is very experienced in feeding back to its partners. "Our foundation is based on some of the user's behavior trajectories. For many contents, including the design of the bridge section, I can even clearly tell him which frame he sees the most in a video and which bridge section he can see. What you can see, what you stay for the longest, and what becomes its highlights. Based on this, we can interact more deeply with users, which is our biggest differentiation advantage."

Finally, Gao Fei also specially added: All of LeTV's breakthrough industry actions are not to put LeTV's own interests first. On the contrary, LeTV hopes to make the cake bigger with other peers. "For example, when we propose not to buy copyright, we hope to adopt a 'guaranteed + shared' approach to cooperate. We hope that this approach is to avoid the previous situation of separation between upstream and downstream. Combining everyone's best resources and capabilities will ultimately ensure the long-term, stable and healthy development of the content industry."

Editor: Nancy