The outbreak of
the new coronavirus pneumonia epidemic has not only brought a small impact on the cultural industry, but also brought a new opportunity for
digital transformation and upgrading. Many new formats have emerged in the online cultural field. Cultural services have opened new spaces, ushered in new opportunities, and stepped up to a new level. Since this issue, this newspaper has launched the "Decoding New Trends on the Internet" column to interpret new developments in online culture and help practitioners grasp new opportunities in the cultural field.
Eye-catching performance of online cultural activities
During
the new coronavirus pneumonia epidemic, all the residents in the country became “otaku / housemates”, and various online consumption behaviors with the “house economy” attribute exploded, becoming the most significant change in the consumption field during the new coronavirus pneumonia epidemic. The data that best reflects this trend is that from January to February, the cumulative mobile Internet traffic reached 23.5 billion GB, a year-on-year increase of 44.2%. The enthusiasm for online emerging consumption has increased sharply. Although it is a special phenomenon in a special period, all sectors of society are aware of such a problem that the potential of
digital transformation and digital consumption has not yet been fully tapped, and there is still much room for consumption upgrade.
In terms of cultural activities, many agglomeration-type cultural activities that originally occurred offline were moved online. "Cloud Museum", "Cloud Tourism", "Cloud Concert", etc. have continuously emerged during the new coronavirus pneumonia epidemic. People's Network, ByteDance, Tencent and various governments have conducted large-scale experiments on "Cloud Expo" and "Cloud Forum" for the first time. VR and panoramic vision technologies have developed online tour platforms and released them to the society, and the cultural needs of consumers during their homes have been filled in the space and time of the network. For example, the Palace Museum has launched the “VR Forbidden City”, “Panorama Forbidden City” and “Cloud” Tour Exhibitions. The Dunhuang Academy also used digital resources to launch a series of online products such as the “Digital Dunhuang” premium line tour and the “Cloud Tour Dunhuang” mini-program. . In addition, mobile games, short video platforms, social networks and other media broke out in the whole house period, making the development of the online cultural industry eye-catching.
In terms of cultural production, new forms of online office are rapidly spreading. The use of
digital technology has brought new social understanding, cultivated new consumption habits, and created new room for efficiency growth. This means that online teaching, office, education, training, consulting services and even industrial production will usher in more profound development opportunities, which will further affect the production and office methods of cultural enterprises. During the new coronavirus pneumonia epidemic, many service providers opened free remote office products to the society to help reduce the flow of people, including Alibaba ’s Nail, Huawei Cloud ’s WeLink, Tencent ’s Tencent Meeting, ByteDance ’s Flying Book, foreign remote Conference software zoom, etc. This provides the possibility of remote office and cloud collaboration in the cultural industry. Many industries with high reliance on
cloud technology, such as art design, online literature, and game design, have resumed work through cloud office.
Consumption habits are an important consideration
As the new coronavirus pneumonia epidemic prevention and control has achieved important and staged results, the economic and social order has recovered rapidly. Some of the emerging industries generated during the rising tide will be ebb tide, and some will be further upgraded to integrate into the future social production system.
Because the current technological methods cannot fully restore the "liveness" of the concentrated cultural experience activities, online viewing, online concerts, and online travel cannot temporarily replace offline similar activities, most of which are Transitional "solution" under the new coronavirus pneumonia epidemic. Taking Modern Sky's "Cloud Music Festival" as an example, although the live broadcast on the first day achieved an excellent score of 1.31 million viewers, and the audience also highly praised the online performance, it is like some musicians have tried to broadcast live. In the end, it failed to achieve the desired results. Online concerts could not provide the sense of ritual to watch at the performance venues and pay tribute to the musicians; the online concerts also could not provide the satisfaction of singing together with the people around them in the stadiums and other performance venues. Similarly, online travel cannot provide the sense of harvest brought by local elements such as sunlight, humidity, wind, and sound at the destination. In these emerging industry categories that are difficult to replace with a "sense of presence", people's cultural consumption habits have not been subverted, and they will gradually return to their original state after
the epidemic.
For the film and television industry, some of the original operating modes have been rewritten and surpassed in the digital space. The most typical case is that on the eve of the Spring Festival, Xu Zheng's new work "Liang Mom" gave up the plan for the theater online screening and turned to Toutiao today for a free online premiere (play). After this, movies such as "Fat Dragon Crossing the River" and "Big Winner" have also successively selected online video platforms for screening, and no longer use the theater line as the premiere choice. This model has been put into practice in the music field. Ten years ago, China's music industry has undergone a transition from traditional recording to digital distribution, and this process will now happen again in the film industry. Although the cinema viewing ceremonies (including art cinema lines) have a strong sense of viewing ceremonies, high comfort, and sufficient consumer stickiness, online distribution has a strong commercial appeal. Therefore, it is estimated that the distribution mode of the film industry will change further after the new coronavirus pneumonia epidemic. How to play the distribution mode is one of the problems left by the industry to the industry.
After the new coronavirus pneumonia epidemic, the cultural industry will resume as before. Although the digitalization of museum collections is not economically effective, it does not affect the major museums to continue to actively promote the process of digitizing collections, digitizing exhibitions, and digitizing visits. On the one hand, the digitization process is a new requirement for the inheritance of China ’s excellent traditional culture in the new era. On the other hand, the content of the collection of cultural relics is the condensation of excellent traditional culture. The use of digital technology to "recreate" the collection of cultural relics can not only effectively promote the Chinese creation of artistic creation and cultural expression, but also help the full flow of social innovation elements in society . After the epidemic, such measures should continue to be vigorously promoted through fiscal budget design, government purchases, or self-financing.
Standing at the crossroads of change
After making a basic judgment on the changes of some new formats after
the new coronavirus pneumonia epidemic, we must also consider the new phenomena in the epidemic and the reasons for the frequent emergence of new formats from the perspective of demand, that is, to examine the changes in consumer acceptance habits before and after the epidemic. Although the rapid development of the above-mentioned new formats and new consumption forms has indeed made a great contribution to the growth of the consumer market during the epidemic, "e-commerce" is still the most important source of supplementary consumption.
According to the estimation of the National Bureau of Statistics, the online retail sales of physical goods will be 8.5 trillion yuan in 2019, contributing more than 45% to the growth of the total retail sales of consumer goods. It can be seen from this that e-commerce is an important booster for the development of the consumer market in recent years, and is the consumer entrance, channel and platform that consumers most rely on today. During
the new coronavirus pneumonia epidemic, the e-commerce platform made even greater breakthroughs. In February, the total number of orders received by Taobao live broadcast merchants increased at an average rate of 20% every week, and the transaction amount doubled from last year.
In the digital era, the external impact of marketing thinking is huge. The eye-catching performance growth is the external performance, and the internal expression is the nearly fierce marketing planning competition. The social e-commerce represented by "Bringing Goods" has become a miracle place in the digital age. Live streaming with goods is the most important entry and platform that should be valued in the marketing process. This is determined by social habits that social platforms and e-commerce platforms occupy nearly 80% of our mobile phone usage time.
It can also be seen that digitalization is a key way to resist the fragility of the industry. For the cultural industry, the more new formats emerged from
the epidemic, the less digitized we were and the greater the impact. With the advent of the 5G era, consumers will definitely demand more products and services from the digital space. If producers of cultural products and services are unable to improve their ability to develop online businesses, formulate marketing strategies that adapt to the new business environment, no matter how drastic the reshuffle period will be, the one that will swim naked after tide.
That is to say, in the era of informatization development continues to accelerate, the cultural industry stands at the crossroads of development and reform. Whether the public sector and the market can truly embrace digital transformation and pay for and pay for a wider range of digital cultural products, cultural services, and cultural experiences will largely determine the development trend of the cultural industry after the new coronavirus pneumonia epidemic has eased.
