The Chinese Film Market Magazine - Switch’s Triumph When Publicity Outweighs the Movie Itself

Switch’s Triumph When Publicity Outweighs the Movie Itself

Sep 15, 2025 CFM Marketing 0

When was the last time a film with universally bad reviews won millions in the box office?

The movie Switch premiered with an astonishing 51.6 million yuan($8.43 M) by June 9, and exceeded 100 million yuan($16.34 M) within two days, making it the third biggest first-day earner among all non-imported movies. What is interesting is that despite the rocketing box office numbers, its feedback from the audiences was extremely poor. Massive mocking of the film’sabsurdity dominated the Internet on the next day. Its scored below 3.0/10.0 on mainstream moviegoer sites such as Douban and Mtime. 73% of the 40,000 users who went to the movie gave it only 1 star out of 5. However, negative reviews seemed to have helped the movie’s box office performance. Many people claimed that they paid 30 yuan($3.9) just to see how revolting Switch actually is. While the contrast between quality and income ofSwitch bewildered many, the media didn’t hesitate in naming it a perfect example of negative marketing.

Was Switch really a marketing scheme? If it is, did it work? The data has all the answers.

A feature film would usually finish with over 500 million yuan ($81.69 M) in box office if it managed 50million($8.17 M) on the opening day, but Switch stopped at 280 million ($45.74M). Switch made 51.6million, 47million and 44million on the first 3 days (respectively $8.43 M, $7.68M and $7.19 from June 9 to June 11). June 10 was the beginning of Dragon Boat Day Holidays so it should be treated as a Saturday, on which the ticket selling would always increase. But this was not the case for Switch. Moreover, its box office took an 85% dive on the second week and fell out of top ten just three weeks after its premiere. Therefore bad mouthing did hurt its performance significantly and the ticket income plummeted almost immediately.

It turns out that the so-called negative marketing does not make any sense. But how did such a disaster in movie-making become such a success in money-making? The marketing professionals pointed out two main factors for us: P&A and timing.

P&A stands for prints and advertising, it essentially represents the money spent on marketing and publicizing a movie. How a movie does in the opening week heavily depends on the intensity and effectiveness of P&A. Its quality and reputation only comes into play after that. In fact, good marketing can boost the box office of a movie as far as to 200 million yuan ($32.67 M) and we can only judge the genuine popularity of it on its performance that follows. Switch had a P&A budget of 40 million yuan ($6.53 M), which is not much less than that of Jiang Wen’s blockbuster Let the Bullet Fly. The publicizing campaign for Switch is nothing other than thorough and overwhelming. One Switch review has been reposted for over 30,000times on the Chinese twitter Weibo. Its writer confessed that the marketing did work on her: “Its trailer plays everyday on TV, you can see the posters at every bus stop in the city. Andy Lau and Lin Chi-ling in anaction crime film was quite an intriguing idea.Besides, it was scheduled in cinemas so frequently that you don’t need to wait for an hour to see the film.”

That Switch came in at the right time slot was another main reason for its box office triumph. Money grabbers like So Young, American Dreams in China and Star Trek: Into Darknesswere already past their heyday. The Croods, which stayed strong after 5 weeks, was pulled off the screen due to contract issues. Man of Steel, Fast & Furious 6 and Tiny Times 1.0 haven’t arrived yet. In other words, Switch had not a single contestant that’s nearly on the same budget or star level during its two weeks of money harvest. The theatre managers had no choice but to occupy as many screens as possible with it. Because only Switch could pack their screening halls at that time, and its ticket price was 20 to 30% higher than other films as it was converted into 3D format.

Statistics show that theatres nationwide played Switch over 216,000 times during the first week, and 90,000 over the next. In steep contrast, Man of Steel and Badges of Fury only played 111,000 and 86,000 times respectively during their opening week starting June 17. 35% of all the screens in the 20 biggest cities in China were showing Switch on June 9, leaving the audiences with few choices, who were eager to entertain themselves at the beginning of a six-day holiday.

Theater managers claim that they put Switch on so many screens not only because it was the only one that had the potential to make money, but also because they actually thought it was a good movie. Switch never had a public trial screening. Instead, the distributor only showed a half-hour highlight to some theatre professionals. Former vice executive of Shanghai United Cinemas Wu Hehu said he was sure that Switch was going to sellbased on what he saw in that exciting 30 minutes, but he never saw the whole film. Everything looked just fine until the poor reviews on the social networks flooded in around 10pm on its opening day.

Ji Erwei, executive of Reach Glory based in Beijing, with marketing experiences in several Hollywood companies after obtaining his MBA in USC, agrees that premiere date and marketing strategy were the top two reasons for the Switch’s success: “The box office in second, even third tier cities is booming, the audience watch almost every major film, Switch was definitely their best choice at the time.”

The Chinese film market has over 14,000 movie screens and millions of audiences who consider cinema as a form of entertainment on regular basis. The total estimated box office income in 2013 is 22billionyuan ($3.59 billion), that’s 420 million yuan($68.62 M) each week. So the 280 million yuan($45.74 M) Switch made in two weeks without rivalry isn’t really much of a miracle after all. Since box office is essentially the only source of profit for Chinese films, $45.74 Mwill most likely be the Switch’s final income. There won’t be much left of this figure after the cinemas and distributor take their share, and the net profit will not be optimistic for a costly film like this.

Although Switch had its moment of glory, it is still nowhere near real blockbusters like So Young,Lost in Thailand and Finding Mr. Right. These truly successful films all had moving characters, convincing plots and most importantly, a sincere attitude. Commercial films without aesthetic values that inspire no joy or contemplation might find it hard to.