Tencent Biography 1998-2016: Evolution of Chinese Internet Companies

Chapter 18 Internet+: Pan-Entertainment Ecosystem

In the future, everyone will have 15 minutes of fame.

——Andy Warhol (American pop artist)

Tencent only does two things, connection and content, it's as simple as that.

——Ma Huateng
From "Locke Kingdom"

Underwood fought to the death in the political slaughterhouse during the day, and when he returned to his home at night, he would sit cross-legged on the ground and play shooting games in front of the computer.He often plays Killzone 3.This is a scene that appears many times in the American drama "House of Cards".

In European and American societies, online games are called the "ninth art" after movies, and they are the only interactive modern art form.But in China, online games have never been able to enter the adult society, and they have a lot of original sin.As the largest online game company in China and even in the world, Tencent has been criticized for this for a long time.

After 2010, as the demographic dividend was exhausted, the big bang era of China's online game industry ended, and the mobile Internet opened up a new path for the evolution of this industry. In July 2011, at the 7th China International Animation and Game Expo, Cheng Wu, vice president of Tencent Group, put forward the idea of ​​"pan-entertainment strategy" for the first time, that is, with IP operation as the axis, game operation platform and network platform Based on the cross-platform and multi-field business expansion model.

Cheng Wu said that driven by the current trend of networking, digitization, and multimedia, games, movies, and animation are no longer isolated, but have formed a closely linked organic whole, a cross-border industry spanning these three industries. The industry chain in the world has been formed and is constantly integrating and moving forward.With the continuous emergence of successful models from abroad, practitioners in all industries need to uphold an open and cooperative attitude to jointly build a cross-border cultural industry, so as to create China's own cross-border cultural brand.

"Actually, before I proposed 'pan-entertainment', I had many discussions with Mark (Ren Yuxin), and he was very supportive of this idea. At that time, 'pan-entertainment' was not a company-level strategy, but a way for the interactive entertainment business department to seek breakthroughs. This kind of exploration." Cheng Wu told me later.At that time, the only thing that Tencent could produce to prove this strategy was "Rock Kingdom".

"Rock Kingdom" is a children's online entertainment community game independently developed by Tencent. Based on this game, the Interactive Entertainment Department has carried out multi-level authorized development.The first is the publication of the children's picture book "Locke Kingdom: A Big Picture Book of Pets", which quickly topped the list of children's books in China.Secondly, the animated movie "Rock Kingdom!"The filming of "Sacred Dragon Knight", which was screened in the subsequent National Day file, made a box office of 3500 million yuan.

By March 2012, at Tencent Interactive Entertainment's annual strategy conference, the "pan-entertainment strategy" was officially proposed for the first time, and it became the most important testing ground for Ma Huateng's "platform + content" concept.

Cheng Wu organized a "Pan-Entertainment Master Advisory Group" for this purpose, including musician Tan Dun, cartoonist Cai Zhizhong, director Lu Chuan, communication scholar Yin Hong, and Hong Kong doll maker Micheal Lau (Liu Migao). artist.Later he explained that in the absence of real physical business, "pan-entertainment" is a somewhat advanced and abstract concept, so we must use this form of "labeling" to make it as easy as possible for everyone to understand and accept .

tear a hole from anime

"Pan-entertainment" is a strategy that "looks beautiful", but it is difficult to enter the implementation stage.Tencent is a company with a very deep engineer culture. The thinking of science students has grasped its values. From the realization of traffic to the cross-border content, it is very important.Ren Yuxin and Cheng Wu had to find a narrow breakthrough point and tear a convincing opening.

They're targeting anime that no one has ever looked up to.

Cheng Wu graduated from the Department of Physics of Tsinghua University. During his studies, he served as the business captain of the drama team of the Tsinghua University Art Troupe. He is a science student born with artistic talents.He joined Tencent in 2009. Before that, he held senior management positions in the market operation business lines of companies such as Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo. A lot of experience from the traditional fast-moving consumer industry played a role at this time.

In a research report, Cheng Wu found that among all the user groups who play online games, 87% of them are watching or have a need to watch animation.This is a very astonishing statistic.Moreover, whether it is the American animation culture represented by Marvel and DC, or the Japanese animation culture represented by Shueisha and Shogakukan, they have actually had a great impact on young people.In the beginning, they were subcultures, but as their users grew, they gradually integrated into mainstream society and became mainstream culture.

In China, due to the low number of users and the thin industrial chain, animation has always been like a child who can’t grow up: practitioners have neither professional glory nor actual recognition from the market, traditional animation publishing continues to shrink, and online animation is mixed. , Piracy is rampant.

Cheng Wu found that it is necessary to start from the most basic work.With the strong support of Ren Yuxin, he found a director in charge of product research and development from the channel department of the mutual entertainment business group, and he led the team to form a small commando team of 8 people. "At that time, the team's understanding of animation was blank, and the small partners entered a completely unfamiliar field with the mentality of internal entrepreneurship."

The first job of the small animation team is to cooperate with foreign animation organizations to introduce high-quality works, and then feed back domestic readers for free.Cheng Wu said: "We hope to cultivate users' good reading habits of reading genuine products, let them experience what is an excellent product, and let them see that the genuine content and genuine reading experience in the future will far surpass the content and experience of shoddy pirated copies. Yes.” Since December 2012, Tencent had a long discussion with Japan’s Shueisha, and obtained the exclusive Chinese online copyrights of excellent works such as “Naruto” and “One Piece”. “Although it is exclusive, we pay for it, but we have There is no charge for users in China, which is actually cultivating an industry.”

The second task is to cultivate the original ability and ecological system of Chinese animation.From the first day of the project's launch, Cheng Wu took the cultivation of China's own comic and animation creation ecosystem as the most important strategic goal.Tencent has signed contracts with different cartoon authors to give them professional creation and editing guidance.In the four years since 2012, more than 4 comic authors have contributed on the Tencent Animation platform, and more than 5 works have been published by officially signed authors. Among them, more than 2 serial comics have been clicked over 40 million. The most popular manga author's annual income exceeded one million yuan.This was completely unimaginable before the platform was created.

With the substantial improvement of domestic creative capabilities, starting from 2015, Tencent began to export animation copyrights overseas.Under the promotion of Cheng Wu, Tencent formed a copyright committee with Japanese and Korean animation organizations to jointly produce and promote excellent Chinese animation works.

Studio DEEN is an old Japanese animation production company with a history of 40 years."Rurouni Kenshin" and "Ranma 1/2" familiar to domestic fans are all works of the company.President Kazuki Noguchi is a very motivated person who is open to new adventures with young teams in China.

Under the selection of both China and Japan, an online literature work called "Once upon a time there was a mountain of spirit sword" was selected.Tencent and DEEN formed a joint creative team to develop an animated version of this work. In January 2016, the animation "Once upon a time there was a mountain of spirit sword" was broadcast on the manga channel of TV TOKYO, and it ranked first in the new animation of the month in one fell swoop, with over 1 million hits on the Internet.Japanese media commented that "this work with a strong Chinese style unexpectedly became popular and has the potential to become the next "Fengshen Yanyi"".

Acquired Shanda Literature for RMB 50 billion
The small animation team built the largest animation platform in the country in just over two years.Its success has allowed Tencent to suddenly seize a piece of territory in the content market. Although it is not within the traditional mainstream sight, it has given decision-makers great confidence.In fact, as early as the beginning of 2013 at the cadre management meeting of the interactive entertainment business group, Ren Yuxin had clearly defined "pan-entertainment" as one of the three core strategies of the business group.

Next, Liu Chiping, Ren Yuxin and Cheng Wu set their sights on online literature.Compared with animation, this is of course a 10-fold Red Sea market.

Chinese Internet literature has gone through a long period of barbaric cultivation.

In 2002, Wu Wenhui, who graduated from Peking University, founded the fantasy literature website "Qiandian Original Literature Association", which was the predecessor of Qidian Chinese website.In the second year, Qidian Chinese.com launched an online fee-based reading model, setting up a paywall for original serialized novels, thus forming a profit model that allows self-transfusion.

In 2004, Shanda, a thriving company, acquired Qidian Chinese.com for US$200 million, and then acquired many other companies, such as Under the Banyan Tree, Hongxiu Tianxiang, Romance Novels, and Jinjiang Literature, becoming the largest online literature platform in China in one fell swoop. At its peak around 2013, Shanda accounted for more than 70% of the online literature market, with about 1.5 million users, accounting for 24% of the country's Internet users.

From the first day of its birth, online literature has the characteristics of upstream and downstream derivatives.Many original works on Shanda Literature Platform, such as "The Legend of Zhen Huan", "Scary Step by Step" and "The Age of Naked Marriage", etc., have been adapted into TV dramas and became popular for a while. In 2006, the tomb-robbing novel "Ghost Blowing the Lantern", which was published on the Qidian Chinese website, has successively produced comics, online games, film and television dramas, and other derivative content through the transfer of copyright.This novel has about 2000 million readings on the Qidian Chinese website. In the few months after the paper version of the same name was published, it was reprinted four times, with a total sales volume of more than 4 million copies.

In early 2010, Jobs released the iPad, and the era of mobile Internet came with a bang.In June of the same year, after China Mobile's reading platform was launched, it quickly became the king of the mobile reading market with its powerful subscription charging capabilities, and its annual operating income once reached 6 billion yuan.

For quite a long time, Tencent has had two online content departments, one is the literature channel of Tencent.com, and the other is QQ Reading. The two teams together have more than 100 people, but they have never been able to find a breakthrough. strategic point. At the beginning of 2013, Liu Chiping transferred the online reading business to the interactive entertainment business group.At this moment, a personnel earthquake occurred in Shanda Literature.

In the increasingly fierce market competition, Shanda's strategy, like Chen Tianqiao's personality, hesitated and wavered several times. In March 2013, Wu Wenhui and the core founding team of Qidian.com left Shanda collectively due to two failed listings on Nasdaq and disagreements with decision-makers. On September 3, 2013, Tencent integrated all its online literature businesses, officially launched "Tencent Literature", and at the same time established its position as an "important component of the pan-entertainment business matrix". In July 9, Tencent went a step further and acquired Shanda Literature as a whole for 10 billion yuan to form China Literature, with Wu Wenhui as CEO.

After this round of advance and retreat reorganization, China's digital reading market has changed drastically.China Mobile's "Hereading" has the largest number of digital book copyrights and the largest revenue, and Zhangyue has the most active mobile user base, while the newly established Tencent Reading has nearly 1000 million literary works and a team of 400 million creators , won almost all of the original online literature market, and a three-legged confrontation has emerged.

From the era of starting point to the era of reading articles, China's digital reading market has experienced several major changes in the past 13 years: first, from PC to mobile; second, from grassroots reading to mainstream reading; third, reading products The value-added mode of reading has changed; Fourth, the social characteristics of reading have become more and more clearly highlighted.

In Wu Wenhui's view, the future digital reading platform should be customized, that is to say, after different readers enter a reading scene, he can set his own "reading identity".Furthermore, in the process of continuous reading and searching, the background can capture his behavior through big data, so as to establish a recognition system.Eventually, everyone will build their own knowledge base in the cloud.

At the end of 2015, China Literature cooperated with WeChat to develop and launch "WeChat Reading", which means that the experiment of social reading has begun.

Four rings combined, content ecology

Through internal incubation and external mergers and acquisitions, Tencent has made great achievements in the two sectors of animation and online literature, thus gaining a foothold in the field of Internet content production.

At the Tencent Interactive Entertainment Annual Conference in 2014, Cheng Wu further launched the "Version 2.0" of the pan-entertainment strategy, which he refined into "building a fan economy centered on celebrity IP."Under the overall proposition of "building a star IP", Tencent's business ideas have become clearer——

Literary and animation creation is the most effective and cheapest link in telling stories and establishing characters, and is suitable as the source of IP.Moreover, enterprises can use the Internet platform to have a large number of products, allowing creativity to emerge continuously, allowing users to vote through their own reading, and to select high-quality works.As the most mature Internet business model, games are a powerful monetization channel for IP.However, the social influence of online literature and animation works is relatively not explosive. The explosion of the influence of an IP often comes from TV series or movies, so Tencent then entered the film and television industry as a matter of course.

The first case of a small trial was the cooperation with Guo Jingming.

In August 2014, Cheng Wu met the post-8s best-selling author in Shanghai.At that time, Guo Jingming was working on the film and television adaptation of the novel "Grand Trail". The sales volume of this series of novels exceeded 80 million copies. Cooperative scramble.

Cheng Wu proposed a package of cooperation plans: the online literature department will purchase the exclusive copyright of "Grand Trail", the animation department will exclusively purchase and participate in the creation and publication of the animation version, the online game department will invest in the development of theme games, and Tencent will participate in "Grand Trail" "Trace" film and television investment plan.Cheng Wu's plan immediately impressed Guo Jingming, who is very commercial, and the two sides quickly reached an agreement on all-round strategic cooperation.

Just one month after this meeting, in September 2014, Tencent announced in Beijing the establishment of a new business module under the pan-entertainment business, the fourth module besides literature, animation, and games, which was called "Tencent Movie+" at the time. ".Cheng Wu explained the three meanings of "+": "First, movies should be combined with 'Internet+', so that the Internet can become a great boost; second, it is hoped that movies can '+literature' in the pan-entertainment strategy." '+Anime' and '+Game' will become a thriving content ecology; thirdly, I hope Tencent can also become an open platform in terms of movies, and everyone can do imaginative things together."

In March 2015, when Ma Huateng, a representative of the National People's Congress, participated in the National Two Sessions, he clearly stated for the first time two things that Tencent will focus on in the future-connection and content.

He said: "Tencent has made a lot of adjustments in its strategy in the past two years. After we sold search and e-commerce, we focused more on the core, that is, communication and social networking as the core, and WeChat and QQ as platforms and connectors. , we hope to build the simplest connection to connect all people, information and services. The second thing is the content industry. It’s as simple as that, one is a connector, and the other is a content industry.”

A few days later, at Tencent Interactive Entertainment's annual press conference, Ma Huateng's idea became the company's development consensus.Starting from the details, Cheng Wu further put forward five future-oriented thinking:
First, any form of entertainment will no longer exist in isolation, but will be fully connected across borders and symbiotic;
Second, the boundaries between creators and consumers are gradually broken, and everyone can be a creative master;

Thirdly, the mobile Internet will give birth to the fan economy, and the efficiency of star IP birth will be greatly improved;
Fourth, interesting interactive experiences will be widely used, and entertainment thinking may reshape people's lifestyles;
Fifth, the freedom of technology, art, and talents, "Internet +" will give birth to the era of great creativity.

On September 9, Penguin Films, which combines video platform and media attributes, was announced to be established, led by Sun Zhonghuai, the head of Tencent Video.Only a few days later, on September 11, Tencent announced the establishment of Tencent Pictures in Beijing, with Ren Yuxin as chairman and Cheng Wu as CEO.

In an exclusive interview with the media, Cheng Wu said that Tencent has proposed the concept of "pan-entertainment" for four years, and the establishment of Tencent Pictures means that Tencent's pan-entertainment business sector has completed the last piece of the puzzle.At present, Tencent Interactive Entertainment has a total of four major platforms: Tencent Games, Tencent Animation, Tencent Literature and Tencent Pictures, thus forming a complete pan-entertainment ecological layout.

In addition to the four content production sectors, Tencent has also invested in Wei Piao Er, a ticket distribution company based on WeChat and QQ platforms. This company was upgraded from QQ Movie Tickets. In December 4, Beijing Weiying Times and Shanghai Guevara announced the merger. Weipiaoer and Guevara operate independently under the dual brands. It cooperates with 2015 theaters, covering 12 cities across the country, and the coverage rate of moviegoers exceeds 4500%. , becoming the online seat selection platform with the largest number of cooperative theaters and coverage of moviegoers in the country.

The layout of the content industry since 2011 is a "local event" in the entire Tencent system, and it has not changed the social nature of the company.However, its rapid growth and the creation of a circular ecological chain have had a strategic impact both internally and externally.

Internally, "pan-entertainment" has become the most active experimenter of the "Internet +" and "Tencent only doing connectors and content" strategies advocated by Ma Huateng. In the long run, it may become a cultural growth pole within Tencent's business system. .

Externally, Tencent is not only the first large-scale Internet company in China to propose the concept of "pan-entertainment" - a concept that has been identified as one of the most important development trends of China's Internet since 2014 - but also the first to explore the concept of "pan-entertainment". Redefine the term IP, which is popular in China now.

(End of this chapter)