"Banning" 29 brands, can Little Red Book "cure the root cause"?

Author | Hu Shu Editor| Luo Lijuan

Open the little red book, search for "Huatian With Mu", "Dove", "eiio" and other brands, the relevant note content can not be displayed, the page only appears "the brand is suspected of false marketing, related content is not displayed" prompt.

On December 16, all-weather technology learned from Xiaohongshu that the platform has launched a new round of "false marketing" governance projects, and the first batch of 29 brands suspected of false marketing have been banned.

It is understood that compared with the previous governance projects, the scope of this governance will be further expanded, covering the upstream and downstream of the entire "ghostwriting" gray production chain. Regardless of brand size, no matter how much the brand is, it is the same.

Due to the grass planting attribute of the platform, Xiaohongshu has become an important social platform for many consumer brands to advertise, and Xiaohongshu has also officially launched a commercial platform "Dandelion" for brand parties to dock MCN institutions and KOLs and KOCs.

However, many brands bypass the "dandelion", through external intermediaries or platforms, look for KOLs and KOCs in the form of product replacement or cash, and lay false marketing content on the platform, forming a black and gray industry chain.

The existence of this industrial chain, on the one hand, damages the content environment of Xiaohongshu and seriously affects the user experience; on the other hand, bypassing "dandelion" also increases the difficulty of Xiaohongshu content supervision and damages the interests of the platform party.

A founder of MCN institutions, "Meat Meat" (pseudonym), told All-Weather Technology, "Now the Little Red Book is very good, and the KOL order situation is quite good, but many do not take dandelions." ”

According to meat, the charging standard of "dandelion" is that after charging 10% to advertisers, it is also necessary to draw 10% when settling with KOLs and KOCs, which is equivalent to a two-way fee; MCN companies undertake business delivery, although they do not take a draw, but need to open a 6% special ticket with Xiaohongshu.

It is understood that the commissioning standard of station B in the industry is to charge 5%-7% service fee on the basis of the QUOTATION of KOL, and 5% of Douyin. The commissioning standard of Xiaohongshu is higher than that of B station and Douyin, which is one of the reasons why many brands and KOLs bypass the "dandelion" platform and privately undertake advertising.

"The platform is now very commercialized, but judging by the current scale of KOLs and KOCs, the platform should have made more money." Meat meat said, "And there have been negative comments such as the bad atmosphere of the Little Red Book before, and the platform really needs to rectify the content." ”

In terms of community governance, since 2019, Xiaohongshu has implemented several rounds of false marketing governance projects, including the "Woodpecker Plan" to combat low-difference content, false grass notes and accounts; through cross-platform reports such as WeChat, Baidu Tieba, Douban, Taobao, etc., more than 1.6 million black and gray recruitment links have been removed or blocked.

In April this year, Xiaohongshu once again launched the "Community Convention", which regulates and restricts the content of showing off wealth, false information, sexual innuendo, excessive embellishment, etc., and also requires bloggers to actively declare their interests in whether the note has accepted sponsorship or convenience from the merchant.

It is understood that the direction of the previous Xiaohongshu rectification mainly lies in the revocation of false information, that is, when the platform finds that KOLs and KOCs publish false marketing content, the platform will investigate and delete them, as well as the seizure of some accounts. In this round of rectification, the focus is on the investigation and punishment of brands that frequently put false marketing content and third-party order-taking intermediary platforms, and the entire platform cancels the content and advertisements of related brands.

"If you don't cut off the demand for brand 'ghostwriting and sending', this gray production chain will continue to exist and continue to grow, and only the false content and accounts in the platform will be treated, which is to cure the symptoms rather than the root cause." Xiaohongshu "false marketing" governance special person in charge said.

After this governance, the Xiaohongshu platform will have better control over both content supervision and advertising placement.