Increase revenue, break the circle, and expand the community In 2022, Guoman IP will take root in digital collections

Four months into 2022, people are still waiting for the first Chinese comic hit. However, the leading IPs in the field of Guoman have already extended their tentacles to a new field-digital collections.

Last week, a group of leading animation companies in China, such as Ruosen Digital, Zhongce Culture, 2:10, and Qichuangshe, jointly released their digital collection plan. Yuanshu Zang is sold in batches. Each Guoman work releases four digital collections, each limited to 5,000 copies.

Almost at the same time, Tencent Comics released a ten-year limited digital collection, which covered well-known Chinese comic IPs such as "Under One Man", "Fox Fairy Little Matchmaker", and "The King Forgive Your Life". Tencent Animation App has directly become the platform for the sale of digital collections, taking the first step of their digital collections. These 4,800 digital collections were sold out on the day they went online, and even caused the Tencent Animation App server to go down.

If we look a little further, it is not difficult to find that platforms such as Alipay, Tencent and Bilibili have already deployed in the field of digital collections, and have promoted many Guoman IPs to join this market. The annual turnover of digital collection platforms like Whale Explorer has approached 200 million. And this year, more animation production companies have also invested in the tide of digital collections to further realize their layout.

Are digital collections just a way to increase revenue for these Guoman IPs?

The person in charge of the digital collection business of some animation production companies told the Prophet Traveler (ID: yuyanjiayoubao) that digital collections have gradually become an important tool for IP marketing. The main target group of many digital collections may not have watched animation in the past, and animation companies can obviously take this opportunity to break the circle of their own animation IP. In addition, the strong user stickiness of digital collections can also help animation manufacturers build and expand their own communities.

What digital collections are animation companies keen on? What IP will they choose to attract more outsiders? How are high-profile digital collections viewed by marketplaces and platforms? The Prophet visited a number of animation production companies and digital collection platforms, hoping to gain insight into the new possibilities brought by Guoman IP and digital collections.

Guoman IP's efforts in digital collections,monetization has become the main driving force

In the past year, the popularity of digital collections has not been low.

According to the "2022 Digital Collection Research Report" released by the computing power think tank this month, a total of about 4.56 million digital collections will be sold in China in 2021, with a total issuance value of about 150 million. The scope of digital collections is also very wide, including cultural and creative, sports and ticketing digital collections. Among them, the cultural and creative field is undoubtedly the most important component. In addition, digital collections can be linked with popular fields such as digital education, digital social networking, and Metaverse.

The growth trend of the digital collection market is obvious, but what makes animation manufacturers determined to enter this market is that the pioneers have seen the enthusiasm of ordinary users for digital collections.

Nono, the person in charge of related businesses of Seven Creation Society, told the prophet: "Currently domestic animation companies, monetization is a difficult problem for everyone. After the emergence of new things such as digital collections, everyone is still willing to try. After all, digital collections For IP copyright holders, the cost is not high, but the benefits are still very considerable. ”

As we all know, digital collections have a certain scarcity, and the characteristics of animation IP strengthen the cultural value of digital collections. Therefore, the selling price and secondary market price of many digital collections are very impressive. For example, "Wu Liuqi" and Uncle Fuji's Tiger Down the Mountain, they both launched special Alipay payment code skins.

These Alipay payment code skins are not expensive, ranging from 10 yuan to 20 yuan. Generally, they will be sold out immediately after going online, no matter how many are on the shelves. When these Alipay payment codes are available for circulation, the second-hand transaction prices generally rise to around 60 yuan, and the value directly doubles by five or six times.

For example, the digital collection commemorating the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Tencent Animation App not only has illustrations related to animation IP, but also is accompanied by customized audio related to IP. It is not a fantasy that the price of such a commemorative digital collection has increased by 100 times.

Compared with digital illustrations and payment code skins, the production period of virtual figures is longer, but the benefits for animation manufacturers are also higher. In September last year, Aofei Entertainment launched three limited-edition virtual figures of the "Soul Street" IP, one of which sold 40,000 copies. Based on the price of 25.9 yuan, this virtual figure alone has brought millions of sales to Aofei.

In addition to illustrations and virtual figures, some animation manufacturers have also implanted AR technology in digital collections, allowing fans to interact with purchased virtual assets and bring them a different visual experience.

In November last year, Yihua Kaitian teamed up with GSV Digital Arts and other partners to launch the "Ling Cage" AR series digital blind box. Through the combination of materialized art style and AR technology.

After a successful purchase, fans will first see an exquisite unboxing animation, followed by a virtual figure of the character and related ecological animation clips. The integration of digital collections and AR technology highlights the fact that Yihua Kaitian is trying to restore a spiritual cage world in their imagination to fans.

It is worth mentioning that the AR digital blind box of "Ling Cage" was sold out immediately after it was launched, and set an auction record of 120,000 yuan in the Yongle auction digital collection.

It is not difficult to see from the above-mentioned many cases that animation IP has become an important category in the field of digital collections. Whether it is illustrations, virtual figures, or AR blind boxes, they can bring a considerable income to IP copyright owners.

Digital collections drive Guoman IP to break the circle and become the starting point of marketing

The income that digital collections bring to IP copyright owners is well known, but this is not the full meaning of Guoman IP's entry into digital collections. With the rapid expansion of the digital collection market, people can clearly see that the two groups of digital collection investors and animation IP fans do not completely overlap. And as sales continue, digital collections are bound to help Guoman IP break the circle.

The difficulty of breaking the circle has always been an important issue surrounding Chinese animators in recent years. The audience is relatively fixed. Although the personality and cultural value of the IP itself has the conditions to break the circle, the ability to cross borders still restricts the further development of many Guoman IPs.

How to reach a wider user group through linkage with other IP or brands has always been a headache for Chinese animators. This is why many Guoman IP licensees regard digital collections as the first step in IP marketing.

nono revealed to the prophet that Qichuangshe has formulated a clear plan in the field of digital collections, that is, it hopes to use digital collections to further break the circle of IP in its hands.

The standard for Seven Chuangshe to select IP as a digital collection is very simple, that is, to make the purchasing users willing to hold it for a long time instead of directly reselling it out of interest. "Bump World" is precisely an anime IP with a fan base and high user stickiness. Fans have a very high degree of love and recognition for the characters in the work, and are willing to pay for them. In addition, the "Bump World" IP itself was born on the virtual network, and such attributes have the opportunity to combine natural and digital collections.

In fact, Qichuangshe hopes to create a metaverse IP work that connects online and offline, animation, games, physical peripherals, and virtual products. Digital collections can be regarded as a new attempt in IP expansion. nono even bluntly stated that the current market for digital collections is still developing, but in the future mainstream animation IPs will use digital collections as the starting point for IP development.

"Under One Man" has a similar IP development strategy with Qichuangshe. As the first batch of animation IPs that focus on cross-border cooperation, "Under One Man" has tried almost all mainstream forms of cooperation and linkage on the market. From the simplest cross-border cooperation of food and daily necessities, to making Longhu Mountain in Jiangxi the first anime holy land, "Under One Man" has accumulated sufficient experience in cross-border cooperation and expanded their IP to as many people as possible. among the crowd.

But the fact is that the IP of "Under One Man" still has great market potential, and the expansion of the user circle is far from reaching the ceiling, which is why they are willing to try to launch digital collections.

Running a successful Guoman IP has never been an easy task, but for latecomers, digital collections have become a great tool for them to break the circle.

New community + new product form, two surprises await Guoman IP

Revenue and breaking the circle are undoubtedly very attractive to Guoman IP, but the possibility of digital collections obviously does not stop there. With new community building and new product models, there are still many surprises waiting for the animation industry in the future of digital collections, and the practitioners in it are also looking forward to these new things.

Liao Huainan, founder and CEO of OBS Chaoxingyuanli, believes that from the perspective of traditional brand marketing, community maintenance is essential if any product wants to achieve a breakthrough in sales, and community-based publicity is better than ordinary publicity methods It will also be more efficient. At the same time, the community will also grow along with the IP, so this will be a long-term business rather than a short-term business.

At present, Guoman IPs that have been recognized by mainstream audiences will build their own community systems. QQ groups, WeChat groups, Weibo groups, animation companies in these communities can find high-quality fans for the next step of marketing. However, for some small companies and new IPs, it is still very difficult to build their own communities.

Interestingly, the field of digital collections is inherently community-based. Whether it is a subsequent transaction or spontaneous formation after purchase, the user stickiness of buyers of digital collections is far higher than that of other users. Liao Huainan said that when Guoman IP launches digital collections, in order to better boost sales, the manufacturers themselves will start to pay attention to community maintenance.

Whether it is a new user who comes for digital collections or a fan of the original animation IP, as long as the manufacturer can find a way to maintain the community, it can maximize the virtuous circle within the community, and finally obtain a relatively high-quality community . Liao Huainan also mentioned that when they released the IP digital collection of "Jiansiquan", they observed that the relevant digital collections received a good response from the fan community of "Jiansiquan", which also attracted some new fans to join.

It is worth mentioning that with the development of the industry, digital collections have begun to derive new forms, and these new forms can even give birth to new industries.

For example, recent news shows that Douyin is about to launch a new business called "Boiling Ji", which mainly involves virtual clothing, virtual people, virtual fashion and other aspects. "Boiling Ji" is a brand new fashion community, which integrates technology and humanities into fashion, and builds a new market for the fashion industry.

In fact, in Liao Huainan's view, there is essentially no difference between virtual clothing and digital collections. This new form derived from digital collections is also very easy to achieve linkage with Guoman IP. Liao Huainan revealed to the prophet that some well-known top-tier Guoman IPs have already begun preparations for the linkage with virtual clothing, and they will be officially announced to the outside world when the right time comes.

In the past six months, the voice of further supervision of digital collections has not stopped. However, the continuous growth of the overall market has given confidence to more practitioners. The continuous addition of Guoman IP has allowed the outside world to see the marketing value of digital collections. Obviously, with more funds and new technologies, the future of digital collections still has unlimited room for imagination.

Author｜Snow Night Maple Lin