Before You Commission a Micro-Drama

Micro-dramas are attracting growing attention from brands, but a fast-growing entertainment format is not automatically a sound communications investment. What matters is whether the story, the audience and the business objective justify the approach.

Audiences are spending more time with short-form video and marketers want deeper connection. Instead of a product claim in one advertisement, a brand can become part of a story that unfolds across episodes. In our work with brands across Southeast Asia, one pattern is consistent: briefs often arrive focused on production logistics and episode count. The more useful questions, what the brand needs the story to achieve and how that story will sit alongside everything else the consumer already encounters, are frequently left until later. That sequence is usually the wrong way round.

A growing market, read carefully

Micro-dramas are short, episodic stories made for mobile viewing, usually vertical. They rely on compressed plots, recognisable characters, emotional tension and cliffhangers.

The format expanded rapidly from China. According to Sensor Tower’s State of Short Drama Apps 2026 report, downloads of dedicated short-drama apps exceeded 850 million globally in the first quarter of 2026, and Southeast Asia accounted for 32% of them. Southeast Asia leads on downloads, but revenue leadership still sits in more mature markets, so a large audience here does not by itself mean large spending. Those figures describe app downloads in the entertainment category. They are not proof that branded micro-dramas will deliver comparable results.

A paid series on a dedicated app is different from a brand-commissioned series on TikTok or Instagram. On the major platforms the cliffhanger exists because the format must continually earn the next minute of attention and, where payment or ad-unlocks apply, the next commercial transaction. A brand releasing its own series free does not face the same conversion pressure, but it still needs the story to hold attention minute by minute. The two situations are related; they are not identical.

What the format offers, and what it requires

Three characteristics explain the interest.

A reason to watch. People rarely open a social platform for another product claim. A compelling story can earn attention a conventional advertisement struggles to win. The creative challenge is to make the brand relevant without turning the story into a sales pitch.

Room for a narrative to develop. A series can build characters and familiarity across episodes when the objective is to shift perceptions or make an unfamiliar proposition easier to understand. When one clear demonstration would suffice, a series is more investment than the problem needs.

A route to short-form audiences. Episodic, mobile-first storytelling meets viewers where they already spend time.

What sets micro-dramas apart is the combination of all three and the sustained, cliffhanger-driven structure. That structure makes the format both distinctive and more demanding.

What the examples show

Three recent Southeast Asian campaigns illustrate the approach.

Mastercard’s Tap into my Heart, a three-episode K-drama-style microdrama created with McCann Singapore, is rolling out across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, with a Korean director and cast. The series builds Mastercard’s payment-security features into the storyline, in a genre McCann sees as a natural fit for fraud anxiety.

In Singapore, Singtel sponsored SPH Media’s first microdrama, CONNECTED, a 24-episode horror-comedy created by SPH Content Lab. The first of its three stories is on STOMP, HardwareZone and Singtel’s social channels. It draws on local folklore and Singaporean humour, and Singtel says its role in keeping people connected is threaded through the story.

In Malaysia, Beiersdorf used micro-dramas for NIVEA during Chinese New Year and Hari Raya and reported a two-to-three-point improvement in brand-health metrics, measured by YouGov, and a sales increase of almost a double-digit percentage, which it attributed to the work. The product was placed inside festive, relationship-led storylines.

All three are brand-led or sponsored productions, and none tests the long, paywalled model described above. One further caution applies. Mastercard and Singtel are recent launches with no results published yet, and NIVEA’s figures come from the brand itself, with no breakdown of investment, attribution or concurrent media activity. The cases show what is possible when a story is tied to a clear communications problem and a credible brand role. They are not forecasts for another organisation.

Measure before you make

Strong viewing figures do not automatically translate into brand impact. A drama can attract millions of views without making its sponsor memorable. High completion rates show people enjoyed the story, not that they understood the message or acted on it.

The measurement plan must be settled before production. Awareness requires reach and recall, and perception change requires consideration and sentiment on specific attributes. Sales or enquiries need a credible link to outcomes. Attribution is difficult in practice; clean brand-lift data is not always available, and series that perform well on completion can show little movement on the attributes that matter. The task is to separate correlation from contribution and to be honest about the limits of measurement.

Not every brand needs one

Suitability depends on the communications problem the brand is trying to solve, and the cases above show how different those problems can be. NIVEA placed a beauty product inside festive, relationship-led stories. Mastercard used drama to make fraud anxiety, and the features that answer it, easier to relate to. Singtel sponsored a series that carried a telecom brand through local folklore. A simple functional benefit may not need a drama at all. Regulated categories need extra care: storytelling can make a decision more relatable, but it cannot replace clear explanation of terms, fees, eligibility or risk.

Sometimes a documentary series, expert-led content, a creator partnership or a straightforward explainer is the better choice.

The commercial and reputational questions

Production is only one line in the budget. Creative development, talent, distribution, amplification, rights, localisation and measurement all add cost, and a series may need ongoing promotion. The right comparison is the full cost against other ways of achieving the same objective.

The format also leans on high-emotion staples such as romance, revenge, family conflict and status reversal, so a brand has to decide how much of that it is willing to be associated with. A heavy-handed brand presence costs a story its credibility. If commercial involvement is obscured, audiences who later discover the story was commissioned may feel misled. Sponsorship should be disclosed, and the requirements are worth checking market by market. Fiction can also touch on family dynamics and social expectations that land differently across markets. These are reasons to weigh the risks before production, not reasons to avoid the format.

A Southeast Asian perspective

Even regional examples do not travel unchanged. Language, humour, social expectations and cultural references differ across Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines. Localisation often requires rethinking characters, settings, casting, humour and sensitivities around family, religion or gender. A strong concept should not be discarded because it began elsewhere, and a successful campaign in one market should not be assumed to work in another simply because the language is adjusted.

In Malaysia, the festive calendar is where several brands have placed theirs. NIVEA ran micro-dramas for Chinese New Year and Hari Raya, and Guardian Malaysia ran a four-episode series for Chinese New Year. Each festival carries its own audience and expectations, and a tone that works for one can miss for another.

That judgement comes from working on the ground in these markets. Knowing which platforms people use is the easy part. The harder part is knowing how a message will be received and where a brand needs to take greater care.

Start with the communications problem

Before any production brief, a brand should be able to answer: Who needs to be reached? What do they currently think or feel? What needs to change? Why would they follow this story? What role can the brand play without compromising credibility?

The answers determine whether a micro-drama is appropriate, what narrative might work, how it should be evaluated, and whether the investment is proportionate. Sometimes the answer will be a micro-drama. Sometimes another format will do the job better. Sometimes the right decision is not to commission branded entertainment at all.

Micro-dramas are worth taking seriously. A growing entertainment market is still not a business case for every brand to join it. To the audience there is only ever one brand, so the decision belongs before the production brief, where experience across markets and disciplines makes the most difference.

At Orchan we have spent years advising brands across Southeast Asia, in sectors from banking and fintech to automotive and healthcare, on reputation, communications and brand experience. We have developed micro-drama concepts and are working on a travel-series idea of our own.

If you are considering micro-dramas or other storytelling-led communications, talk to us. 

Contact us at changenow@orchan.asia, call +603-7972 6377, or visit www.orchan.asia.