The author | Xia Wenqi Blue Lotus
Recently, sports-related topics such as fitness wear have become the "social code" on major platforms. On the Douyin platform alone, the topic of "fitness" has been played more than 130.9 billion times, and the super topic of food and clothing is in the same order of 100 billion, while the playback of makeup, English and other subdivided topics is only about 20 billion.
After the start of the epidemic, the fitness market began to be fully online, and some head fitness experts even had more than 10 million fans on the platform. With the improvement of young people's willingness to consume fitness courses and products, fitness celebrities with professional knowledge have also become a part of Xiaohongshu, Douyin, B station, and Kuaishou platform to preemptively sign cooperation and lay out vertical ecology.
Recently, Keep released the "10,000 people stretch plan", announcing that in the next 1 year, more than 150 "millions of practitioners" will be hatched; in the next 3 years, help 10,000 fitness creators to achieve monthly income of more than 10,000 through content in the Keep single platform. Previously, Keep also launched a joint smart bracelet and exclusive course with Pamela.
It can be seen that while Keep emphasizes the attributes of "open sports platform" and supports the development of multi-platform talents, it also hopes to retain and incubate talents with the help of traffic and cash to further consolidate the content moat.
Although compared with beauty and lifestyle Internet celebrities, it is more difficult for professional fitness experts to create people and break the circle, and the income from brand endorsement and sales courses is limited. However, in the context of each family investing in subsidies and competing for fitness experts, the commercialization of fitness experts has undoubtedly ushered in a new round of leaps.
How can fitness gurus build people and successfully monetize on this vertical track? How do Keep and major social platforms combine their own ecology with the commercialization of fitness experts?
01Keep fitness master: 10,000 people million yuan plan
In the last annual plan, Keep's goal was to help 5,500 talented people achieve commercial profitability. By 2021, there will be more than 100 million fans on KEEP, and 14 monthly "millions of practitioners".
The relevant person in charge of Keep told Chopped Pepper TMT, "At present, the official course and the talent course are two-line parallel and complementary relationship. The official course upgrade is upgraded towards the boutique, focusing on quality and series, and the corresponding output cycle is also longer; and the master course starts from its own characteristics, the content is more diverse, the new frequency is high, and the type of Keep course can be enriched. ”
For example, the talent "Yu Sister" often uses Tianjin dialect to encourage fans to "stick to it for two minutes, come to Tianjin Sister to invite you to eat pancake fruit", with its own joy, and now a popular yoga fat burning course has attracted more than 20 million people to practice.
What attracts fitness experts to Keep is its "unicorn" status on the professional fitness vertical track.
"The biggest difference between us and other Internet platforms is that fans will really follow the talents to train, rather than staying in the stage of just watching, and after practicing for a long time, the stickiness to the talents is high." The relevant person in charge of keep said that the talents courses are divided into K1-K5 professional difficulty ratings, indicating the calorie values consumed to meet the needs of users to choose their own courses.
It is reported that if you want to become a master of Keep paid courses, you need to obtain a professional certification certificate in the sports and fitness industry, and Keep will usually carry out training in content production and product function use.
"We have established a review mechanism for the talents curriculum, if the action arrangement is unreasonable and not standardized enough, it will be rejected and modified, and it may be directly released on other platforms." Fitness experts in other platforms mostly rely on advertiser orders to achieve personal income, in Keep in content and commercialization can have gains. ”
(Source: Good look business)
At this empowerment conference, KEEP announced the "10,000 People Stretch Plan", which divides the growth of fitness content creators into three stages: creation novices, seed creators, and strength creators; and encourages each talent to first establish a fan base, create a personal IP, and then transform into a commercial IP with the support of the platform.
The first is the empowerment of traffic operation, Keep will launch theme month operation activities on the basis of content distribution and recommendation, and plan to carry out 5-6 theme activities such as training, yoga, exercise classes and other different categories throughout the year, and it is expected that each person can get 300,000 traffic exposure in a single month. At the same time, Keep also encourages all talents to participate in community topic activities, launch punch cards, record challenges, and drive more users to "move".
In the commercialization area, Keep developed a new product "Calorie Storm" this year, packaging the talent resources of the entire platform and making customized recommendations for advertisers. Let more seed creators have access to some high-quality business orders in advance, and the head authors can endorse advertising products through professional content and image, and establish long-term cooperation opportunities with advertisers.
Previously, through the marketing concept of "daily essential nuts for fitness people", 4 Keep master coaches such as "An An Xiaoyu" appeared on the cover of the packaging bag of Qiaqia nuts.
It is reported that in the past two years, the marketing promotion of Keep platform masters has grown by about 50% per year. This time, Keep also put forward the cooperation concept of "brand content officer", so that talents can not only manufacture explosive products to endorse the brand, but also participate in professional empowerment and deep integration in the incubation stage of the brand.
In addition to the talents, Keep is also developing its own course product IP, taking content quality as a development strategy, "just like video platforms are independently developing IP, similar to iQiyi's Mist Theater, B Station's animation, music IP matrix, etc., everyone is also exploring their own originality when strengthening content competitiveness, not just relying on a single content production channel." The person in charge of Keep explained.
Under the boom of this year's Olympic Games, Keep has just launched the world champion ski class, and the current "champion coach" program has covered boxing, rhythmic gymnastics, karate, taekwondo, race walking and other Olympic sports, bringing a new path of commercialization and talent for athletes.
Previously, Keep has launched a live class, users can click on the same product link, tip anchor, etc. during the practice process, and the relevant person in charge said that next year will also explore new cooperation models with talents.
02 Saturday Wild, Pamela, how to monetize head fitness experts?
In the past two years of the epidemic, the outbreak of online cloud fitness has brought fan dividends to Pamela, Saturday Wild and other head fitness masters, although they have a mature commercial promotion monetization model, but some people have encountered some challenges and twists and turns on the way to explore self-built brands.
Previously, there were many hot Pamela videos on the major platforms on the Internet, but most of them were fragments carried by netizens, and after Pamela signed a contract to enter the keep, she launched a systematic and comprehensive course content on the platform, and she would also update exclusive and first courses on the platform every month, and finally the monthly training volume reached 8.15 million.
In addition to the quality of content, Keep also closely integrates the strategy of "sports technology" with the talent economy. On October 21, Keep announced Pamela as its Smart Bracelet Ambassador and launched an exclusive gamification course that not only simply runs and picks up iron, but motivates users to exercise for a long time and happily.
Recently, Pamela also signed a contract with the Chinese smart fitness mirror brand FITURE for 2 million US dollars, becoming a member of its coaching team, which also shows the commercial value potential of fitness experts.
After the outbreak of the epidemic, another head talent on Saturday Ye's fans on the B station quickly grew from 2 million to 8 million, "We have now encountered 'fan anxiety', that is, too many people, multiple portraits, and the accuracy has declined." A lot of new fans just follow us for fitness content, and when we expand to launch videos on women's health topics, some fans will leave messages saying that underage viewers are not suitable for watching these contents. ”
Before shooting the video, Saturday Ye had a full-time job abroad, "In the foreign environment, everyone seems to be more peaceful, at first they just wanted to do a good job of content, and then after becoming popular in China, some brand advertising needs came to us, feeling that the environment is more competitive." ”
In 2017, Saturday Ye's personal training course began to be listed on WeChat and Taobao channels, and the sales of 28-day private teaching courses priced at 360 yuan exceeded one million, and now this course has been removed. Recently, Saturday Wild also launched a joint underwear with inside and outside, and cooperated with big brands such as Sisley to promote it.
However, the head of the Internet celebrity self-built brand to solve the problem of supply chain, "we began to prepare this brand from 18 years, has been accumulated and explored for a long time." In the past, our team did this brand abroad, and the docking was more troublesome, which also invisibly increased the cost. After changing to China, the previous team was not the same as our concept, and now we have found a team that suits us. ”
In 2018, Saturday Wild launched its self-built brand "Wild Sataurday", and the number of Taobao stores reached more than 60,000, but the number of fitness products was not large. In November, the Saturday Wild brand was upgraded to "She is a Firework", mainly engaged in women's fashion sportswear and settled in Tmall, the current sales scale is not large, some fans believe that the pricing is high.
It is understood that the brand concept of "She is a firework" is to break the scene restrictions and create sportswear and yoga clothes that can also be worn on daily appointments and shopping. "Many brands of yoga underwear are specially designed for the gym and sweating, but we hope to launch many other fashion items through the way of wearing, such as a suit jacket, so that everyone can wear it to the company, and can also go directly to the gym after work."
On the Xiaohongshu platform, there are 130,000+ notes on "fitness wear", which shows that the user's mind is changing and the market potential is large. Saturday's wild team said that similar brands have alo YOGA, free people, etc. abroad, but there is no head competitor in China.
Saturday's team said, "After the brand was launched, Internet platforms and investment companies have come to talk about investment, but at present, the brand is still in its infancy, and we still hope to control and do a good job of this brand before considering financing." ”
03 Competing for fitness experts is the only way to improve the vertical ecology
The real rise of fitness enthusiasts came after the pandemic. On the one hand, offline fitness once suffered stagnation, on the other hand, home fitness boomed. This has caused fitness content on various Internet platforms to skyrocket.
Relevant data show that during the epidemic period, the cumulative playback of fitness sports videos in Station B reached 660 million times, an increase of nearly 200% over the same period last year, and the number of notes related to sports and fitness on the Little Red Book also increased by nearly 2 times; Kuaishou also launched the "Living Room Gym" activity column.
But since then, there has been an incident that has more triggered the pan-fitness crowd, that is, Pamela's entry into the domestic social platform. In just two months, her total number of fans on the domestic platform has reached more than 4 million, and she has been on Weibo hot search many times.
Behind Pamela's popularity, it reflects the changes in the aesthetics of mainstream women in China. In the past, it was "white and thin", but now the vest line, peach buttocks, healthy and plump figure has become the new ideal type. Pamela's personal image and videos of fitness tutorials are just right for women's fitness needs today.
The periphery of the fitness crowd suddenly intersects with "weight loss" and even expands to a wider range of people. In other words, people's fitness may not be as "utilitarian" as before, and maybe they haven't lost a lot of weight, but through exercise, people have become more energetic and confident.
In addition, the national level is also constantly calling for everyone to increase physical exercise. According to the "National Fitness Plan (2021-2025)", by 2025, the proportion of people who regularly participate in physical exercise will reach 38.5%, and the total scale of the national sports industry will reach 5 trillion.
Taking advantage of this shareholder wind, in order to make the community content become diverse and rich, and show the positive attitude of users to life, various platforms have begun to create a vertical track for fitness content.
In September 2020, Xiaohongshu released for the first time the list of fitness talents, including the Xiaohongshu Fitness Celebrity List and the Xiaohongshu Fitness Newcomer List. Almost at the same time, Kuaishou and the fitness chain brand Yizhao Wade jointly launched the first sports and fitness industry creator conference, and announced the official opening of the Internet celebrity joint gym jointly created with Yizhao Wade.
Douyin officials also announced that there are more than 37 million creators of sports and fitness-related content on the platform, and the scale of fitness fans as the core creators of content has exceeded 21,000.
It can be said that the fitness field has become an important battlefield for various content platforms, and fighting for head fitness experts has become the only way to occupy this highland, and even traditional gyms have joined the battle for fitness experts.
After the launch of the "Luck Live" online fitness live broadcast platform, Leke Sports announced that it will invest 100 million yuan in the next 10 years, increase the annual investment by 20%, serve about 100,000 fitness coaches, and fully support the star coach industry ecology. It is reported that the annual income of the head of Leke is more than 300,000.
Although the commercialization of fitness experts has not been smooth because of the narrow audience group, today, the fitness extension population has expanded, and it is deeply related to the food and other industries, coupled with subsidies from various platforms, the commercialization of fitness experts can be expected in the future.