Ignition Dimension (ID: chaintruth) original
Produced by Burning Finance
Author | Cao Yang
Edit | Deng Shuanglin
On April 20, Meyer Musk, a well-known model and nutritionist in the United States, quietly opened a Little Red Book account. As a newly settled foreign creator, this would not have been eye-catching, because there are many foreign creators on the Little Red Book, and as early as 2018, the American Internet celebrity Kardashian has already settled in the Little Red Book.
However, Meyer Musk's other identity has aroused a certain degree of attention, that is, this 73-year-old woman is the mother of Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Little Red Book is not the first stop for Meyer Musk to land on the Chinese Internet, in June last year, she has been stationed on Weibo, and soon won the title of Weibo rising star, the most notable in its official introduction is "the eldest son is Silicon Valley Iron Man, Elon Musk".
Industry insider Wang Guangliang introduced that the three major platforms of Weibo, B station and Xiaohongshu are the main entrances for foreigners to enter the Chinese Internet. As early as 2011, american movie star Tom Cruise sent out his first Microblog, and later, a group of European and American stars also opened accounts, but it was basically an official publicity channel, mainly based on agency operation. Station B and Little Red Book are new entrances, dominated by original content.
In June 2020, Pamela, a beauty fitness blogger from Germany, opened accounts on these three platforms, and in less than a year, Pamela, nicknamed "Humanoid AI", had 1.09 million, 5.07 million and 4.92 million fans on Weibo, B station and Little Red Book, respectively.
As a beautiful fitness blogger all over the Internet, Pamela was named "2020 Top 100 UP Owners and Fitness Bloggers" by Station B in 2020. Most of the videos released on the B station account have been played hundreds of thousands, millions or even millions.
Before opening a Chinese Internet account, Pamela's fitness videos had long been transported to China by The Little Red Book and the UP master on The B station. A video of the "Pamela Weekly Sports Plan" released in March 2020 by the B station UP master "Wang Xiaoji to Work Hard" has been viewed more than 5.85 million times so far.
Also in 2020, Jerry Kowal, an American Jewal, was interviewed by CCTV, allowing foreign creators on the Internet platform to begin to be known to more people. Guo Jerry is the B station 2018, 2019 top 100 UP master, according to reports, its team of a total of 3 people, one in China responsible for domestic affairs, shooting by Jerry and the photographer two people to complete, editing, post-subtitles are the photographer is responsible.
In fact, in addition to Weibo, Station B, and Little Red Book, foreign creators are also accelerating into platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Zhihu. According to Kath statistics, on Douyin alone, there are nearly 100 overseas bloggers with more than one million fans.
The contents of the foreign creators on Douyin mainly include foreigners experiencing Chinese culture or cuisine, recording daily life in China, sharing English knowledge, and displaying the comparison of Chinese and foreign cultures. For example, @Enisenes is a foreigner living in China, recording his and his family's daily life in China on Douyin; @Russian Ring records the beautiful rivers and mountains around China on Douyin; @Kristin English teacher is teaching everyone to learn English on Douyin.
In the first season of "Informal Talks" broadcast in 2015, Liu Yiwei said, "For a long time in the past, it was difficult to imagine that there could be so many elites from different countries and handsome men from different countries on The land of China, using Chinese to express their views on China, the world, the present, and the future." ”
Perhaps At that time, Liu Yiwei did not expect that a few years later, such a scene has been seen everywhere on the Chinese Internet, and more and more foreigners have become Internet celebrities with a large number of fans on China's social platforms, and have good commercial returns. For example, the "Fake Smile Boy" account can reach millions of dollars in china's commercial revenue a year.
Wang Guangliang said that some of the creators of foreigners are personal behaviors, and many people are supported and incubated by MCN institutions.
In 2017, Li Kui, a hey man who has been studying and living in China for five years, opened his own Douyin account, and after accumulating 100,000 fans, he was discovered by the domestic MCN agency Shell Video; in July 2018, the "Fake Smile Boy" from the United States entered Sina Weibo with the help of his Chinese agent and gained more than 1 million fans on the same day; in September 2019, Bart, who now has tens of millions of fans, came to China from Los Angeles and signed a contract with DongjiDazi Media. In April 2021, the Victorian couple, who have opened an account on Douyin for more than two years and have accumulated nearly 6 million fans across the network, signed a contract with Worry-free Media...
At first, it was very simple for foreigners to become popular in China, and using their foreign identity to talk about Chinese, praise Chinese cuisine, praise China's landscape architecture, or simply shout a few words "I love China", you can get a lot of praise and attention.
According to internet insider reports, foreign Internet celebrities are popular in China, and the deeper reason is not that foreigners see the Chinese like to hear and praise, but Chinese have always had a high degree of curiosity about foreigners' contact with Chinese culture, which has spawned and promoted this kind of content to run in the forefront of domestic video platforms.
Weibo, Xiaohongshu and other platforms believe that this is an effective traffic password, the use of users love to see the relevant psychology of foreigners, have consciously introduced foreign stars, which is the beginning of foreigners stationed in the Chinese Internet, later, with the development and growth of China's Internet, many foreign students and foreign Internet celebrities, began to spontaneously settle in, and active in various platforms.
Today, in the wave of the world's Internet, Chinese creators have poured into overseas Internet platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, and foreign creators have poured into domestic Internet platforms such as Station B, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin, which are two equally magnificent parallel lines.
Exchange and learning will bring cognitive improvement, but also lead to dividend fading, now, overseas Internet platforms are difficult to give birth to a second Li Ziqi, domestic Internet platforms are also difficult to rely on "I love China" to harvest traffic, in Wang Guangliang's view, creators want to better achieve long-term traffic growth and commercialization value, it seems that "no lack of traffic" foreign Internet celebrities, must be as serious as Chinese creators how to continue to create higher quality, deeper, more interesting content.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="46" > foreigners poured into the Internet</h1>
"The oven is broken, I can't make pizza anymore, what should I do?" Two foreigners, confused, sent out a plea for help from another blonde foreign lad. The blonde boy began to skillfully knead the dough, wrap the pie, and bake the pie, and the action was quite Chinese the meaning of the pancake.
The pie came out, and the two foreigners looked disgusted and asked what it was, and the blonde boy said, "This is the pie, the Chinese pizza, the pizza of her grandmother." As soon as the picture turned, the two foreigners took a big bite of the pie in an exaggerated posture and praised it one after another: "Chinese pizza, delicious!" ”
Such a simple Douyin short video brought a total of 3.42 million likes, 85,000 comments and 37,000 retweets to The Blonde Boy Chris in Norway, becoming the most popular video on the Douyin platform on the day of its release.
Click on the Douyin account of foreigner Chris, hundreds of short video works are based on the theme of "foreigners returning to China for a long time", almost every work has hundreds of thousands or even millions of likes, and Foreigner Chris has also gained 16.918 million fans on Douyin, and has been praised as high as 170 million.
Xiao Hong, a short video enthusiast, found that in recent years, there have been more and more foreign Internet celebrities on domestic social platforms, and Weibo, B station, douyin, and Kuaishou are all foreigners. The presence of foreign Influencers in China is getting higher and higher, and the traffic they have gained is also increasing.
When it comes to foreign Internet celebrities in China, it is necessary to mention the MCN organization "Crooked Research Association" that produces a number of blockbuster video works.
Founded in Beijing in 2016, the "Crooked Research Association" is a cross-cultural video content production organization, which has new media matrix accounts such as "Crooked Nut Research Association", "Wanguo Specialties", "YChina" and other new media accounts, and the latest data shows that its cumulative fans on Weibo, B station, Douyin and YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other platforms have exceeded 100 million. According to the data of Tianyancha, at present, Beijing Weiwo Technology Co., Ltd., the parent company of the "Crooked Research Association", has completed 4 rounds of financing.
The Society also incubated and signed more than 40 COLs (Cultural Opinion Leaders). They come from Israel, the United States, Australia, Spain, Argentina, Japan, Thailand and other countries and regions, covering more than 10 vertical fields including food, beauty, fashion, travel, etc., including Gao Yousi, Xingyue, Ma Sirui, Xia Bobo and other coL with more than 1 million fans.
Photo / bilibili burn finance screenshot
In station B, the "Crooked Research Association" has more than 4 million fans, the number of plays has reached hundreds of millions, and throughout the whole station, this data is definitely called "top stream". In 2019, the "Crooked Research Association" was certified as one of the top 100 UP masters and well-known UP masters by Station B. On Weibo, the "Crooked Research Association" once set a record of 1 million fans in 100 days, and as of now, the number of Weibo fans of the "Crooked Research Association" has exceeded 5 million.
The data of the "Crooked Research Association" directly reflects the status of the entire "Crooked Nuts" channel in the B station. According to the statistics of Burning Finance, in the total of 2549 channels in Station B, the "Crooked Nut" channel has gained 6.71 billion views with 178,000 video volumes, with an average of 37,000 single video plays, which is a very high level in the whole station.
The data shows that the number of foreign Internet celebrity fans on Douyin is also quite considerable, and tens of millions of accounts like Foreigner Chris are not uncommon. For example, Alex Kost, a Ukrainian who became popular with his finger dance, currently has a fan base of 1469.2W, and Bago Bart, who has become popular with a cover Chinese song, has a current number of 1267W fans, in addition, Red Denis, Vlaf, Italy's Bernie, Wen Ruoshui Agash, Lao Ma and other talents from different countries overseas have tens of millions of fans on Douyin.
In the Xiaohongshu search for "foreigners", "foreign countries" and "overseas", there are also more than 70,000, 280,000 and 330,000 related notes respectively, and the content is roughly funny, tourism, food, fitness, singing, popular science and daily sharing.
It can be said that today's Chinese Internet is full of foreigners.
"There are two main categories of active foreign creators, one is foreign Internet celebrities, and the other is foreign students." Wang Guangliang said that around 2000, the Canadian People's Mountain, who had appeared on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala for four consecutive times and was also praised by the People's Daily, should be regarded as an early foreign Internet celebrity.
In recent years, the path for foreign Internet celebrities to enter the Chinese Internet has mainly relied on participating in variety shows. For example, "Informal Talks Season 1", which began in 2015, a program in which young people from 11 different countries and four hosts discuss hot topics and issues of concern to young people, can be said to have become a springboard for some foreigners to become popular in China.
According to incomplete statistics from Burning Finance, from the first season of "Informal Talks" to the current season 6.5, foreign Internet celebrities who have come out include Young Men of different styles and nationalities such as Xia Bobo and Gong Biyang of Argentina, Wu Yuxiang of Germany, Sasha of Russia, Bellate of Australia, Ichinose of Japan, Luo Shijie of the United States and Zhong Yilun of different styles and nationalities.
In addition, domestic popular variety shows such as "Run Bar Brothers", "Happy Base Camp", "Every Day Upward", "Extreme Challenge" and so on have all appeared in the faces of foreign celebrities, which to a certain extent have become shortcuts for foreigners to become popular in China.
Relatively speaking, foreign Internet celebrities enjoy more traffic dividends, while foreign students basically rely on their own content creation capabilities, and it is much more difficult to do, such as Guo Jerry, who is one of the best.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="89" > the traffic password of foreigners</h1>
In the eyes of many people, on the Chinese Internet, there is no shortage of traffic for foreigners.
In the first two years, a group of foreign Internet celebrities who relied on "I love China" quickly became popular on China's social platforms. One of the most representative is the Russian Internet celebrity Vlav who always hangs "I love China" on his lips.
Initially, Vlaf made a video of a wine tasting, and the amount of attention was pitifully small, until one day he released a video of "I love China", which quickly became popular and received a lot of likes and attention.
This allowed Vlaf to discover the traffic secrets, and it turned out that saying "I love China" as a foreign friend could easily become popular. Vlaf began to establish a person who loved China, shooting content around the themes of "I love China", "I want to be a Chinese", and "China is very powerful", with his exaggerated performance methods, and soon, Vlaf's fans exceeded 10 million.
What China has brought to Vlaf is not only attention, but also business monetization. According to TechWeb, Vlaf's advertising revenue can reach hundreds of thousands of yuan a month at its peak.
Many foreign friends have mastered this set of wealth codes, made a short video, shouted China's good and their love for China, uploaded to China's video platform, and easily got tens of thousands of likes and fans.
But after reading this set of rules for a long time, Chinese netizens began to be aesthetically tired, and gradually saw the real purpose of the foreigners behind this kind of content. "Are there really so many foreigners who love China?" No, they love Chinese money. Xiao Hong said.
Vlaf thus overturned. Sharp-eyed Chinese fans found that Vlaf said in the video that he had always used Huawei mobile phones, but in another video he shouted "Hey, Siri"; a video of saying that he could only speak Chinese could not speak English, but was pulled out to talk to foreign passers-by in English; one moment saying that he came to China at the age of 17, and the other saying that he came to China at the age of 18. Vlaf's frequent punches in the face began to make many netizens question that this foreigner who shouted every day that he loved China was just to "fool" Chinese money.
Although the content of the "Vlaf model" has suffered many doubts and controversies, "praising China" is still the fastest way for foreign Internet celebrities to become popular in China. On many platforms, video content that foreigners eat Chinese food, say Chinese, and try Chinese things is still more likely to become a hit.
But this wealth code has become more complex, it is difficult to maintain the heat only by simply and rudely showing love, and praising China and loving China needs more diversified content forms to show, which puts forward higher requirements for the content creation of foreign Internet celebrities, and if you want to go on for a long time, you must have high-quality content to continue to output.
In recent years, foreign Internet celebrities who have become popular by "taking shortcuts" have either been forgotten or forced to transform and create better content. The reason why the "Crooked Research Association" can sit firmly in the head seat of foreign Internet celebrities developing in China is that they have a deeper understanding of the content essence of "I love China".
In the report of "Moving Point Technology", Fang Yeton, co-founder of the Crooked Research Association, once said that there are still cultural barriers between Chinese culture and foreign countries, and even have stereotypes about the Chinese people, and the original intention of him and another co-founder, Gao Yousi, to establish the Crooked Research Association is to let more foreign young people understand China's current development, and also to let Chinese young people understand the position of China in the context of world development.
According to "Moving Point Technology", the team of the Crooked Research Association formulated a "three-stage rocket" and two-dimensional coordinates for its content. The so-called three-stage rocket mainly contains video content with "China from the perspective of crooked nuts" as the main line, such as street interviews with foreigners and domestic vlogs, mainly funny and relaxed; vertical video content with "overseas products and knowledge" as the main line, such as Wanguo specialties and overseas vlogs, which tend to popularize knowledge and drive consumption; and foreign language video content with "helping China go to sea" as the main line, mainly interviewing Chinese views on values.
The two-dimensional coordinates are the coordinate axes for testing the company's contents, the vertical axis is from breadth to depth, and the horizontal axis is from foreign countries to China. "We will put all the content in two-dimensional coordinates to see if there is a layout in four dimensions, and try to ensure that the content is comprehensive." Fang Yeton said.
Foreign influencers who create more high-quality and diversified content are also more likely to gain "loyal fans". Huo Si paid attention to a number of foreign Internet celebrities such as Belletai on the B station, and she told Burning Finance that she liked Belletai's videos, on the grounds that "although it is a funny video, he is very careful when shooting, unlike other foreign Internet celebrities who are easy to be superficial." ”
In Huo's view, foreign Internet celebrities have an evolutionary process in China. "Generally speaking, when they first entered China, they simply praised China, but this kind of video shooting will definitely be aesthetic fatigue." So the bloggers I'm following now all have something different, for example, for a while I was particularly interested in British English, and I started to pay attention to Situ Jianguo Stu and The Deer Gentleman. The reason why I pay attention to Beijing Xiaolei ALEX is that he has a strong sense of variety and talent, can speak the language of many countries, such foreign Internet celebrities can attract me more, and I will regularly watch their updated videos. Hoth said.
And Maizi prefers to pay attention to foreign bloggers on Douyin, her favorite Italian Bernie, "from her single to now married and have children, almost every video has been watched." MaiZi said, "The reason for liking her is very simple, the content is interesting, the appearance can be played, the personality is real, and it is much more interesting than those foreign Internet celebrities who only know how to shout China 666." ”
For the increasing number of foreign bloggers in China and the increasingly fierce competition, He Jianhong, a partner of the Chris team of foreigners, told Burning Finance that in the content field, whether Chinese bloggers or foreign bloggers, seriously think about their positioning and the value they can bring to the audience, and do a good job in every output is the king, and it is the "shortcut" to respond to changes without change. "Among foreign bloggers, we are not the first to start, but now we have achieved a very high position in the overseas vertical category, which also reflects the audience's recognition of us and the feasibility of this idea." He Jianhong said.
Source / Courtesy of respondent
He Jianhong told Burning Finance that nowadays, more and more foreigners who are interested in China and Chinese have become bloggers, and they hope to further understand Chinese culture, communicate with Chinese audiences, and better understand the Chinese market. "China is growing fast, and it's particularly dynamic in the digital space, and there are a lot of new models and content on social media, so foreign bloggers have more opportunities to record and express their stories through new forms such as short videos and live broadcasts, and even get some benefits." He Jianhong said.
Users in China are still willing to pay for "praising China", provided that there is careful content. Shouting "patriotic" can harvest traffic in a short period of time, but it is unsustainable. If foreign influencers want to survive in China for a long time, they must force themselves to adapt to the content rules of the platform and the content preferences of Chinese netizens.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="135" > the business driver behind foreigners</h1>
Many foreigners who are popular in China have commercialization promoters, some will choose to cooperate with Chinese teams or partners to operate, and some will directly sign contracts with China's MCN institutions.
Burning Finance learned that the current operation team of the foreigner Chris account is run by Chris and He Jianhong, Chris is mainly responsible for content production, and He Jianhong is responsible for handling external cooperation matters, while providing strategic support.
"Overall, we have received fewer cooperation, although we will increase some revenue through advertising and other forms, but we will choose brands that match our positioning." He Jianhong said. At present, the two have not signed up to the MCN agency's plan for the time being.
Figure / Douyin Burn Finance Screenshot
Heidi, founder and CEO of GlobalBook, a global internet celebrity platform, told Burning Finance that some foreign Internet celebrities in China, especially those who know More about China, tend to operate their own accounts, but those who want to monetize will generally choose to sign MCN institutions.
"At present, some MCN institutions in China emphasize carrying goods, but this model is relatively immature overseas. Coupled with the fact that some foreign Internet celebrities have a strong sense of self, in such a situation, there are some foreign Internet celebrities who insist on creating their own videos. Heidi said.
Domestic MCN institutions will not miss these "fat meat" with their own traffic passwords. Many MCN institutions began to actively dig up YouTube celebrities overseas, introducing foreign mature bloggers into The country, these celebrities have a certain fan base overseas, with their own traffic, content creation capabilities, can continue to output, on these basis, MCN institutions do a good job in content reprocessing and localization, it is easier to recreate a blockbuster IP than local incubation.
Victoria, a foreign internet celebrity blogger on Douyin, told Burning Finance that his Douyin account "Victoria couple" chose to sign an MCN agency in China from the beginning.
Burning Finance learned that Victoria from Russia studied Chinese during her university years and came to Beijing in 2011. Because he has participated in the recording of some programs such as "Love Defense War" and has also appeared on CCTV-4 and other CCTV programs, Victoria has a certain degree of popularity in China, and the quarrel between Victoria and her husband is loved by Chinese audiences. As a result, Victoria was discovered and contracted by a Chinese MCN agency.
Victoria told Burning Finance that although she loves Chinese culture, she is still inaccurate about some of the terriers that have been circulating in China for a long time. Cooperation with institutions, on the one hand, can make themselves better grasp the laughter of Chinese fans, on the other hand, they can also better realize, and there is a certain improvement in revenue.
Victoria recalled that she began shooting her first short video in March 2019, and the following month, Victoria released a short video of "my husband doesn't let me send this video, he said it was too humiliating" on Douyin, and the account's fans quickly rose from a few thousand to 1 million. Victoria said that in the process of cooperating with the first Chinese MCN agency, it has always been the two sides to find materials and stems together, and then screen, until the subject matter that both sides think is OK will be filmed. However, because the scale of this institution was small, there were some problems in the later operation, so it stopped cooperating and stopped its account for a month.
Recently, Victoria signed a contract with Worry-free Media, but the previous stop has a certain loss to fans, and now she is also exploring new short video directions with Worry-free Media, hoping to show better content to fans. "But now there are more and more people shooting short videos, and it's getting harder and harder to find creative content." Victoria added.
Heidi pointed out that the MCN agency and the influencer are actually a two-way choice. For MCN agencies, in addition to looking at whether the influencer has accumulated a certain number of fans in the home country, it also depends on the activity and quality of its comments. Heidi stressed that bloggers with smaller cultural differences, such as fitness bloggers, food doctors, and fashion bloggers, will be more popular. For foreign Internet celebrities who have just stepped into China or have recently accepted Chinese culture, choosing a MCN institution that suits them is like choosing a school, which is very important for the development of the future Internet celebrity career.
These foreign Internet celebrities who have crossed the ocean and come to China to pan for gold can already feel that China is no longer a market that can make a lot of money by shouting a few words of "I love China", and how to truly establish an emotional bond with local users and continue to export real high-quality content is the problem that foreigners who develop in China really need to think about. After all, creators of any nationality must respect the laws of the market.
bibliography:
"Crooked Nut" KOL is quietly entering the 2.0 era" Blue Whale Muddy Waters
"The Happy Life of "Foreign Internet Celebrities" in China" Chinese Entrepreneur Magazine
"Crooked Seminar: How does MCN Company that studies "crooked nuts" break the wall of cultural dimensions? | Startups" Moving Point Technology
*The title image is from "Informal Talks". In the text, Wang Guangliang, Xiao Hong, Huo Si, and Mai Zi are pseudonyms
*Disclaimer: In no event shall the information herein or the opinions expressed herein constitute investment advice to any person.