Will short dramas become established as a promotional method?

Short dramas won the Grand Prize in TikTok's 2024 Mid-Year Trend Awards and received a Special Award in the Full-Year Trend Awards. When a short drama pops up on your social media timeline, haven't you found yourself pausing what you're doing to watch it?

Amid this trend, many companies have already begun incorporating short dramas into their product promotions. SEPTENI CO.,LTD, the digital integrated agency within the Dentsu Group, also recognized this approach early on and has created numerous promotional use cases.

■SEPTENI CO.,LTD's Short Drama Series (Dentsu-ho)
https://dentsu-ho.com/booklets/633

This article features Yuichi Emura and Taichi Murajo, who handle business production and planning for short dramas at SEPTENI CO.,LTD, along with GOKKO , discuss the further potential of short dramas, the keys to utilizing them for promotions, and future prospects.

Short Dramas' Reach Power: Overwhelmingly Effective with Younger Audiences

The appeal of short dramas lies in their overwhelming reach. High-quality content often surpasses one million organic views. In fact, the average view count per episode for short dramas previously produced and released by SEPTENI CO.,LTD reaches 1.65 million.

Furthermore, organic views offer a major strength: they deliver promotions through content across all platforms, including users with ad-blocking or ad-free settings like YouTube Premium. In today's world where younger audiences are increasingly turning away from TV and ads are harder to reach them, short dramas are a major point for creating new touchpoints with consumers through content.

 

At SEPTENI CO.,LTD, however, we believe short dramas must be established not merely as content with strong reach, but as a more universal promotional method.

By maximizing the "efficacy" of short dramas beyond mere reach and accurately quantifying their advertising impact, we can dramatically enhance their promotional effectiveness.

Two Keys to Maximizing Short Dramas in Promotion

There are two particularly important points as keys to maximizing the use of short dramas in promotions.

1. Planning with the Entire Promotion in Mind

2. Appropriate Evaluation Design and Campaign Assessment

First, let's examine the first key point: planning.

Even on its own, a short drama can boost awareness of products or services through its reach. However, designing multi-layered initiatives—such as running campaigns in parallel—significantly increases the potential to guide users who have become aware of the product toward "attitude change."

The short drama campaign by Japan Airlines (JAL), previously introduced, is a prime example of how running short dramas alongside campaigns on TikTok and X led to actual conversions.

■Why Did JAL Succeed with Vertical Short Dramas? Behind the 10 Million Views
https://dentsu-ho.com/articles/9062
 

This "multi-dimensional planning" approach is crucial not only for communication strategy but also for media planning. For example, as shown below, running TV commercials and short dramas simultaneously during the same period significantly boosts brand awareness among users exposed to both, compared to running short dramas alone.

Thus, rather than merely implementing short dramas alone, designing multidimensional planning—combining other initiatives or multiple media tailored to the product or service—can yield greater impact.

Next, we explain the second key point: evaluation design and campaign assessment.

Accurate evaluation of how short drama views and reach contribute to promotional KPIs requires predefined goal setting. This enables precise assessment of creative and campaign effectiveness, facilitating efficient PDCA cycle management. Such methodologies not only improve creative elements but also allow for overall campaign redesign, significantly enhancing cost-effectiveness.

Below is an illustration of the evaluation design and PDCA cycle proposed by SEPTENI CO.,LTD.

The Future of Short Dramas: Turning Chance Encounters into Value

Let's broaden our perspective slightly. Several years ago, "influencer marketing" emerged. As messages not originating from companies gained consumer acceptance, many businesses adopted this approach. It did not end as a fleeting trend but has now established itself as a standard promotional method.

Short dramas, much like influencer marketing once did, are beginning to establish their presence as a new promotional technique. We are now at a crossroads: will this approach become a standard in promotion, or will it fade as a temporary fad?

However, in today's world where AI further optimizes recommendations, the power of short dramas to create those "can't help but stop and watch" moments—providing serendipitous encounters with products and services—will likely become increasingly valuable.

Maximizing the use of short dramas as a promotional tool is nothing less than acquiring a powerful weapon in the promotional arsenal.

To that end, SEPTENI CO.,LTD approaches short dramas not only from a creative perspective but also through strategic planning and effective evaluation. SEPTENI CO.,LTD and the Dentsu Group companies provide comprehensive support, from vertical short drama production to marketing implementation. If you are interested, please feel free to contact us.

[Interested in utilizing short dramas? Click here]
Email: sss@septeni.co.jp　Contact: Murajo