In fact, the popularity of the Palace Museum IP depends not only on the profound cultural accumulation, but also on the successful product development and precise layout. The data and achievements of the Forbidden City have also proved that young people's interest in China's splendid culture will only exceed people's imagination if they use the appropriate way.

1、 Guobao Lianmeng, a 10 billion market

521. On this wild Valentine's Day, which is homophonic to "I love you", Taobao announced the "National Treasure Lianmeng" plan, declaring that it will develop 100+national treasure IP in the next three years, and will provide support in IP introduction, creative derivatives design, production and sales, IP secondary creation commodity copyright protection, etc.

The first batch of national treasure IPs finalized for cooperation include: Terracotta Warriors Taobao, Sichuan Opera Face Changing Taobao, Dunhuang Taobao, Tianyan Taobao, Great Wall Taobao, Long March Rocket Taobao, Chinese aircraft carrier Taobao, Yuanmingyuan Beast Head Taobao, West Lake Taobao, Panda Taobao (public welfare) and other 10 national treasure IPs.

The national treasure is the collective memory of all Chinese people. It is a super IP with high recognition and identity. The status quo of these IPs is more like the feeling that "dumplings are cooked in a teapot, and goods cannot be poured out".

China's 5000 year history has precipitated a long history of cultural heritage. There are more than 1300 national intangible cultural heritage in China alone, and there are countless national treasures.

The development mode of IP such as Sichuan Opera and Terracotta Warriors is relatively traditional and simple, still focusing on viewing, while the sophisticated culture such as aerospace is far away from users' daily life, which seems to be a cultural gap between national treasures and the public.

In fact, one of the national treasures, IP, has developed more maturely, that is, the Forbidden City.

The Palace Museum established a creative center in 2008, and since then has embarked on the path of IP creation and realization.

According to the data, the sales of cultural and creative products in the Forbidden City were only 600 million yuan in 2013, increased to 1.5 billion yuan in 2017, and increased by 1.5 times in four years. The categories of cultural and creative products have exceeded 10000.

At the same time, the Baidu search index of the Forbidden City has risen steadily in recent years, reaching its peak during the Lantern Festival and Shangyuan Festival this year.

In fact, the popularity of the Palace Museum IP depends not only on the profound cultural accumulation, but also on the successful product development and precise layout. The data and achievements of the Forbidden City have also proved that young people's interest in China's splendid culture will only exceed people's imagination if they use the appropriate way.

Next, I will take you to dig deeply into the "Ten year Realization Road of the National Treasure IP Palace Museum".

2、 Check the Ten Year Development of National Treasure IP Palace Museum

In 2008, the Forbidden City opened its cultural and creative road, and established the department "Cultural and Creative Center of the Forbidden City". In December of the same year, the Forbidden City settled in Taobao, becoming the first museum in China to open Taobao stores.

In January 2012, Shan Jixiang, the new president of the Forbidden City, made a bold reform and created a new business management model. The Forbidden City has online ticket sales; At the same time, ticket outlets, security checkpoints and bag storage places have all increased; The rest seats for tourists at the square are also optimized; The tourist reception area has been expanded, and these changes around the "user experience" have also made the Forbidden City popular.

In July 2013, the Taipei Palace Museum solicited ideas from the society and launched the popular "I Know It" paper tape, which was sold across the Taiwan Straits until it was out of stock. This small success made Shan Jixiang realize the huge market of cultural and creative products, and he decided to start with cultural and creative products. Since then, the cultural and creative road of the Forbidden City has also officially embarked on the fast track, driving cultural and creative income in various forms. This year, the sales revenue of cultural and creative products of the Palace Museum was 600 million yuan, four times that of 2012. In September of the same year, the official WeChat account of "Forbidden City Taobao" was launched. In the early days, some popular science knowledge about the Forbidden City was officially published.

Until August 2014, an article entitled "Yongzheng: Feeling Cute" was released on the official WeChat account of "Taobao in the Forbidden City". This article has changed the traditional "Yongzheng Xingle Picture" to a dynamic picture of Yongzheng. Coupled with vivid story writing, it was reproduced crazily as soon as it was released, and its reading volume exceeded 800000 in less than a week. At present, the number of WeChat articles of "Forbidden City Taobao" has reached 100000+.

In addition to interesting H5 marketing, the number of cultural and creative products launched by the Forbidden City has also been greatly accelerated. According to data, the number of cultural and creative products in the Forbidden City increased by 265 in 2014 and 813 in 2015.

In August 2015, the Palace Museum cooperated with Juhuasuan, and 16000 cultural and creative products of the Palace Museum were sold on Juhuasuan in one day. After tasting the benefits of cooperation with the platform, the Palace Museum reached a strategic cooperation with Alibaba in 2016. The two sides cooperated based on the ticket of the Palace Museum, cultural innovation and publishing. In July of that year, the "Palace Museum Cultural Innovation" Tmall Store was officially launched.

In January 2016, the documentary "I Build Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City" premiered on CCTV, with a score of 9.4 for Douban, which has a win-win reputation and really brought the Forbidden City into the public's view.

In addition to physical products, another form of cultural and creative products in the Forbidden City is digital products. Since 2013, it has successively launched apps such as The Beauty of Yin Zhen, The Emperor's Day, The Daily Palace Museum, and gradually formed its own APP matrix group.

In January 2017, the Palace Museum teamed up with Fashion Bazaar to create the "Palace Museum Bazaar Red" necklace set; In November, we cooperated with Tencent to establish an innovation laboratory; At the end of the year, National Treasure was broadcast, with an annual income of 1.5 billion yuan.

In August 2018, the "Forbidden City Bottle" was launched jointly with Nongfu Spring; In December, makeup was released and the Palace Museum Corner Cafe was officially opened; At the end of the year, the Palace Museum pajamas launched by the designers of the "Newer" in conjunction with the designers were crowdfunded on Taobao. The pajamas were launched 24 days ago, and the recognition rate was 20355%, raising more than 10 million yuan.

In 2019, the number of online fans reached 3.33 million, and Beijing ranked first in the cultural and creative region of the national museum. 3000 tickets of the Forbidden City were robbed in one second.

So far, the cultural creativity of the Forbidden City has fully blossomed.

It is easy to see from the realization of the national treasure IP in the Forbidden City that the vitality of cultural and creative products depends entirely on the shaping of IP. To create a successful IP, the key is to shape the values, then the world outlook, then the plot, and then the figure.

3、 How to build national treasure IP

In fact, most of the national treasure IP has its own values and world outlook, and the main task is to shape the plot/content. The Forbidden City uses new media marketing methods, and constantly incorporates various distinctive character/animal tags, so as to make its own IP image deeply rooted in the hearts of people.

We have learned from the following points on the way of the Palace Museum's popularity, hoping to help you.

1. Unique national treasure IP personnel

Most national treasures have a sense of distance from young users, and their market value has been buried. They need to be developed and inherited in a younger and more lifestyle way. Before building the national treasure IP, you need to understand the story and values of the IP itself, and then set the story and content on this basis.

Just like the Palace Museum's "Yongzheng Xingle Painting", Yongzheng is regarded as a lofty and serious emperor in everyone's mind, but this picture shows his cuteness, which is very contrastive and has earned a large number of fans.

Of course, in addition to the contrast with the original image, the content can also be developed along the inherent image. For example, the national treasure giant panda, soft and cute, can often sell and gain fans; Also, depending on the museum's own architecture, collection and local handicrafts of Suzhou as the basic content, Suzhou Museum has developed secret color porcelain lotus bowl cookies, Wen Zhengming hand planted cane seeds and other popular online products, which are very popular.

2. Favourite

The creation of a single IP is sometimes weak, and cannot form a scale effect. When necessary, we can try to unite with stars, fashion, technology and other brands to break the circle to obtain traffic and expand influence.

Just like the Palace Museum once launched the "Tianlu Linglang" stationery gift box in conjunction with Luhan Studio, teamed up with fashion bazaar to create the "Palace Museum · bazaar red" necklace set, and teamed up with Nongfu Spring to launch the "Palace Museum bottle". Also, this year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States cooperated with the fashion brand Tiffany. They designed and launched creative products such as "The Apron of the Naked Man David Ye Zhe shih", "The Silk Scarf of the famous painting Mrs. Lilith by the Raphaelite artist Rossetti" in combination with the characteristics of historical figures in the museum.

Of course, the staff of National Treasure IP mentioned above should not be lost when selecting cooperation brands and determining cooperation plans.

3. Social currency

In addition to creative marketing and products that can be discussed and promoted by consumers, we can also make expression packs related to National Treasure IP. Just like the "Su Daqiang facial expression pack" in the drama "Everything is OK" some time ago, it has become popular among friends, and major brands have rubbed hot spots; There is also Wang Ju in the variety show "Creation 101", splicing her various expressions to make a meal circle and various circles of fans.

For example, the National Treasure IP Panda Expression Pack has become very popular. It's cute and silly. Netizens like it very much. Similarly, can the head of the Old Summer Palace have its own expression bag? Different expressions and actions express different emotions, and the face changing of Sichuan Opera itself involves many facial expressions, which can also be made into expression packs.

Of course, the settings of the emoticon package also need to have story and person settings, so as to better match the user's use scenarios. For example, the Terracotta Warriors and Horses are all solemn faces. Can they be accompanied by some unorthodox words as expression packs? It should be possible.

The "National Treasure Alliance" plan launched by Taobao is a new era, a great cause requiring patience and long-term investment, and a complex process of Chinese cultural inheritance, protection, dissemination, and commercialization.

The process of "rejuvenation" of local culture based on the Internet has just begun.