Li Ziqi Incident: What role does Wei Nian "play" in the end

Wen 丨 新 entropy, Author 丨 白芨, Editor 丨 月見

On the video platform, the video update of the top internet celebrity Li Ziqi (real name: Li Jiajia) stayed on July 14, and in the comment area, every few minutes, a user left a message "Miss you, sister."

The trigger that triggered public attention was the reply of Li Ziqi's account on social media on August 29 that "capital is really a good means". In the eyes of outside public opinion, Li Ziqi's IP dispute seems to be a story of "silly white sweet" meeting "old fox". On Weibo, the account "Rabbit Tearing Chicken Master", who took the lead in exposing the dispute, wrote: "The current situation of Li Ziqi is far worse than everyone imagines... This beautiful girl who brought the ancient wind to the fire suffered a big loss in the equity structure. ”

However, with the deepening of the media's excavation of the event, the Li Ziqi incident has reversed, and the fact is not that Wei nian "squeezed dry" and "overhead" a high-quality content creator, but Wei Nian supported the growth of Li Ziqi's IP.

According to the Phoenix Network report, the cooperation between Li Ziqi and Wei Nian originated in 2016, and the two sides agreed that Li Jiajia would be responsible for creating content, and Wei Nian would be responsible for operation and promotion and capital investment. Dolphin Think Tank disclosed that when the two sides signed the contract, Li Ziqi's account had only 200,000 fans in Meipai and only 10,000 fans on Weibo, while at that time, Weinian had signed a contract with Internet celebrities including two million-fan level Meipai bloggers, and after Li Ziqi signed the contract, he signed two Weibo bloggers with millions of fans.

And equity disputes are not "overhead" as understood by the outside world. According to the "People" report, Wei Nian proposed a plan to issue shares to Li Jiajia more than a year ago, but Li Jiajia did not accept the proposed plan because he did not think it was necessary. The Tech Planet report corroborates this, when Wei Nian "gave several options, equity, money or equity superposition, as she chooses." In the case of a loss of 100 million, Weinian also gave Li Jiajia 40 million in cash.

Reviewing the ins and outs of Li Ziqi's IP contradictions, the facts are clear, this is a dispute between content creators and cooperative institutions, the core contradiction is that under the rapid growth of IP, the respective demands of both sides cannot be well matched and adapted to changes in reality. It is worth noting that in the whole dispute, public opinion is more inclined to side with the content creator, and in the comment area of Li Ziqi's account, its cooperative Fang Weinian is often named "vicious" and "squeezed". Obviously, in the midst of criticism, few users think objectively and rationally about what the deep logic of contradiction is.

01, the essence of micro-thinking is to tap the deep value of IP

In economics, capital, like labor, land, information, and data, is one of the factors of production. If analyzed from a rational point of view, commercialization itself has nothing to do with morality, in modern society, commercial activity is not only a necessary part of social production, but also provides a catalyst for content production.

In real life, the nature of IP commercialization is more based on whether its operation mode is in line with the interests of IP itself and a wider group.

For example, since the beginning of this year, Douyin, Kuaishou and other enterprises have set up the "Three Rural Short Video Support Plan" and related projects related to the live broadcast of agricultural products, although they are both commercial operations, but they have not been criticized by public opinion. The reason is that the "flow to the countryside" promoted by new economy enterprises is conducive to alleviating the dilemma of less attention in some areas, and for such actions, not only should not be opposed, but should be encouraged.

In the case of Li Ziqi, Wei Nian also played an important role, the latter developed and amplified the value of Li Ziqi's IP.

Most of the content IP is to first rely on advertising to monetize, maintain life, and then use the platform's e-commerce system to live sell goods, few people will consider the most difficult self-built brand. The cooperation between Li Ziqi IP and Wei Nian began in 2016, before the brand was opened, Li Ziqi account did not receive advertising, did not live broadcast, and did not have any commercial conversion for up to three years, but the account was still able to produce high-quality content at a relatively slow monthly pace, which was inseparable from the resource guarantee and supporting personnel support given by Wei Nian in all aspects. Since then, until 2018, based on video content, Weinian built the Li Ziqi brand system from scratch, taking a huge risk during the brand incubation period. Relevant data show that in 2021, the loss of Li Ziqi brand will reach 100 million.

The return on investment is the rapid growth of the Li Ziqi brand. According to the data of "2021's Most Growing New Consumer Brands in China", the sales of the Li Ziqi brand reached 1.6 billion yuan in the whole year of 2020. Li Jiajia has also smoothly transformed from a content creator to a brand founder, and is the only celebrity in the same period who still maintains ultra-high traffic. Obviously, such achievements cannot be achieved by the individual creator alone.

On the other hand, the operation of the brand by Wei Nian has driven the development of the local food industry chain to some extent.

Local cuisine often have the characteristics of a hundred flavors, the taste of the product depends on the chef's understanding of the meal, to this day, can conquer the country's local cuisine only Lanzhou ramen, Shaxian snacks and other few types, its common feature is the standardization of raw materials, processing processes, to ensure the stability of the taste of the product.

In the process of operating the brand, Weinian has gained greater market space by creating explosive local food products, and more than 100 upstream suppliers associated with it have gained greater market space, and only snail powder products have directly and indirectly driven about 4,000 jobs. The report shows that from 2020 onwards, Weinian has also carried out special scientific research projects related to the production and processing of snail powder with Jiangnan University, and then cooperated with the National Agricultural Science and Technology Achievements Transfer Service Center of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and continued to make greater moves in the upstream of the supply chain.

In addition, with the popularity of plum snail powder and lotus powder and other products on the whole network, a large number of merchants have chosen to follow up the snail powder and lotus powder market, further opening up the market space for local cuisine. In other words, a good brand operation can drive the network breaking and benign development of the entire local food industry.

In the field of online content, the same is true of logic.

The common feature of content creators is often that they have strong creative ability, but they do not have the ability or energy to consider the prospect of commercialization. From the PC era to the mobile Internet era, from graphic creation to video creation, there are many authors who have excellent personal creative ability on major content platforms, but because they cannot balance business and content, they are ultimately "short-lived". The operation and promotion support provided by MCN and other institutions is conducive to creators clarifying their personal IP and finding a commercialization path. Creators can also devote themselves to creation without worries, which is a win-win outcome for both parties.

However, in reality, because ordinary users cannot understand the operation mode of the online content industry, they often magnify the personal role of content creators and ignore the input value of capital elements. For example, in the Li Ziqi incident, users remember more about the parties' "good means of capital" complaints, and substituted into conspiracy theory speculation, while ignoring the role of micro-thoughts on IP cultivation.

In fact, each platform has its own operating rules and promotion algorithms. If good content wants to be seen by more people in a short period of time, the conventional way is to buy traffic on mainstream platforms, and similar products are publicized at key traffic entrances such as subway stations. Many creators will eventually seek to work with institutions, also because the costs and resources associated with them are difficult for individual creators to bear on their own. According to the Weibo released by Li Ziqi's account in 2017, Weinian gave the account a large number of promotional resources during its cooperation with it.

In the rapid rise of Li Ziqi's content, we can clearly see the value of micro-ideas in IP - if there is no support and investment in all aspects of micro-ideas, excellent content is likely to be buried because the creator's personal commercialization needs are not fully guaranteed and supported, and cannot play a greater role.

02. Complex disputes in business cannot be viewed from a single perspective

The scholar Yi Zhongtian once had a view on historical analysis: "For historical figures, we must see his situation and reasons at that time... It makes no sense to simply divide historical figures into good and bad, good and evil, gentleman and villain. ”

The logic of the business world is the same, and considering business cooperation from a single perspective is a "lazy" way of thinking. On the one hand, the cognition of a single perspective is often fragmented, and it is difficult to examine the problem with a comprehensive eye; on the other hand, inferior content such as the title party that lacks depth of thinking is also deliberately reducing the incident to "black and white".

For example, in the torrential rains and floods in Henan in July this year, the sports brand Hongxing Erke quickly became popular because it announced that it would donate 50 million yuan to Henan, becoming a star enterprise in the minds of netizens.

Few users have noticed that Hongxing Erke's active donation action cannot cover up its "failure" in commercial competition. In 2009, when the market was cold and the sports brand was destocked, Hongxing Erke fell behind due to the misjudgment of the market situation. In addition, Chuangbang reported that due to the financial fraud of secretly controlling its own funds to support the store system, Hongxing Erke stock fell into a long-term suspension, and the company was on the verge of delisting.

Today, in the domestic sports brand, Hongxing Erke has been "left" behind by Anta and Li Ning. As a loss-making enterprise, Hongxing Erke's "bankruptcy donation" in the face of the flood to assist the disaster area is undoubtedly commendable; but as a listed company, Hongxing Erke's financial fraud, suspension and delisting have hurt the interests of investors; as a member of the sports brand market competition, Hongxing Erke misjudged the market trend and hurt the interests of partners such as dealers.

In the Li Ziqi IP dispute case, the role played by Wei Nian is also difficult to measure from a single perspective.

Li Jiajia herself is undoubtedly the main contributor to the promotion of its content to break the circle, and Weinian also provides the support of huge promotion and marketing expenses. After the successful content creation, Weian led the commercial development of Li Ziqi's IP, and the public account of "Li Ziqi Brand" shows that the research and development of Plum Ziqi snail powder has undergone a long iterative process, and the R&D team has traveled to Liuzhou many times to investigate the taste, and its soup base, sour shoots, and red oil are optimization products after repeated trial and error. Obviously, the market success of IP series products such as plum snail powder is inseparable from the continuous optimization of WeIan in the fields of products and supply chains.

In the process of the rise of Li Ziqi's IP, Li Jiajia and WeiNian are undoubtedly the relationship between Maxima and Bole, which has successfully cooperated. And just by virtue of the distribution dispute, the distinction between "black and white" between the two is obviously unconvincing.

03, the business belongs to the business, the content belongs to the content

If the dispute is put aside, both sides of the cooperation in Li Ziqi's IP are worthy of praise.

For creator Li Jiajia, she has successfully exerted the influence of Li Ziqi's IP to a new height in the short video era by showing the traditional Chinese manual agricultural production method. By 2020, the number of Li Ziqi accounts on Youtube will exceed 10 million, providing a new footnote for traditional culture to go to sea. "People's Daily" gave a very high evaluation to Li Ziqi's IP: "We need more Li Ziqi, from different angles and different aspects, to show the world a rich, diverse and wonderful China that is not only rich in unique traditional cultural connotations, but also constantly moving towards modernization." ”

For Wei Nian, through the protection and incubation and development of Li Ziqi IP, Wei Nian has achieved its own development and empowerment of traditional local cuisine. Before the plum snail powder broke the circle, snail powder was a weak category in the fast food industry, and consumers' eyes were more focused on instant noodles, chutney powder, self-heating hot pot, self-heating rice and other products, and the emergence of micro-ideas provided a great opportunity for this category to move towards the national and even global markets. Tmall data shows that as of May 10, 2020, the Li Ziqi brand has become the only food brand among the top ten new brands of domestic goods going overseas.

On the other hand, Wei Nian's development of Li Ziqi's IP also protects Li Ziqi's IP. Different from the capital-light advertising monetization model and the live streaming realization model that consumes the value of the talents, the heavy asset brand monetization model selected by Wei Nian has penetrated deep into the physical industry and driven the growth of hundreds of upstream suppliers. This not only does not consume the value of IP, but also raises the influence of IP to a new height, and also avoids interference with Li Ziqi's content creation to the greatest extent. Looking at the domestic short video field, Weinian is one of the very few enterprises that have practiced the success of IP cultural value and commercial value in both directions.

In the content industry, the main body of production is often scattered individuals or small-scale teams, and angel investment in business may be more suitable to describe the capital action in this field.

This means that in the development process of the investee, the risks and benefits of the cooperative institutions are corresponding. On the one hand, the cooperative institutions share the commercial value of successful IP; on the other hand, the cooperative institutions also have to bear the investment losses to the "can't run" masters. For creators, cooperative institutions have played a key role as a catalyst for their career development, obtaining investment means more opportunities, strengthening their competitive position in the market, and greatly improving the efficiency of personal exploration and single-handedness. The B station UP master "Xiangxiang Battle" also said in the video, "A good MCN will have a huge help to bloggers who have just entered the industry."

This is obviously far from the "oppression" and "exploitation" understood by some netizens. From the perspective of the reasons, the public is more familiar with the entrepreneurial and growth stories of video creators, and can often empathize with their hardships, while the lack of awareness of the institutional assistance behind them, after the conflict between the author and the institution, they naturally choose to side with the author. With the improvement of public awareness of the content industry, the emotional judgment of the industry will gradually decrease, and the dilemma of public opinion on IP commercialization will eventually become history.