During the live broadcast of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, JD.com distributed a total of 1.5 billion yuan worth of red envelopes and physical objects. According to official data, from the beginning of the Spring Festival Gala to 23:00, the cumulative number of interactions between Chinese people around the world participating in the Jingdong App red envelope reached 52.3 billion times.
Author | Zhang Chao Edited | Luo Lijuan
In the familiar melody of "Unforgettable Tonight", the 2022 CCTV Spring Festival Gala has come to an end.
Once upon a time, Chinese habit was to Chinese New Year's Eve the whole family around the table, watching the Spring Festival Gala while eating; now, the Spring Festival Gala has gradually become the BGM of Chinese New Year's Eve Night, and more people have focused on one thing - grabbing red envelopes.
It is reported that during the live broadcast of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala this year, Jingdong distributed a total of 1.5 billion yuan worth of red envelopes and physical objects, inviting the whole people to interact. According to official data, from the beginning of the Spring Festival Gala of the Year of the Tiger on CCTV to 23:00, the cumulative number of interactions between Chinese people around the world participating in the Jingdong App red envelope reached 52.3 billion times.
During the Spring Festival Gala, based on more than 70 data centers across the country, based on more than 70 data centers across the country, based on the world's leading nearly 3 million containers, more than 10 million accounting power resources, through the rapid scheduling of second-level resources, the hybrid multi-cloud operating system cloud ship successfully challenged the world's largest traffic peak.
Unlike the previous Spring Festival Gala red envelope interaction, which was only carried out during the live broadcast of the evening, this year's online feast will continue until the Lantern Festival, during which consumers can divide the red envelopes, in kind and other rewards through the Jingdong platform, and live a full year.
This is also the first time that JD.com has appeared in the CCTV Spring Festival Gala as an "exclusive interactive partner".
From the official announcement partner CCTV program group to the Chinese New Year's Eve activity online, it is only 27 days. According to JD.com insiders, in these 27 days, the entire behind-the-scenes team is like riding a roller coaster, experiencing excitement, anxiety, anticipation and nervousness. On the one hand, they are facing unprecedented technical and product challenges, and the pressure is very high; on the other hand, the team is naturally excited and proud to have the opportunity to cooperate with the CCTV Spring Festival Gala.
So far, this TV evening with the highest attention in China has gathered the blessings of Tencent, Ali, Baidu, Kuaishou, Douyin, JD.com and other enterprises, and the red envelope pool that stimulates audience interaction is also expanding rapidly.
It is worth noting that this year, even if some platforms do not have the blessing of the Spring Festival Gala, they have also joined the "red envelope war" of the Spring Festival file, launched a variety of interactive programs, the total scale of rewards has exceeded 8 billion yuan, and the "giant showdown" has intensified.
When "grabbing red envelopes" became the standard of the Spring Festival on the platform, another round of industry rolls opened?
1
Excited and anxious preparations
On a Friday in December 2021, Shao Jingping, vice president of JD.com and head of JD.com's retail marketing and commercialization center, was busy preparing for the Chinese New Year Festival.
On this day, he and several core members of the department are located in the "Dongdong Group" (Jingdong internal work group) suddenly received a message: CCTV contacted Jingdong, and Jingdong may have to undertake this year's Spring Festival Gala interactive project.
After seeing the information, Shao Jingping's first reaction was excitement and excitement, after all, he could participate in the Spring Festival Gala project in Jingdong, and such an experience may only be once in a lifetime. Immediately after that, he realized a great sense of oppression and anxiety.
Replaced by: At this time, it is not far from the time when the 2022 CCTV Spring Festival Gala will be officially staged, and both sides have not yet determined cooperation, once it is finally determined that Jingdong will serve as the interactive partner of the Spring Festival Gala, is it too late? Can it be done well? Can the technology and product capabilities keep up? A series of questions came to mind, and the excitement in Shao Jingping's heart was instantly replaced by anxiety. He didn't even have time to wait for the news to finally be confirmed, and he began to think about how to do the project.
For JD.com, the biggest challenge in undertaking the CCTV Spring Festival Gala interactive project comes from the technical level.
According to the data released by CCTV, from 2001 to 2016, the ratings of the Spring Festival Gala remained above 30% every year; from 2017 to 2021, the audience size of the Spring Festival Gala continued to rise, with 1.08 billion, 1.13 billion, 1.17 billion, 1.23 billion and 1.272 billion, respectively.
Even if not all Spring Festival Gala watching users participate in the red envelope interaction, according to the situation of other homes in the past, there will still be hundreds of millions of users involved, which puts forward a lot of requirements for the peak traffic of Jingdong server.
Different from the "618" and "Double 11" two e-commerce promotions, the peak of server operation only appears in the two time periods of the start of the activity and the payment of the final payment, and each time period lasts only half an hour to forty minutes; the CCTV Spring Festival Gala is performed from 20:00 on the Chinese New Year's Eve night to the early morning of the next day, with a duration of about 4.5 hours, during which the red envelope interaction link will be inserted many times.
Chang Liang, senior director of the R&D department of Jingdong cloud infrastructure and head of the IDC basic guarantee of the Spring Festival Gala project, told All-Weather Technology that there were a total of 7 rounds of red envelope interactive oral broadcasting at the Spring Festival Gala this year, which means that the server not only cannot have problems in the past 5 hours, but also has to withstand the impact of 7 rounds of traffic peaks.
Everyone knows that if you take over this job, any flaw in the middle will have an immeasurable impact on JD.com's credibility and corporate image.
In order to confirm and accumulate technical capabilities as soon as possible, he and his team began to contact equipment and resources everywhere, "except for the things that cost money, everyone is ready, (just waiting) a call to start working." ”
At the end of December, Shao Jingping and his team of eight or nine people came to a café near Beijing Guomao and cooperated with the CCTV Spring Festival Gala program team to open the first round of exchanges. During the four-hour period, the two sides communicated in detail on the form of activities, relevant rights and interests, and basically determined the initial cooperation intention.
According to the discussion between the two sides, the interactive activities of this year's Spring Festival Gala red envelopes have identified three innovative points: first, the interactive benefits are no longer limited to cash red packets, but are distributed in the form of red envelopes and good things, with a total value of up to 1.5 billion; second, Jingdong and its sub-businesses, sub-brands, and domestic brands will be exposed in the oral broadcast part, so that the platform and the brand can achieve a win-win situation; third, the number of oral broadcasts exceeds previous years, and it is still retained when the CCTV Spring Festival Gala is rebroadcast.
After that, the two sides communicated many times on the details of the issue, and finally in the last hour of 2021, the cooperation was finalized in the form of words.
2
Coinciding "holding hands"
"What impressed me the most was that when I went to the main desk for the first time, the two sides talked about a lot of content, from direction and planning to interactive forms and implementation, but they did not involve costs." Recalling the first time he communicated with CCTV about the interaction of the Spring Festival Gala in person, Shao Jingping still remembers it vividly.
According to the normal negotiation process, the two parties will basically first reach a consensus on the cost level, because in the absence of talking about the cost, many details of the cooperation cannot be pushed forward.
Because of this, in Shao Jingping's view, the CCTV Spring Festival Gala interactive project does not seem to be competitive, there is no pressure on the communication between the two sides, and the design of the content of the event coincides, "The goal of both sides is very consistent, that is, I hope to provide a wonderful evening party for the audience, so that everyone can enjoy the New Year's flavor and have fun on the Chinese New Year's Eve night." ”
Some people attributed the opportunity to host the CCTV Spring Festival Gala interaction to Jingdong, which was simply summarized as "feng shui rotation", after all, Tencent, Ali, ByteDance and Kuaishou have all partnered with the Spring Festival Gala program group before, how should it be Jingdong's turn.
But in fact, it is not uncommon for dachang to cooperate with the CCTV Spring Festival Gala for many consecutive times, and the Ali Department has cooperated with the Spring Festival Gala in 2016-2018.
Compared with the financial strength and comprehensive strength of the enterprise, perhaps the corporate image and social reputation are the key to influencing the selection of partners for the CCTV Spring Festival Gala.
Taking 2021 as an example, CCTV officially announced Pinduoduo as the exclusive red envelope interactive partner of the Spring Festival Gala of the Year of the Ox as early as September 2020, but in early 2021, the latter frequently appeared on Weibo hot searches and was plagued by negative news, and finally had to stop cooperation with CCTV Spring Festival Gala and withdraw from the project.
In the past year, Tencent and Ali have been punished for violations, and Douyin and Kuaishou are also in a sensitive position because of their live broadcast business.
As for the choice of Jingdong, at the press conference of the official announcement of cooperation, Peng Jianming, member of the editorial board of the Central Radio and Television Corporation and general manager of the general manager's office, said that Jingdong Group, as a well-known domestic enterprise, has developed well in retail, logistics, science and technology, health and other fields in recent years, providing support for economic development and consumption upgrading. At the same time, as a cooperative enterprise of the "Brand Power Project" of the General Station, Jingdong has long been committed to promoting the transformation of Chinese products into Chinese brands, helping to build a brand power and serving the people's better life.
CCTV officially announced that JD.com is the exclusive interactive partner of the 2022 Spring Festival Gala
In fact, based on the judgment of the general environment, Jingdong also has a "premonition" of this.
Since May last year, the company has begun a series of preparations around the Spring Festival Gala activities, and set up an internal "X project", with Xu Lei, president of Jingdong Group, as the number one, and Xin Lijun, vice president of Jingdong Group and CEO of Jingdong Retail, as the second place, and the two took the lead in grasping the project.
Usually, JD.com's activities are divided into S-class, A-level, and B-level, and the importance is reduced in turn; the X-level is a more important existence than the S-level, and this project is also the only X-level project in 2021.
At that time, the team specially designed product models under the pretext of preparing for the "531 Event", including big promotion red envelopes, drumming interaction, brand shopping coupons, etc. Although the internal members communicated that they were preparing for the "531 event", shao Jingping and several core team members knew that this was to prepare for project X, "in case we are given more than a month to go to the Spring Festival Gala, the product model of project X must be on top."
It is not difficult to find that the interactive model of the Spring Festival Gala of the Year of the Tiger is the same as the "531 Activity" product model, but it is more detailed in terms of content.
"For us to undertake the Spring Festival Gala interaction, this is a real big test, which is to gather the strength of the entire JD Group, integrate the business sectors of various sub-groups such as retail, technology, and logistics, and invest fully." Shao Jingping said.
It is understood that for the interactive project of the Spring Festival Gala, Jingdong Group has given the greatest attention. Not only liu Qiangdong has repeatedly stressed that all business sectors of the group should attach great importance to and go all out, but also set up a special work guidance group, headed by Xu Lei, president of Jingdong Group, Xin Lijun, CEO of Jingdong Retail, as deputy leader, shao Jingping and Lin Chen, vice president of Jingdong Group and head of the platform business center of Jingdong Retail Group, as secretary general. In addition, 9 working groups have been set up, including the activity group, the investment group, the research and development group, and the support group.
If there are some external coincidences in the "hand-in-hand" between JD.com and CCTV Spring Festival Gala, then the settings of interactive content between the two sides are really coincident.
Shao Jingping told All-Weather Technology that whether it is sponsoring or distributing red envelopes at the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, the amount of funds involved is very large; Jingdong, as a new type of real economy enterprise, the actual profit margin is not large, and it is very challenging to undertake such a large-scale event. If the way of distributing shopping red envelopes + good goods welfare is adopted, so that users can go to Jingdong to shop and experience Jingdong services, in order to give full play to the advantages of enterprises; at the same time, Jingdong hopes to unite more brands, merchants, small and medium-sized enterprises and other partners to join hands on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala, so that more domestic brands can get exposure opportunities, so as to maximize the value of resources.
Unexpectedly, in the first exchange and communication, these important changes proposed by Jingdong were immediately supported by CCTV. After all, at present, the state is vigorously advocating the revitalization of the real economy, and shopping red envelopes are more likely to stimulate consumption than cash red envelopes.
According to the estimate that more than 200 million users may participate in the interaction of the Spring Festival Gala red packets, if each person is divided to an average of 3-5 yuan, plus some people receive higher-value products, Jingdong will eventually set the total value of the Spring Festival Gala benefits at 1.5 billion yuan, and distribute them in the form of red envelopes and good things. Among them, the red envelope welfare is divided into Jingdong no threshold shopping red packet, brand no threshold shopping red packet, etc.; good goods welfare is in the form of physical coupons, that is, consumers only need to pay 1 cent to redeem the special rights and interests of the physical prize.
3
Fully upgraded red envelope war
With the footsteps of the Spring Festival approaching, many Internet companies have opened a crazy "throwing money" model.
When "grabbing red packets" became the standard of the platform, each company launched a fierce competition on the amount of activities, the red envelope gameplay and the activity cycle, and there was a great tendency not to give up until it took the first.
On January 19, the main venue of the Kuaishou Spring Festival event was officially launched. It is reported that on the basis of the map level and the collection card, Kuaishou's red envelope play this year has added innovative ways to reverse the mobile phone to get red packets, play a jump mini game to get red packets, and guard the old money. Users can share 2.2 billion red envelopes on the day of Chinese New Year's Eve by participating in various fun activities from the launch of the event, an increase of 100 million yuan over last year.
Alipay followed suit and launched the Five Blessings Chinese New Year's Eve Night Red Packet Contest. This year, the way users collect Fu cards is more complicated, in addition to the traditional ways of AR sweeping fu, ant forest, ant manor, but also increased the shake, write fu characters, life channels and other access channels. At 10:18 p.m. on the 29th of the New Year, Alipay divided a total of 500 million red envelopes.
Douyin's Spring Festival activities this year are themed "Warm Chinese Year", which lasts from January 24 to February 6; during which users can divide 2 billion yuan of red envelopes by completing activities such as Collecting New Year's Flavor Cards and participating in red envelope rain in 8 clients such as Douyin, Today's Toutiao, and Watermelon Video, and at the same time, Douyin also launched the Spring Festival movie viewing benefits, and users can receive up to 100 yuan of movie benefits in the Douyin Movie Ticket Hall.
As bold as last year, Baidu held the "Good Luck China Year" reunion red envelope event from January 22 and lasted until January 31 Chinese New Year's Eve night. Users can participate in card collection activities to divide the prize pool of 100 million yuan, and can also win jewelry and cash by forming teams to receive red envelopes and play games. It is reported that the total amount of red envelopes in Baidu's event is as high as 2.2 billion.
According to incomplete statistics, the total amount of red envelopes issued by jd.com, Kuaishou, Alipay, Douyin and Baidu during the Spring Festival in 2022 alone reached 8.4 billion yuan, which exceeded iQiyi's revenue in the first quarter of 2021 (about 8 billion yuan).
Behind the crazy money throwing on the platform, in the final analysis, it stems from the extreme desire of the giants for traffic. No one wants to let go of the golden period of the Spring Festival, and even more does not want to let go of the "top stream" of the Spring Festival Gala.
In 2015, WeChat cooperated with CCTV Spring Festival Gala to not only make the "Shake a Shake" red envelope interactive project a Chinese New Year's Eve night phenomenon, but also attracted users to bind 200 million bank cards during the Spring Festival; in comparison, Alipay accumulated 200 million users, which took up to 8 years. This classic counterattack is also known in the industry as the "Pearl Harbor sneak attack".
In 2018, through cooperation with the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, Taobao harvested 15 times more traffic than the 2017 Tmall Double Eleven event, and even crashed the Taobao server at one point.
The traffic influence of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala has been repeatedly verified, and it is difficult for enterprises to be unmoved and unimpressed. However, after the peak, whether the platform can withstand this wave of traffic dividends is a big test.
Baidu has fallen on the issue of user retention at the Spring Festival Gala. QuestMobile released the 2019 Spring Festival report shows that on the night of Chinese New Year's Eve (February 4), Baidu App's DAU rushed to 240 million, an increase of 67.3%; but the IFC Research and Innovation Center monitored that the retention rate of Baidu App on February 9 was only 2%.
Image credit: QuestMobile
In the final analysis, red envelopes still have to be combined with the payment, consumption, financial management and other scenarios behind them. Although Baidu has exploded with the help of the Spring Festival Gala instantaneous traffic, the end user directly withdraws cash after binding the identity, bank card and other information, unlike WeChat, which can use red envelopes for daily life consumption payment, thereby expanding its share in the payment market.
Partner Spring Festival Gala launched audience interaction, not a big gamble, win a battle to win the overall situation; but a carnival, after the bright starlight, everything will return to the original point.
As long as the traffic of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala does not fail, the role of promoting the growth of platform users, promoting business achievements and expanding the influence of enterprises in the short term is not a problem. The key is what the platform can leave behind after the carnival.
JD.com, which won the first battle, still has a longer way to go.