时光网帮好莱坞打开中国市场

Mtime Helps Hollywood Clear China’s Marketing Hurdles and Reach Fans
时光网帮好莱坞打开中国市场

LOS ANGELES ― Now that Hollywood has mostly figured out how to get its biggest movies approved for release in China, studio marketers here are grappling with a new puzzle: What is the best way to woo China’s ticket buyers?

洛杉矶――如今好莱坞已经基本上摸清如何让它们的顶级大制作影片获得在中国的放映许可，但电影公司的营销人员又要应对另一个谜题：怎样才是吸引中国电影消费者的最佳方式？

Trailers and television advertisements, the two most effective methods to drum up interest, are difficult marketing tools to use in China. Chinese theaters do not typically play trailers. The cost of advertising on TV can be exorbitant, in part because studios must buy time at the last minute. China usually limits foreign films to an advertising window of a few weeks.

电影预告片和电视广告是激发人们对电影好奇心的两种最有效的手段，但在中国，这些方法使用起来有些困难。中国的电影院一般不放映预告片。而电视广告的花费则过高，这部分是由于电影公司必须等到最后一刻才能购买广告时间。因为中国通常会给外国电影的广告限定一个几周的窗口期。

Instead, film companies pay for outdoor banners and signs, advertise online, team up with local promotional partners and, increasingly, call a company with enormous reach that few people outside of China have ever heard of: Mtime.

电影公司因此改为出钱打户外横幅和广告牌、网络广告，与当地市场推广伙伴合作，并越来越多地求助于一个外国人很少听说、但影响力巨大的公司：时光网。

Founded in 2005 in Beijing by Kelvin Hou, a former Microsoft executive, Mtime started as an online listing of movie times, hence the name. Then a film database was built and added. Next came a movie-news service, aggregation of user-submitted reviews, a movie-scoring system and an online ticket service for 3,000 theaters. Now attracting 160 million unique desktop and mobile users a month, according to Mr. Hou, Mtime is effectively Fandango, IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes and Yahoo Movies rolled into one.

2005年，时光网由前微软高管侯凯文(Kelvin Hou)在北京创立，一开始是一个分享电影放映排期的网站，网站的名字正由此而来。后来公司加入了一个电影数据库。随后又开始提供电影新闻服务、用户影评聚合、电影评分系统，以及一个包括3000家影院的网上购票服务。据侯凯文说，如今该网站每月吸引1.6亿电脑和手机用户。时光网相当于是Fandango、IMDb、烂番茄(Rotten Tomatoes)以及雅虎电影(Yahoo Movies)的综合体。

And for a fee, Mtime will promote movies through all of these services, helping studios to quickly cover a market they covet but do not yet fully understand.

时光网还有在这些渠道推广电影的收费服务，帮助电影公司迅速覆盖这个它们觊觎已久却又不完全了解的市场。

Next comes merchandising: Mtime, which counts Fidelity Growth Partners and CBC Capital among its backers, has started designing movie-themed products that are sold on its website and inside Chinese multiplexes. Mtime began opening these “merchandising centers,” many in partnership with Wanda Cinemas, China’s largest theater operator, in January. Mr. Hou will have 80 of these centers operating by December.

下一步就是衍生品开发：在富达亚洲风险投资(Fidelity Growth Partners Asia)和宽带资本(CBC Capital)等公司的支持下，时光网已经开始设计电影主题的相关产品，并在其网站和中国的电影院内销售。今年一月，时光网还成立了衍生品销售体验中心，其中相当一部分是与中国最大的院线万达影城合作。到今年十二月，侯凯文将开办80家这样的中心。

“All of a sudden, it’s a wildfire,” he said over coffee at a hotel here in June.

“突然之间就火起来了，”六月在一家酒店接受采访时，他喝着咖啡说。

Walt Disney Studios was one of Mtime’s early merchandising partners. According to Mr. Hou, Mtime sold 300 items tied to “The Avengers: Age of Ultron,” which was released in China in June. Recently, “Cinderella” dresses were selling on Mtime’s site for $53. Disney did not respond to a request for comment.

沃尔特・迪士尼公司(Walt Disney Studios)是时光网最早的销售伙伴。据侯凯文说，《复仇者联盟2：奥创纪元》(The Avengers: Age of Ultron)六月在中国上映时，时光网出售了300种与之相关的产品。最近，《灰姑娘》(Cinderella)的裙子在时光网网站上以53美元（约合）的价格出售。迪士尼未回应置评请求。

In itself, the ability to sell merchandise inside Chinese theaters is tantalizing to Hollywood, which is trying to improve the profitability of releasing films in China, a movie market that is soon expected to surpass the United States as the world’s largest. Ticket sales totaled $4.8 billion last year, a 34 percent increase from a year earlier, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. But foreign studios typically receive a 25 percent share of ticket sales from China; Hollywood’s cut from movies released in North America is closer to 50 percent.

好莱坞一直想增加在中国上映电影的利润，因此仅在中国影院内销售衍生品这一项就已经极具诱惑力。据预计，中国电影市场很快就将超过美国成为世界最大的电影市场。根据美国电影协会(Motion Picture Association of America)数据，去年中国的电影票房总收入达48亿美元，较前一年增长了34%。但国外电影公司通常能拿到中国票房收入的25%；而好莱坞从北美票房的分成接近50%。

American studios have long relied on sales of movie-themed products elsewhere in the world, but China has been difficult to crack, in part because cheap knockoffs proliferate overnight. But there appears to be a shift at hand. Disney, for instance, in May opened its first Disney Store in China. Zeng Maojun, president of the Wanda Theater Group, said in a statement that the Mtime partnership “marks an important milestone in China’s movie market,” with movie merchandise shifting from a niche to “a vital part of the lifestyle market.”

在其他地方，美国电影公司很早就已经开始依赖电影主题衍生产品的销售，但中国市场一直都很难打开，迅速蔓延的廉价冒牌产品是其中一个原因。但似乎转变即将到来。比如迪士尼五月在中国开设了第一家迪士尼商店。万达影城总经理曾茂军在一份声明中说，与时光网的合作“标志着中国电影市场的一个重要的里程碑，”电影衍生产品从只服务特定用户群拓展成了“生活用品领域的重要部分。”

In some ways, the retail centers function as Trojan horses for studio marketers to show movie trailers. While the centers vary in size, they all add a big screen to theater lobbies in the form of nine 52-inch televisions, which form a wall. And Mtime sells that space to studios for trailers and other promotions as part of “total solutions” marketing packages, according to Afrat Spalding, an Mtime vice president who works from an office in Burbank, Calif.

从某种意义上看，零售中心播放的电影预告片，成了电影市场推广者的“特洛伊木马”。各中心虽然大小不同，但都在大厅内安装了一面由九台52寸电视组成的屏幕墙。时光网驻加利福尼亚伯班克(Burbank)副总裁阿芙拉特・斯伯丁(Afrat Spalding)说，时光网会向电影公司出售市场推广“整体解决方案”，包括播放预告片和其他宣传内容的广告位。

Pricing varies based on the scope of what a studio wants, she said. Over the weekend, Universal and Sony used Mtime theater screens to run trailers for “Minions” and “Pixels,” which are set for release in China in mid-September.

她说具体价格要视电影公司的要求而定。周末，环球影业(Universal)和索尼(Sony)用时光网影院屏幕播放了《小黄人大眼萌》(Minions)和《像素大战》(Pixels)的预告片，两部影片定于今年九月中旬在中国上映。

Sunnie Shen, a 20th Century Fox marketing executive in Beijing, praised Mtime’s recent work on “Kingsman: The Secret Service.”

20世纪福克斯(20th Century Fox)驻北京市场总监申慧称赞了时光网最近为《王牌特工：特工学院》(Kingsman: The Secret Service)做的推广宣传。

“Within a short promotion window of three weeks, Mtime delivered five comprehensive editorials, developed social games and promoted the movie heavily on their ticketing app,” Ms. Shen said in an email.

“在短短三周的宣传窗口期内，时光网就发表了五篇翔实的软文，开发了社交游戏，并且通过他们的票务应用对电影进行了大规模宣传，”申慧在一封电子邮件中表示。

Mtime is not alone in this arena. Douban, an arts-focused social network, has as much sway in the movie-review realm, if not more, operating a scoring system based on critiques from tens of thousands of users. For those seeking movie news, Mtime competes with the entertainment sections of Internet companies like Sina, Tencent and Sohu.

时光网并不是这个领域的唯一一家公司。关注文艺的社交网络“豆瓣”同样也拓展到了电影影评领域。豆瓣在成千上万的用户评论的基础上，建立了一个电影评分系统。对那些搜寻电影新闻的人来说，时光网同诸如新浪、腾讯和搜狐等网络公司的娱乐板块是存在竞争的。

Tencent ― which owns the wildly popular WeChat messaging service that, marketing executives say, has itself becoming a crucial movie promotional tool ― is also a major movie ticket seller, along with Baidu and the Alibaba Group.

腾讯公司拥有广受欢迎的微信，其市场部门高管表示，微信已经成为电影推广的一个关键工具。腾讯、百度和阿里巴巴集团都是主要的电影售票商。

But no competitor has integrated all of these functions under one umbrella in the way Mtime has. That integration plays a role in its influence on Hollywood, and not just because Mtime has created an environment of one-stop promotional shopping.

不过没有任何一个竞争对手像时光网那样，把所有的功能都整合在一个体系之内。这种整合也是它对好莱坞产生影响的地方，不只是因为时光网为一站式促销购物创造了一个环境。

“Mtime is useful as a marketing partner, but it’s not totally indispensable,” said one studio executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “At the same time, you have to be mindful that it controls a huge amount of ticketing and has an influential movie scoring system.”

“时光网是一个很有用的营销伙伴，不过并不是完全的不可或缺，”一位要求匿名的电影公司高管表示。“同时，你还要注意到，时光网控制着相当一部分票房，并且有一个影响力很大的电影评分系统。”

Mtime movie scores and reviews are “never, never” affected by who does and doesn’t buy marketing packages, Mr. Hou said. “Marketing is totally separate. We do not change film scores and reviews.”

是否购买营销解决方案，对时光网的电影评分和评论是“绝对、绝对”不会有影响的。侯凯文表示，“营销是单独的一个部分，我们并没有改动电影的评分和评论。”

In fact, the company has rankled Chinese movie studios over the years by giving a prominent forum to negative user-submitted reviews. (Of Mtime’s relationship with these studios, Mr. Hou said, “Mtime respects their artistic integrity and choice, and they respect that users have the right to judge a movie.”) In 2011, both Mtime and Douban disabled the review system for “Beginning of the Great Revival,” a movie celebrating the Communist Party of China’s 90th anniversary. Mr. Hou declined to comment.

事实上，由于为用户提供了一个提交负面评论的知名论坛，中国电影公司一直对时光网心怀不满。在谈及时光网和这些公司的关系时，侯凯文表示，“时光网尊重他们的艺术创作自由和选择，但也尊重用户对电影的评判权。”2011年，时光网和豆瓣关闭了庆祝中国共产党建党90周年的电影《建党伟业》的评论。侯凯文拒绝置评。

Mr. Hou did, however, talk with pride about his news operation, which now has a staff of 110. Along with producing articles about music, television and movies (recent headline: “Young Brits Pan for Gold in Hollywood: Have Americans Had Their Rice Bowl Snatched Away?”), Mtime’s news division interviews Hollywood stars and pumps out clips to dozens of local television station partners.

不过，侯凯文在谈到自己的新闻业务时很是自豪，目前这个部门有110名员工。除了制作针对音乐，电视和电影的文章外（近期一篇文章的标题：《英伦新生代好莱坞淘金记：美国人的饭碗被谁抢走了？》），时光网的新闻版块还对好莱坞明星进行了采访，并且为有合作关系的地方电视台提供许多采访片段。

While Mtime does hard-hitting industry news ― a report about supposedly shady business dealings of Chinese film distributors, for instance ― its coverage more closely resembles “Access Hollywood,” without the focus on celebrity dating or personal scandals.

时光网制作了有分量的娱乐新闻，例如一篇关于中国电影发行商间可能存在不正当交易的报道，但是其新闻内容更接近“走进好莱坞”(Access Hollywood)，只是没有那么关注名人约会和个人丑闻而已。

Raymond Zhou, a Chinese film critic, uses Mtime as an “IMDb equivalent,” he said, referring to the Internet Movie Database, and finds it particularly useful for its data on older Chinese films. But he and others in the industry say they almost never pay attention to its editorial section.

中国影评人周黎明表示，自己把时光网当成IMDb来使用，并且认为时光网中有关中国老电影的数据特别有用。他和其他圈内人士表示，他们几乎都不关注时光网的编辑板块。

“Whatever you see is greatly affected by advertising,” Mr. Zhou said. “It’s not independent.” He added that he had seen a similar problem with entertainment news on the sites Sohu, Tencent and Sina.

“那些都是有很重的广告色彩的东西，”周黎明表示，“不是独立的评论。”他还说在搜狐、腾讯和新浪网站的娱乐新闻中也有类似的问题。

Mr. Hou, 49, grew up in Beijing and came to California in 1990 to study education at the University of California, San Francisco. He briefly ran an education-focused start-up before moving on to Microsoft, which meant moving back to China, where he climbed the rungs for a decade.

现年49岁的侯凯文在北京长大，于1990年前往加州大学旧金山分校((University of California, San Francisco)学教育学。他曾短暂地运营过一家专注教育的初创公司，后来他加入了微软公司，因此重回中国，在接下来的十年里一点点升上高位。

Mr. Hou declined to disclose Mtime’s revenue and profit. “We won’t reveal our financial prospects to anyone yet,” he said. But the company ― which makes money in three main ways: a percentage of online ticketing revenue, studio fees and now a cut of merchandise sales ― is on “very, very good financial footing,” he said.

侯凯文拒绝透露时光网的收益和利润。“我们不会向任何人公开财务前景，”他表示。“不过公司有着非常好的财务基础。”该公司有三个主要的盈利模式：1%的网上票务分成，电影公司的费用，如今又增加了商品销售的分成。