Why So Drama! Entertainment is taking a shot at microdramas

So Drama! Entertainment is betting that a little basketball, chess and romance can do more than keep Singaporeans watching, it can give them a reason to keep coming back to its Kakee app.

Its latest play is The Queen’s Court, a 26-episode live-action microdrama centred on Victoria "Vicky" Tan, a chess prodigy recruited to help rescue a struggling university basketball team. Applying chess-inspired strategies to the court, Vicky soon finds herself caught between rival players Ryan Cheong and Alex Ang, who both begin falling for her.

All 26 episodes are available for free on Kakee, while the first 12 have also been released on Kakee Watch's Instagram as a discovery point for audiences.

For Melvin Kuek, executive director of So Drama! Entertainment, however, getting audiences to download Kakee is only the beginning.

"A download is only the start. We want viewers to stay for the story and return to explore the music, games and rewards," Kuek told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE.

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The team will also be looking at episode viewership, audience retention, app engagement and the broader response to The Queen’s Court to gauge its performance.

That focus on retention is particularly important in an increasingly crowded app ecosystem, where convincing someone to download an app does not necessarily translate into long-term engagement.

"The number that matters most is how many people find a reason to come back. After all, a download doesn’t mean much if the app spends the next six months collecting digital dust," said Kuek.

From microdrama to app habit

Kakee is So Drama! Entertainment's free entertainment and rewards app, bringing together local video content, music streams including POWER 98 Emergenc-E and 88.3JIA, games and rewards under one platform.

Kuek acknowledged that asking consumers to make room for another app is no small task, particularly when much of their entertainment can already be accessed through established social platforms. He said: 

Nobody wakes up thinking, 'I need another app.' We have to earn a place on theirs.

That is where The Queen’s Court fits into the broader strategy. Rather than treating the series as a standalone piece of content, So Drama! Entertainment hopes it can act as one of several entry points into the Kakee ecosystem. 

Someone may initially download Kakee to finish the series after discovering its first 12 episodes on Instagram, but the aim is for them to subsequently explore its music, games, rewards and other entertainment offerings.

Social platforms therefore remain an important part of the funnel. So Drama! Entertainment is using Kakee's social channels to introduce the show's characters and story through teasers, behind-the-scenes content and short clips, while making the opening episodes available directly on Instagram.

"The aim is to spark that 'just one more episode' feeling," said Kuek.

From there, the challenge becomes giving users enough reasons to return after they have reached the end of Vicky's story.

Kuek described this as a "content and engagement flywheel", where social content, campaigns and live events drive discovery, while a steady stream of shows, music, games, rewards and experiences encourages continued use. Audience interests can then inform how Kakee makes the experience more relevant over time. He added: 

We want Kakee to become a habit people enjoy — not just an icon they occasionally move around to make space on their phone.

A Singapore story without waving the flag

The decision to centre The Queen’s Court on chess, basketball and romance also marks a different approach to local storytelling for So Drama! Entertainment, which has links to Singapore's Ministry of Defence. Kuek said locally made entertainment does not necessarily need to explicitly foreground national identity to connect with Singaporean audiences.

"Singapore storytelling has room for more than one playbook," he said. For The Queen’s Court, the team instead looked to the strategy of chess and energy of basketball, drawing inspiration from stories such as The Queen’s Gambit and Slam Dunk.

"For Kakee, that range matters. We want to tell stories that feel distinctly ours and connect with people through themes they recognise — whether or not those stories wear their national identity on their sleeve," Kuek added.

Produced by homegrown production company Bite Size Pictures over nine months, the series also tapped the Basketball Association of Singapore and The Jedi Chess Academy for their expertise. According to Kuek, the 26-episode series cost less to produce than what So Drama! Entertainment previously spent on a single 30-second television commercial.

For So Drama! Entertainment, the series is ultimately part of a wider effort to build a direct relationship with audiences through Kakee. While first-party data can help the team understand audience interests and make the app more relevant, Kuek stressed that data and downloads are not the end goal.

"A direct relationship helps us understand what audiences enjoy and make Kakee more relevant to them. But we’re not building an app just to collect downloads — or data," he said.

Instead, the bigger test comes after viewers have finished all 26 episodes. Kuek said: 

The Queen’s Court might bring someone in, but there should be something else worth opening the app for when they finish the series.

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