Written by / © AI Finance and Economics Li Yiman
Editor / © Zhang Shuo
In order to shoot a scene of pushing and shoving in the stairwell, Dalian Old Wet King Bowen "tore it up" with the most expensive prop, the "mink" sponsored by his mother.
This is a big deal in the northeast. His mother insisted that he lose money, and he also harvested the first mink in his life. During this year's Spring Festival, no less than a dozen sets of women's clothing styles appeared in the video, most of which he bought online on Taobao, adding up to 2,000 yuan, only one-tenth of the price of the black mink coat.
On the day of the shooting, the mother knocked on all the neighbors' doors from the first floor to the fifth floor, reminding them that "my son may be calling in the hallway when shooting in the afternoon." After filming the fierce red packet grabbing shot, Wang Bowen, who was wearing a mink coat, green eyeshadow and big red lipstick, sweated and rested for 20 minutes before he eased up. "Tear it up" to the point of intensity, he will not only knock over the camera, but also scratch himself and his friends all over the body.
For this film, he wrote it alone for a day, changed it more than a dozen times, and after filming, he sat in his 15-square-meter bedroom and cut it all day, crying and laughing with the characters inside, and after cutting it, he found that because he was too focused, his mouth had not been opened and closed.
After it was issued on the evening of January 30, the article was titled "How do northerners celebrate the New Year?" The most complete strategy you have to watch" video was quickly forwarded tens of thousands of times on Weibo, the WeChat public account read 100,000+, up 200,000 fans.
"I'm not an influencer." But he repeatedly stressed with a serious face that he is more willing to define himself as a creator than an Internet celebrity, producing funny, heartfelt, and resonant literary and artistic works.
In his pen and lens, those small people and the warm city culture burst out the power to strike people's hearts.
01
The middle-aged aunt is a treasure trove of inspiration
Did you burn your hair, did you take a shower, did you buy New Year goods? Last year's Spring Festival, a series of ultimate tortures that hit the soul directly made millions of people remember the name Wang Bowen.
It was his first real phenomenon-level blockbuster work, and it also made him feel the taste of "red" for the first time.
After the release of "Those Things of the Northern New Year", almost overnight, Wang Bowen's Weibo fans quickly jumped to more than 2 million, weChat rose by 1 million fans in a week, the number of fans on the whole network rose by 4.5 million, and the total number of plays exceeded 700 million times, completing the gorgeous turn to the head of Internet celebrities.
The feeling of redness, coming from every dimension and detail of life, is swift and powerful.
A friend who had "not been in touch for a long time" in WeChat popped up and excitedly told him that "the circle of friends has turned crazy." He will also be recognized by fans when he walks on the street, and even the Chinese shopping guide of the Japanese drugstore knows him, and the cabinet sister of Shiseido insists on giving him a lot of samples. Countless people advised him to go to Beijing for development, and he said that he would consider it later.
For Wang Bowen, Dalian has the most fertile creative soil, and Dalian's middle-aged aunt is an inexhaustible treasure of inspiration.
He went to the market to buy vegetables, saw the two aunts bargaining, and suddenly thought of the scene that he had not yet done the scene of bargaining for vegetables, "I will not leave, stop and listen to their conversations." The mother called a friend to talk about the parents' short, he secretly wrote down the content on the side, and a slight modification was a wonderful book. Not long ago, the popular video of the bathing that brushed the screen was a sudden inspiration when he was soaking in the bathing center, and he took out his mobile phone on the spot and spent half an hour to list the outline.
All his creations must return to the lives of ordinary people, and the most touching things are the small things that are commonplace in life.
Spend a whole day before the Spring Festival, let Tony teacher give a fashionable head; hoard thousands of pounds of cabbage for the winter, the pig should buy a whole head, and must be the kind of brown rice noodles to feed; dumplings from Chinese New Year's Eve to the fifteenth day of the first month, eat at least three meals a day.
In the winter in the south, you have to change clothes in the quilt, wear sweaters and sweaters to sleep, freeze out of the frostbite indoors, the outdoors are warmer than indoors, the clothes are always wet, and I would rather shrink in the bed to smell the fart than come out to breathe.
He complained about the relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, and knew the skills of girls when they were shopping and gossiping about buying clothes, pretending to leave when bargaining, waiting for the store to retain, and how to distinguish scumbags. The mother lamented that her son played a little girl to make her feel "a feeling of both children and daughters", and relatives and friends praised him as "definitely a beautiful child" if he was a girl.
When cutting the film, he couldn't help but "look down at the crotch" for a moment and asked himself: "Am I a man?" Why do I know so much about women? ”
He has long been looking forward to this year's New Year's book, "it will be a phenomenon-level explosive product when written", but because last year's work is in front, he is careful not to dare to hold out too much hope.
Any work embarks on an uncertain path of fate the moment it clicks to send, and is tested by countless pairs of critical eyes. He's been doing it for five or six years, and sometimes he feels like he can't grasp the key, he can't grasp the audience's heart.
From May 2017 to the first half of 2018, Wang Bowen experienced a period of "up and down". Every time he finished posting a video at 7:30, he always had to sit in front of the computer and watch the number of forwards change little by little until late at night. In fact, there is no need to do this, and by about 8 o'clock you can judge that a video is "definitely not OK".
Sometimes the number of forwards is only more than 2,000 times, and he is "particularly on fire", "at that time, people collapsed, and suddenly felt wronged." He couldn't sleep all night, opened the computer in the middle of the night to analyze the reasons, called the team to discuss, and reflected on the "difference" of the creation. He also cried countless times until two or three o'clock in the morning, crying tired before falling asleep.
At first, he was busy at the business park until after 10 o'clock every night, and there were no pedestrians on the street, and he "felt particularly wronged in his heart." Exhausted to the extreme, he thought more than once, "Forget it, don't do it."
It was also his hardest and most anxious time.
Inspiration suddenly burst out to write it down quickly, and sometimes I couldn't take care of eating a meal a day, so that I got a stomach problem. Get up at seven or eight o'clock to work, stay up until more than two o'clock at night, busy face without washing hair or combing, as if a washing inspiration will disappear. Sometimes the creative cycle is long, four or five days in a row without washing his hair, just like the "wild man", but he quite enjoys this kind of immersion in the creation of the distraction of his own attention. Some people envy him for not having to go to work, but he feels that it is really difficult to take responsibility for himself.
"If you want to be noble before men, you will be guilty after them." Wang Bowen told AI Finance and Economics that everyone thinks that Internet celebrities are bright and beautiful, but in fact, no industry money is easy to earn.
02
Can you speculate for a lifetime by hype?
Wang Bowen's first experience as an Internet celebrity began with a casual attempt to inadvertently insert willows in his college years.
In March 2013, Renren launched a 90-second voice photo album, on which he imitated his mother and high school teachers talking, and sent more than 100 works in two months. Many of the people who were about the same age as him had an impression of him.
After he became popular, Renren began to decline, and in May of the same year, he decisively switched to Weibo at the suggestion of his friends. At that time, the short video industry was not a climate, and few people on Weibo held commercial purposes, "everyone is playing", and there is no concept of Internet celebrity, "when internet celebrities are mentioned, they are Furong sisters".
Intermittently updated to the first half of 2016, papi sauce became popular overnight, an advertisement shot a sky-high price of 22 million yuan, he suddenly realized that short videos have become a huge market, "this thing can sell money."
Wang Bowen's keen grasp of business opportunities comes from the business culture he received in Guangzhou during his four years at the university. Locals don't like to "work for others" and have to be their own bosses no matter how big or small the business is. Many of his classmates started small businesses during their time at school, and he himself worked as an art teacher for 4 years, not spending a penny on his parents since he went to college.
At that time, Wang Bowen originally wanted to study abroad after graduating from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, and also studied English for seven or eight months, but he did not get a visa, so he went to a company to work as a screenwriter. He used the weekend to produce several videos, and by June he had been on 3 hot searches, and many large numbers helped forward them. At that time, it was the period when Weibo's fans were the fastest, but he was "particularly stupid and didn't know how to market himself", and a video rose by 20,000 or 30,000 fans.
On Christmas Day, December 25, 2012, Wang Bowen, who had accumulated 400,000 followers on Weibo, resigned and returned home to start a six-month preparatory work.
The time left for him was already quite tight. The papi sauce is on fire, and the reds with similar styles have become famous. "I don't think if I don't hurry up, this wave of dividends will pass." Wang Bowen attributed his embarkation on the road of Internet celebrity to the dual promotion of fate and chance. "Later, I looked back and thought, fortunately I came in at that time, and if it was a little later, I guess I wouldn't have anything to do now."
On May 11, 2017, Wang Bowen set up his own team in Dalian. From May to August of that year, with his excellent quality works, Wang Bowen quickly rushed the number of fans from 500,000 to 1 million in just 3 months, and then entered a period of steady growth. The blockbuster video in early 2018 once again made his fan base surge to 2 million.
Up to now, Wang Bowen's Weibo fans have exceeded 3 million, WeChat has more than 2 million fans, Douyin and Today's Headlines have more than 7.5 million fans, and the number of fans on the whole network has reached nearly 20 million, and he has also been named the top ten annual creators of Watermelon Video.
Also in 2018, his ranking of Weibo videos has always remained in the top 50 in the country, the highest ranking 9th, and he also won the Golden Second Award for Best Actor, the Top Ten Influential Humor Bloggers of the 2018 V Influence Summit, the Most Commercial Potential IP, Crowley Dark Horse Self-Media, Microcast Easy Annual Self-Media, and the 2018 Weibo Redspring Festival Annual Video Celebrity awards.
Whether it is from the number of fans, industry influence or commercialization, this IP is already the top celebrity in the field of short video.
Wang Bowen told AI Finance and Economics that it is the safest way to lay out the whole platform in a planned way, "Don't count on a platform alone, otherwise once the platform goes downhill, it may be finished." Each platform has different properties, but his videos go viral wherever they are placed.
"Can you hype for a lifetime by hype?" Even if you look like a celestial immortal, you will always grow old and ugly one day. He said, "A thing has good content, no matter the horizontal screen and vertical screen, even if it is filmed obliquely, it can be red." ”
03
It's not the same as other influencers
If you draw a circle with your home as the center of the circle, Wang Bowen's living radius does not exceed 5 kilometers in all directions.
His most frequented places are nearby wet markets and commissaries, hanging out in nearby shopping malls, the farthest place to go is the studio, and a taxi only starts at 9 yuan. He lived a simple life of two points and one line in this small circle, like a fish in the water.
His studio is located in his old house in the suburbs of Dalian, walking up the steps of an old-fashioned residential building to the 3rd floor and opening a life-filled security door, which is the world of his creation. The building is older than Wang Bowen, he was born here, and the neighbors' grandparents all watched him grow up.
The team is not big, he is the pillar of it, makeup artists, editors, etc. are part-time, videographers are looking for wedding photos, when there is a group of people with laptops crowded in the small office brainstorming, busy going back to their homes, looking for their mothers.
It's hard to imagine that this simple and somewhat rough office belongs to a big number of tens of millions of fans.
He never mentioned it to anyone, except for his mother,who occasionally came to clean up, and AI Finance was the first person on his team to set foot here.
That computer screen was a barrier he had deliberately erected for himself. At the other end of the screen, there are Internet celebrities who are good at singing and composing, laughing and cursing like clouds and flowing water. This end is a polite, slightly shy "post-90s" Dalian boy, showing a green stubble on his chin, talking about the rise of the mobile phone to read the book in a colorful way, his eyes lit up, his eyebrows flew and danced, "Walking on the street and saying that I am an Internet celebrity, no one has a letter."
Whether it is his works or daily life, Wang Bowen feels that he is "really not an Internet celebrity".
Every time he goes out to a meeting, his dress, walking posture and even language style are very low-key and simple. On the day of the interview with AI Finance and Economics, his dark green sweatpants were bought at the gap discount, more than 180 yuan, black sweaters 200 yuan, sneakers more than 600 yuan, coats were bought last year, "expensive to buy, spent seven or eight hundred yuan."
He knows only a few Internet celebrities, and he rarely interleaves with others and pushes cups and cups. He had been to fifty or sixty cities and tasted all over the world, but he felt that it was not as good as the cabbage and potatoes at home.
Many people in the industry are increasingly recognizing him, and Wang Bowen believes that these recognitions come from his professional content creation. In his view, the key to the success of IP lies in irreplaceable characteristics, and his advantage lies in his ability to grasp inspiration from life and strong expression.
He felt that in the final analysis, those who engage in creation must "have a simple mind, must speak sharply, be able to poke into people's hearts, and must not have too many selfish distractions." He deliberately kept his distance from the outside world, and wholeheartedly immersed himself in the world of buying vegetables in the morning, cooking at noon, and nagging with his uncle and aunt in his spare time.
He worked at home all day and "never thought of himself as superior." In his view, the internet has only given him a platform to show his talent, and the work he is now engaged in is just an ordinary industry in society, just making some money to support his family, "I am no different from anyone."
However, creating videos is a somewhat "strange" industry, the boundaries between work and life are not so clear, and once the pursuit of perfection will be filled with work all the time. From writing books, uploading videos, taking titles, cutting cover pictures to business cooperation, he has to do almost everything himself, even the most classic "tear it" red envelope scene in the video, which he personally cut out.
Others play mobile phones are a pastime, Wang Bowen brushed Weibo to see what material, "naturally associated with their own work and work." He has also watched "Ruyi Zhuan" and "Yanxi Raiders", watching and watching, "can't help but think of his own number, follow the performance". So his way of resting is reading books and "not touching these electronic products."
Because he is busy with creation, he rarely participates in industry conferences, and rarely looks at the works of other Internet celebrities, one is afraid of disturbing his own creative ideas, and the other is that he can't calm down after watching too much. Sometimes the work causes controversy, and he only replies simply on Weibo: "Calm your mind, go with the flow, try your best to do it, each platform has different characteristics." ”
Cultivating a heart that is strong enough to resist all malice is a necessary self-cultivation for an Internet celebrity.
Wang Bowen told AI Finance and Economics that every IP that can go to the head position is not easy, and first of all, it must withstand the pressure from the outside world and people around it. Many people are scolded by people when they have three or four hundred thousand fans and "can't do it", then there is no future at all.
His wish is also very simple, he just wants to "buy a house and a car" through his own efforts, to settle his life well, and his parents have saved a lifetime of money for them to spend themselves. Mothers often lament that their children are not burdened, and feel lucky and contented, which makes him feel that he is "quite successful".
Compared with taking advantage of the popularity to make a handful of money, he pays more attention to the long-term development of his career. "I can't see it for a year or two, and after a long time, I think it will be different."
04
"The more you think about the fire, the more you can't catch fire"
After sending the last work before the Spring Festival, Wang Bowen plans to give himself a vacation and have a good New Year. He posted a set of pictures of "walking oil" in the circle of friends, all kinds of croquettes, fried fish, looking particularly tempting.
Before the New Year, many advertising slips came to the door, but he refused. More important than money is physical health and life.
How much money is enough? People's desires have no end, "holding 10 million think 20 million, holding 20 million think 100 million." After doing a blockbuster, I want to do the next one, and I keep asking myself if I will be angry and will not be surpassed by new celebrities.
Many of the people he's been in contact with always like to ask him: What are you going to do next? What should I do if I have been angry? But he felt that it was already very good for people to see the road under their feet and understand today's affairs. A person must have the ability to plan the future for himself, but if he thinks wildly every day and backfires, it will only increase his anxiety. In fact, you don't know what will happen in the next second. Tomorrow has its own worries about tomorrow, and a day's difficulties are enough.
Due to the long period of high-pressure work, the body sounded the alarm bell, Wang Bowen began to lose hair at a young age, fast heart rate, pressure fat, less than two years of weight forty or fifty pounds. His mother was distressed that he had no time to rest, and offered to travel to Xiamen, in fact, to help him relieve the pressure.
After the establishment of the team in May 2017, he did not earn a penny in the first three months, and the cost was tens of thousands of yuan a month, and even his father, who had never interfered with his son's choice, suggested that he go back to be a teacher. Employees are anxious about how to remain unchanged, Wang Bowen pretended to be confident and told him "sooner or later". In fact, he was also anxious, "but can't say."
Until in August of that year, after weibo fans reached one million, he received the first advertisement, which was to promote the Suning 818 Carnival, the money was not too much, but he was particularly happy.
The team was quickly on track. In 2018, although Wang Bowen's team did not have a particularly professional marketer, there were still more and more advertisers who took the initiative to find, large Internet companies, FMCG and daily chemicals from the world's top 500 companies were his main customers, and traditional enterprises such as real estate companies also began to enter.
Producing brand-specific advertising films is his strong point, but he has his own principles and is insensitive to customers such as pharmaceuticals, health products, dairy products, perishable foods and so on. He is not willing to always send advertisements, otherwise fans will not be satisfied and have an impact on word of mouth. But as long as the advertisement is issued, it must be filmed according to the standards of the film, "it must be worthy of the customer".
He was reluctant to disclose his income, saying only that the salaries and bonuses of employees were enough, and the rest was enough for him to live well, "what he wants to eat, wear and buy nothing is not a problem, but it is far from the level of special luxury that everyone imagines."
Before September 2018, Wang Bowen's fans rose rapidly, and "we can't miss this dividend period." Now that the growth of fans has entered a stable period, he feels that "it is better to produce fine products." "No matter how big you are, as long as you don't pay attention to it, you will definitely go downhill, and the fans are mobile."
Wang Bowen deeply feels that this industry is becoming extremely cruel.
In 2016, the waist number can still make some money, but now the only one who can really make money is the head size. The short video industry as a whole is bigger, but "advertisers are not as stupid as before and go to fake data, you can't fool him." Those big brands and big projects that are really eyeed by everyone with a total budget of tens of millions of yuan, "as soon as the project comes in, they are all divided by the head account", and customers sometimes designate red people themselves, "there is no waist".
"So it's really early to say what industry to do." Wang Bowen sighed. To become a head influencer, it is indispensable to be in the right place and place. Nowadays, it is difficult to make short videos again, everyone wants to open a store to make money, but the profit of the cost is not considerable. In this increasingly impetuous circle, ambition and desire have long been useless, "the more you think about fire, the more you can't get hot, the more you want to make money, the less you can't earn."
Wang Bowen chose to sink, sink as deep as possible, and bury himself in the most marketable and fertile soil of creation in Dalian. If you want to go further, that is his foundation.