Wen 丨 Zero State LT (ID: LingTai_LT), Author 丨 An You, Editor 丨 Hu Zhanjia
From June 2021 to the present, the well-known short video account "Li Ziqi" has been suspended for more than half a year. Behind this, the discussion about Li Ziqi's IP creator, Li Jiajia, and the investor wei nian behind it has been continuing.
During the period, Li Ziqi's series of products are still selling, and Li Jiajia is no longer "low-key", attending Weibo Reds Day, participating in offline activities, and accepting interviews. As one of the most concerned IPs in the short video era, Li Ziqi has grown into an international IP with sustained influence, and behind this, the public knows more about Li Jiajia's own contribution to IP.
But it is true that the manufacture and explosion of an IP, in addition to Li Jiajia herself, the operation, content support and commercial exploration of the micro-idea team behind it will be ignored at most moments. In fact, according to zero-state LT (ID: LingTai_LT) learned from informed sources, whether it is the initial exploration of overseas channel operations such as YouTube, the promotion of Li Ziqi overseas, or the later creation of the "Li Ziqi" food brand, the role of the pusher behind the micro-idea is difficult to ignore.
Under the new wave of consumption, practitioners of various platforms have changed from a simple red model and e-commerce model to a new model of integration of people and goods brands. Moving from celebrity IP to branding is the development direction of most celebrity teams. After the breakup, Li Jiajia and Wei Nian, who can go further?
01, from the content to the brand, who created Li Ziqi
At the end of 2019, a hot question appeared on Zhihu - is Li Ziqi, who exploded on YouTube, a cultural output? In thousands of answers, many people cited overseas users' praise for Li Ziqi's video, proving that Li Ziqi is a good cultural output.
In August 2016, Wei Nian signed a contract with Li Jiajia, at that time, Li Ziqi had 300,000 Meipai fans and more than 9,000 Weibo fans, far from the current influence. At that time, the short video industry was just emerging, and the MCN system was not perfect. Li Jiajia also mentioned in Weibo that in order to be able to reach cooperation, Liu Tongming, the founder of Weinian, came to Sichuan from Hangzhou, which has a later story.
In the past three years, Li Jiajia and Wei Nian have made the IP "Li Ziqi" famous overseas from China and become an important symbol of cultural output.
In terms of content, Li Jiajia's videos have gradually expanded from simple pastoral life and food records to discovering and disseminating traditional Chinese culture, and the quality of short videos has steadily improved. And micro-thoughts, configuration of personnel, do video to do related traffic delivery, do powder, do IP positioning, etc.; industry insiders revealed that the annual frame of micro-ideas and platforms is at the level of tens of millions; at the same time, it is responsible for the operation and promotion of Various platforms at home and abroad such as Li Ziqi, including YouTube, which also makes this IP frequently searched, and offline activities are also exposed in large quantities, and the circle is really broken.
▲ Picture: Plum Qiqi Liuzhou snail lion powder has become a hit
However, from the perspective of the development trend of today's Internet celebrity IP, the monetization of short video content is not a continuous strategy. A micro-idea investor said to zero-state LT (ID: LingTai_LT) that because of the different regional policies, Li Ziqi's account income is not as described by outside netizens as having tens of millions of yuan per year, and Micro-idea has also refused to directly bring goods, brand advertising and other commercial behaviors, the actual revenue is not much, more to protect the purity of Li Ziqi's video content.
As we all know, if an IP wants to maintain its popularity and continue to be active in front of the public, in addition to increasing content innovation, it also needs to find opportunities and tracks with long-term development value. This is the role that WeIan has assumed in the development process of Li Ziqi IP, and it is also one of the core reasons why the two sides have opened a joint venture company and cooperation model before.
"For an IP to continue to grow, it must evolve into a brand." An MCN practitioner tells zero-state LT (ID: LingTai_LT) in this way. After 2018, under the tide of new domestic consumption, the Li Ziqi food brand positioned, built and operated by Wei Nian has grown and gone out of the circle rapidly.
Taking the snail powder category as an example, Wei Nian accurately entered the snail powder track in 2019, with the rise of the home economy after the epidemic, "snail powder" and other speed foods have become popular products among young people, and there are dozens of brands selling hot every day in the Taobao live broadcast room. Li Ziqi brand snail powder also rode on the east wind of "home economy" and quickly entered the public vision.
In the process of operating the screw powder brand, On the one hand, Wei Nian cooperated with Liuzhou officials to build its own factory from upstream and obtain stable channels and suppliers. On the one hand, strengthen investment in e-commerce channels, and feed back the influence of Li Ziqi's IP through product exposure, such as with the help of exposure in the head anchor live broadcast room, and long-term promotion between the live broadcast of small and medium-sized anchors, so that more audiences know Li Ziqi IP, and also make Li Ziqi brand snail powder quickly stand out in a number of competitors.
Zhuang Shuai, the founder of Bailian Consulting and an e-commerce analyst, believes that the positioning of the Li Ziqi brand by Weinian is successful, and the commercialization is also restrained, because the brand's SKU is relatively small, and it is not to take the "wide casting net" route, but to see which categories have potential and concentrate on doing a small number of fine products. This may be one of the reasons why it can make a blockbuster in a relatively short period of time.
"It is reasonable to say that relying on the influence of Li Ziqi's gastronomic IP, Weinian can do many categories of attempts, or directly find OEM, and then focus on brand packaging, but Weinian obviously has more ideas, to create a supply chain, to do brand e-commerce closed-loop." Zhuang Shuai thinks.
Although the e-commerce business is developing rapidly at the same time, the contradiction between Li Jiajia's own team Ziqi culture and the trading company Wei Nian has escalated. However, according to the above-mentioned investors, Wei Nian was divided in half according to the advertising and e-commerce revenue agreed between the two parties at the beginning of its establishment, and was separately accounted for according to the Li Ziqi brand income project, plus advertising revenue, accumulatively distributed to Li Ziqi about 40 million yuan. At that time, Wei Nian lost 100 million yuan.
In the field of new consumption, whether explosive cases can be copied is also one of the core criteria for measuring commercial value and enterprise capabilities. According to e-commerce platform data, in addition to snail powder products, Li Ziqi brand of osmanthus nut lotus powder, sea duck mayonnaise, Guizhou bad hot sauce, peach steamed rice cake, fruit quinoa crisp and other 30 different categories of products, have good sales and popularity. Among them, there are many successful continuations of the first sales of e-commerce sub-categories.
02, away from Li Ziqi IP, who can go further
At present, the dispute between Li Jiajia and Wei Nian is still ongoing. And Weinian investors revealed that Weinian gave Li Jiajia several plans, shares, money, or rights and interests superimposed, as she chooses. However, Li Jiajia did not accept the proposed plan, and never put forward his own demands, unilaterally absent from this cooperative communication.
Before the dust settles, Li Jiajia and Wei Nian, after leaving Li Ziqi's IP, what are left of the two?
A more embarrassing situation is that it is precisely because the early Li Ziqi IP was not commercialized, away from the advertising revenue and the income of the Li Ziqi brand, Li Jiajia's own commercialization ability has not been confirmed.
According to a number of media reports, there have been many MCNs that focus on live e-commerce have contacted Li Jiajia and look forward to creating a celebrity with both content and anchor characteristics. This is inseparable from the general trend of the industry, from Taobao to Douyin, Kuaishou, and now to the B station and Xiaohongshu, Internet celebrities have begun to take the route of live streaming with goods.
But not everyone can become Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi. It's not easy to hatch a successful streamer. For celebrities, it is difficult for fans to directly convert into consumers. Although Douyin and Kuaishou are constantly cultivating red anchors, there has not yet been the next Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi.
More veteran or new food celebrities stay in the implantation of goods for other brands, such as Mizijun; or personally eat the broadcast goods, with the help of MCN to transform into anchors, such as Xin Xuan's "Cat Sister", Douyin's new anchor "Zhang Xixi" and so on. There are also some Internet celebrities who have completed the transformation from creativity to billion-level anchors with goods, such as the Guangdong couple brought out by Worry-free Media and a series of anchors brought out by the Xinxuan platform.
▲Li Jiaqi in the selection (Photo: Li Jiaqi Weibo)
Different from the intuitive data embodiment of celebrities undertaking commercial endorsements and e-commerce anchors carrying goods, Li Jiajia's personal business monetization ability still needs to be considered. Some time ago, Zhang students on the same track refused to sign a 20 million contract, and were questioned about self-directing and self-acting to inflate prices. How much the commercial endorsement value of the Internet celebrity IP and how much Li Jiajia's endorsement fee is still need time to witness. In addition, out of the micro-thoughts, if Li Jiajia wants to operate the brand, she must rebuild the business team, which is full of difficulties. If you directly do OEM products or outsource related businesses such as product research and development, supply chain, product selection, live broadcasting, logistics and warehousing, you may face similar commercial disputes in the later stage, and even more, there is no word of mouth.
The reasons behind this are not difficult to analyze, the market has long separated IP and individuals. Li Jiaqi also said in an interview that the three words "Li Jiaqi" do not belong to me now. It's not that I don't have the right to use it, but this name seems to belong to many people: it belongs to the United States ONE, it also belongs to all the small partners in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, and it belongs to all the girls. From the individual to the IP, a name represents not a single individual, but the result of the dual role of personal traffic and the professional team behind it.
As the trader behind "Li Ziqi", Wei Nian has demonstrated the ability to build a "culture + consumption" brand, the ability to select products, copy explosive products, and the determination of long-term brandism through the operation of the Li Ziqi brand, and has been recognized by the market in sales lists and business analysis. That is to say, in the process of operating the "Li Ziqi" brand, Wei Nian has explored a more mature consumer brand development model.
The above-mentioned micro-idea investors believe that the market now pays more attention to MCN institutions not to monetize advertising brought by content, but to start from content and build new brands. In his view, if Weinian loses the IP of Li Ziqi, the worst result will be to tear it down and start over, incubate one or more brands, and take the development path of conventional consumer brands. "But it can be believed that the ability of micro-thoughts can also continue to incubate mature celebrities and anchors."
03, lizi and face, break the strength of new consumption
In the current crowded and rapidly iterating new consumer market, IP has long been unable to guarantee the growth of brands. In the new era of consumption, what the industry is really calling for is high-quality brands, breaking the wall of brands and consumers, and achieving long-term development.
As far as food is concerned, there are many stars and celebrities entering the game. Even before the explosion of Douyin and live e-commerce, celebrities or celebrities who appeared in the same era as Li Ziqi began to build their own brands. For example, Huang Lei's "Huang Xiao Chef", Lin Yilun's "Rice Master", and the brands created by food bloggers NishiJi and Ridian. However, the market response of these brands is flat, and they can only rely on fans and live e-commerce to maintain sales, and have not broken the circle.
In the past two years, foods like plum snail powder, such as zi hi pot, a wide dough skin, Xuan Ma egg yolk puff pastry and other successful brands, most of them have been deeply rooted in the industry for many years, with the following characteristics - from the source and supply chain force, constantly push explosive products, high reputation. Similarly, most of the anchors who have become popular in the era of live e-commerce have e-commerce genes. For example, Sydney opened her own shop to sell women's clothing when she was in college, and Li Jiaqi used to work in a cosmetics company.
▲Li Ziqi brand series
Now the new consumer brands called by the industry have long been rid of the "face" as the emphasis, and have begun to build the "Lizi" of e-commerce, growing from a red traffic brand to a long-term high-quality brand.
E-commerce analyst Li Chengdong believes that MCN institutions have evolved from the earliest simple signing, live broadcasting, and streaming to a more complex reds + e-commerce model, either with their own supply chains, or individuals actively building supply chains to achieve the integration of people and goods. On this basis, we must also build our own brand. Such as Li Jiaqi's "Neva Family" and so on.
Li Chengdong revealed that behind the super IP Li Ziqi, Weinian has formed a team of more than 500 people, including product research and development, channels, supply chain quality control, new media operations, etc., and each part of the complete chain, Weinian can provide a full set of services.
From the perspective of the industry, the value of a Li Ziqi brand is much higher than that of other anchors and celebrity teams. No matter how mature the IP, it is increasingly needed platform-based, mature traders and teams, which has increasingly become the key to advancing to the core players of the market.
End
At present, the red people and the traders behind them are complementary to the development of an IP.
How to better ensure the growth and commercial operation of an IP and exert the maximum value of IP is what all practitioners should think about. Under the general trend of live e-commerce and new consumption, the industry needs brands with comprehensive capabilities, and it also needs a platform that constantly incubates and discovers new people. When Li Jiajia and Wei Nian parted ways, it was self-evident who could hatch the next Li Ziqi.