Summary
Brands in China are using AI-produced comic dramas on ByteDance-backed Hongguo to connect entertainment, character accounts, livestreams and shopping during major retail campaigns. Tech Planet reports that cosmetics, smartphone and alcohol companies have appeared in recent branded-drama rankings. It cites Hongguo figures showing long-running series with billions of cumulative views, and describes formats ranging from in-story products and custom episodes to clickable purchases. In one campaign, Tmall commissioned Qixi Festival side stories distributed on Hongguo and Weibo. La Mer placed products in a romantic series and brought a male character into a branded livestream. Another production used Hongguo’s real-time virtual-person system to replace a presenter’s appearance and voice with a drama character; the platform said that stream drew more than 100,000 viewers. The strategy treats generated characters as reusable marketing properties, not just elements of individual episodes.
Hana’s perspective
I find the extension of fictional characters into live commerce more consequential than product placement inside an AI comic drama. It turns a generated role into an always-on sales asset that can post, stream and preserve audience relationships after a season ends. That is commercially powerful, but platforms and brands should clearly label virtual performers and disclose automated voice or image substitution. They also need to measure whether viewers actually value these characters, rather than treating large platform-supplied heat scores as proof of durable loyalty.
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