Wen 丨 a little financial editorial department, author 丨 Bo Dongmei, editor 丨 Wang Jing
During the Spring and Autumn Period, Confucius, who had been inspired by King Zhao of Chu, was besieged by Chen Cai's army in the middle of the road, because he was afraid that the Chu state would become stronger after receiving his help. Confucius, who was famous among the princes, became a red man at that time by traveling to various countries.
In the next two thousand years, the birth of printing, the discovery of radio waves, the rise of television, the birth of the Internet, generation after generation of celebrities no longer need to travel thousands of miles to become famous, text, sound, video instead of and pieced together them.
On September 20, 1987, an email with the content "Over the Great Wall, we can reach every corner of the world" was sent from China to Germany, and the Internet unveiled the mystery; on April 20, 1994, the 64K network channel with the international 64K network was opened, and China officially connected to the Internet. Like a tsunami, the Internet swept through China.
Faster, more complete and more direct ways of disseminating make it easier to become an influencer. From Han Han and Sister Furong to Zhang Dayi and Papi Sauce, to Wei Ya, Li Jiaqi, Simba, blogs, microblogs, short videos, and live broadcasts have suddenly risen and gone, but they have always been there, and more and more gold diggers.
1. The birth of an "idol"
On February 4, 2010, Han Han, who was planning to test a "hey" issue, posted a "Hello" on Sina Weibo, which triggered nearly 10,000 comments.
In fact, it is not new that Han Han has attracted so much attention. In 2003, a diary serialized in "Blog China" by "Mu Zimei" was reprinted in Xici Hutong and became popular all over the Internet, "What is a blog" became one of the most popular keywords in major search engines in 2004, and In 2005, Han Han began to write blogs and gained countless fans on the Internet.
At this time, a "hello" word still shocked many people, some people called it "the power of the Internet", some people said that this is the effect of "idol". Originally in the era of newspapers and magazines, the voices of a wave of people were amplified and gathered through the Internet, and eventually condensed into a force.
Of course, apart from newspapers and magazines, the Internet will also have its own "idols".
The first to tear open this veil, in fact, in the eyes of many viewers, they are more like "circus clowns", is their own poor life of the blind recipe for fun, the lower body of the writing Muzimei is, famous for their personal words and deeds of "Sister Furong", "Sister Feng" is also - "people bite dogs is not news, dogs bite people are news", human nature is so, on the Internet is no exception.
But there is no doubt that these early influencers have already tasted the "idol" dividend for the first time. In the year that Han Han came to Weibo, "Sister Furong" starred in her first film "A Side B Side", playing with Chen Xiaodong and Zhang Jingchu, who were popular at the time. The bold "FengJie" frequently appears in TV shows and talent show activities, with stomach medicine endorsement, the appearance fee of 300,000 yuan is comparable to that of second-tier stars.
This year is the second year of Sina Weibo's establishment. The birth of Weibo makes it difficult for netizens to be recorded in the forum era, and the words and deeds that are followed are fixed to an account, and every word and deed on this account, laughter and anger can be directly linked to this person, and a person can have his own Internet personality presentation almost completely.
Han Han, "Mu Zimei", "Sister Furong", etc. have all taken root on Weibo, and a new generation of Internet celebrities such as Zhang Dayi and Sydney has also been born here. Compared with the previous generation, they are no longer the ones who are "watching", and those who follow them have become "fans", buying what they use under the motivation of imitation and recognizing what they push. Under the fan effect, Internet celebrities are moving towards "idols" and the Internet celebrity economy.
Papi Sauce, which came out in 2015 with a short video, became the person who most concentrated on interpreting the "Internet celebrity economy". In 2016, Papi Sauce received an investment of 12 million yuan, and for the first time, the capital boldly showed its expectations for Internet celebrities. Since then, she has endorsed, sold goods, advertised, appeared on variety shows, made movies, and done everything that "idols" could do.
From text and pictures to videos and live broadcasts, the "viewer" seems to be getting closer and closer to their "viewing" objects, so close that the subject and the guest are reversed, and the farther away they are. The Internet celebrities who appeared in magazines, red carpets, press conferences, and variety shows are now guests, distinguished guests, and idols. The "gold-sucking era" and "golden age" of Internet celebrities have officially arrived!
2, when e-commerce meets Internet celebrities
In 2010, the year that Internet celebrities began to rise on Weibo, there was another force that was also nurturing.
That year, the iPhone 4 was released, WIFI began to be laid on a large scale in China, and China officially entered the era of smart phones. At that time, the number of Chinese netizens was 457 million, the scale of mobile phone netizens was 303 million, the annual growth of online shopping users was 48.6%, which was the fastest growing application of users, and economic activities began to enter the Internet more and more (data from the China Internet Network Information Center).
Taobao, Paipai, Baidu have ah... At that time, e-commerce was booming, when Taobao registered users reached 370 million, B2C business transaction volume increased 4 times in 2010, the peak of single-day transaction volume exceeded the single-day volume of social consumer goods retail in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and countless people wanted to dig for gold in this blue ocean that was still expanding rapidly.
Sydney and Zhang Dayi are one of them, and their life trajectories eventually intersect on Taobao and Weibo.
In 2011, Sydney, then a junior, opened a Taobao shop selling clothes, and at first the sales were mediocre, in order to attract fans, she came to Weibo. Zhang Dayi's path is the opposite, she registered for Weibo in 2010, began to be a model for Taobao store Li Beilin in 2011, and in 2014, she began to open a store with Li Beilin's boss Feng Min.
When Internet celebrities and e-commerce meet, the two achieve the effect of one plus one is greater than two: the identity of Internet celebrities allows them to condense traffic, and e-commerce makes these flows have a "home". In 2013, Alibaba took a stake in Sina Weibo, paving the way for e-commerce-influencers and accelerating the deep binding of Chinese influencers and e-commerce.
At the Taobao Seller Conference in March 2016, Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang repeatedly mentioned "Internet celebrities" in his speech, emphasizing that "in the end, Internet celebrities have a Taobao store, and they all hope to carry fans in this store, forming a second return visit and the sale of future products or future sharing."
At that time, the scale of China's Internet users had reached 688 million, mobile phone netizens reached 620 million (CNNIC data), the second half of the mobile Internet arrived, the traffic dividend disappeared, difficult to obtain customers, high cost of customer acquisition and other problems plagued countless industries, including e-commerce. Internet celebrities with their own traffic have become the only choice for e-commerce cooperation.
This year's Double Eleven, Zhang Dayi's "My Joyful Wardrobe" operating income exceeded 200 million, becoming the first women's clothing store on Taobao to sell more than 100 million. At this year's Taobao Live Broadcast Festival, Zhang Dayi drove a turnover of 20 million yuan in two hours, which made people see the miracle of e-commerce live e-commerce.
Those who see miracles also have vibrato and kuaishou. It was also in 2016 that Douyin was launched, and the number of users of Kuaishou reached 400 million without any promotion, becoming the largest video social platform in China. They quickly suffered from traffic troubles and turned to e-commerce for monetization channels.
In 2019, Wei Ya, Li Jiaqi, Simba began to appear frequently in the online world, behind whether it is an e-commerce platform or a short video platform, the starting point is whether it is selling goods or live broadcasting, and finally they have come to live streaming with goods, the best media form (live broadcast) and the best monetization form (e-commerce) combined, a new storm has come!
In 2021, the storm settled. Sydney and Via have been informed of tax evasion, banned, and brought goods, which is the highlight of the Internet celebrity world, and finally ushered in the trial of law and society, and this industry that has developed for several years but is disorderly has finally bid farewell to barbaric growth and moved towards standardization.
3. The capital paradox of the booming business
The second half of 2021 is the year of disputes in the Internet celebrity industry.
From the emergence of Chu chu in July, the official start of the "lawsuit" between Li Ziqi and Wei Nian in October, to the preferential war between Wei Ya, Li Jiaqi and L'Oréal in November, and then to the tax inspection and ban of Sydney and Wei Ya in December, the Internet celebrities who are active in people's words will show their various contradictions to the world and become a new round of talk.
From a person to a team operation, to the platform promotion, the brand side favors, the Internet celebrity gradually developed from a silk into a spider web, this web captured many "prey", including the Internet celebrity himself, MCN, platform, brand owners, capital, etc. At the same time, they are also gold diggers and beneficiaries in the gold mine of the internet celebrity economy. Among them, MCN was born entirely from Internet celebrities.
MCN (Multi-Channel Network) is actually an "imported product", which first appeared in the United States in 2009, a group of YouTube channel owners formed a content alliance, drained each other, and then gained the support of more channel owners, giving birth to the earliest batch of MCNs. In 2012, YouTube launched the MCN support policy, and the advertising revenue was shared with MCN and Influencers.
The earliest batch of MCNs in China was almost also born around 2011 and 2012, when Weibo, WeChat, etc. just started, and a group of people saw opportunities from them. For example, Zhang Dayi's Ruhan, Qingteng culture, which is active in Station B, Gumai Jiahe, who incubates short videos, and dayu networks that experience Weibo and WeChat are still active in Douyin and Kuaishou.
McN's next peak was around 2016, the bee colony culture that was regarded by Weibo as one of the most influential humor institutions in 2021, Li Jiaqi's beauty one, the worry-free media active in Douyin, Papi sauce's Papitube, and the onion video that hatched the office ono, all of which were founded during this period - when live broadcasting was on fire, capital favored Internet celebrities, and it rose rapidly.
McN's third peak is 2019 so far, e-commerce live broadcast is on fire, B station, jitter fast to accelerate commercialization, some old MCN in strengthening the core competitiveness, such as Dayu network settled in Kuaishou is to watch the "Sanda brother" video, once represented the "big event" Mars culture in 2021 for several consecutive months to win the first MCN content influence of B station.
There are also new MCNs that continue to emerge with new platforms, such as the 101 teacher factory that focuses on education and is established in 2020 to incubate thousands; such as Bumblebee, which was established in April 2020, an MCN organization controlled by the Red Dragonfly Group, which does the live streaming of the company's employees.
For them, the rise of a new channel and a new platform is a threshold, a life and death difficulty, stepping on the last beat, the next may be eliminated. Some MCN practitioners have taken Weibo, WeChat, Xiaohongshu, Weitao, short videos, live broadcasts, etc. as flashpoints, and attributed the reason for their long-term operation to "maintaining close ties with the industry".
As it turns out, there aren't many MCNs that keep on the beat. Taking stock of MCN financing since 2015, of the 74 MCNs that have received investment, 49 have been delisted before the A round, 2 (such as Han Holdings and Feibo Co-creation), 2 have been cancelled, 1 (Starry Sky Wild) has been terminated, and the listed new studio (834630) has applied for termination.
According to data from iiMedia Research, the number of MCN institutions in China will exceed 30,000 in 2021, and the number of MCN institutions is expected to exceed 40,000 in 2022. According to the calculation of 2 of the 74 listed companies, most of the 40,000 MCNs will be eliminated.
The reason behind this is that although Internet celebrities have achieved a leap from social phenomena to economic forms, low replication and high investment make the Internet celebrity economy not so glamorous, although Zhang Dayi sells hundreds of millions of dollars, but the Ruhan Holdings behind her is still delisted after many years of stagnation.
MCN's business model is directly related to the monetization form of Internet celebrities, mainly from advertising and e-commerce, and has light and heavy operations. Light such as Qingteng Wenhua, relying on advertising profits, the first half of 2021 gross profit margin of 33.70%, net profit margin of 10.62%; heavy Ruhan, recently in the light plus code platform, but with the rise in traffic costs, the more Internet celebrities lose more.
ByteDance, which divested from Weinian due to the dispute between Weinian and Li Ziqi, may be able to express the attitude of capital to MCN. Although both influencers and MCNs are on the rise, there is still no answer to who and what successful MCNs are.
4. ATTB that controls the overall situation
In the four corners of the influencer economy, if anyone is fully benefited, it is the platform. In China's Internet world, which mainly relies on advertising and e-commerce for profit, Internet celebrities are the smallest economic carriers, and through thousands of Internet celebrities and MCNs, the platform is expanding and reorganizing its own business landscape.
The first platform to intervene in MCN was Weibo. In 2016, the success of papi sauce detonated short videos, Weibo launched the MCN management system internal test, and cooperated with more than 200 video MCN institutions on short videos; in 2017, in order to activate the platform ecology, Weibo launched 50 vertical MCN cooperation plans and set up a MCN support fund of 3 billion yuan.
Since then, platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, Taobao, Xiaohongshu, and JD.com have introduced their own MCN support policies, hoping to achieve a perfect closed loop of MCN-Net-net-user-business-MCN. For example, douyin, in the third year of its establishment, changed the model of signing contracts directly with celebrities, opened up to MCN, and launched an advertising platform "Star Map" for customers, MCNs and internet celebrities.
Station B and Kuaishou have almost also experienced such an open process. In the early stage of platform development, they wanted to hold the commercial benefits in their own hands, and with the rapid growth of users and customers in both directions, through MCN to achieve two-way collaboration between celebrities and customers, becoming a more economical and efficient model.
Of course, in addition to supporting the development of MCN, platforms will also jump into the market and directly invest in MCN.
In 2016, the U.S. ONE, which later hatched Li Jiaqi, received angel round financing from Lakeside Shannan Capital, which is closely related to Ali - in 2017, Alibaba-associated Weibo joined the A round of financing of U.S. ONE.
An inventory of Ali, Tencent, Weibo, Station B, Douyin, Kuaishou, etc. can be found:
Ali is the earliest betting platform, in 2014 tens of millions of yuan to invest in new sets, in 2016 successively invested in the United States ONE (through the close relationship with Lakeside Shannan Capital), Ruhan, its investment logic in e-commerce;
Weibo investment field is the widest, the sense of smell is the most sensitive, the investment targets are the United States ONE in the field of live e-commerce, the onion video of short videos, the micro-ideas and crooked seminars that are fired overseas;
Tencent has the most layouts, covering tourism, pan-life, games, etc., and has been shrinking in recent years;
ByteDance, although it has started later, but the layout is more positive, and it has begun in 2018;
Bilibili, although it has risen later, but the layout is positive, covering games, pan-life, etc., mainly focusing on games;
Baidu and Kuaishou layout are fewer, especially Kuaishou, which only lays out the game field in 2020.
Internet celebrities are born of platforms, and MCN is also, although the growing Internet celebrities and MCNs are trying to expand omni-channels, such as Li Jiaqi's opening of video accounts and public accounts, trying to get rid of dependence on a single platform and enhance their own right to speak. But there is no doubt that the "gold rush" of the Internet celebrity economy is controlled by A (Ali) T (Tencent) T (ByteDance) B (Bilibili).
5. After frequent contradictions
If you use one word to summarize the Internet celebrity industry in 2021, "contradiction" is the most appropriate.
This is indeed a year of concentrated contradictions: Simba 618 shouts fast hands, is the contradiction between Internet celebrities and platforms; Li Ziqi and Wei Nian are the contradictions between Internet celebrities and MCN; Wei Ya, Li Jiaqi and L'Oréal are the contradictions between Internet celebrities and brand parties; Sydney, Wei Ya and Taxation are the contradictions between the Internet celebrity industry and society.
When the "net red economy" is rumbling and moving at great speed, or because of the millennium proposition of not being able to share wealth and wealth, or because of the "pounding of calculations" under the difficulty of growth, in short, the distribution of benefits makes its discordant interior exposed, such as kidnapped brands, such as the trend of fast-moving thought that has been driven.
As far as live e-commerce is concerned, the significance of the existence of Internet celebrities to brand owners is: First, to endorse brand products with their own personality, shorten the choice chain and trust chain of consumers, which is equivalent to inviting sales + spokespersons; second, as a large channel provider, help brands to concentrate on shipping.
For influencers, the main expectation of brand owners is sales, and in the past few years, many brands have to go to the live broadcast room of big anchors even if they lose money, which is why. For some emerging domestic brands, the big anchor is equivalent to an advertising platform that costs money, and the subsequent brand recognition improvement is the purpose, and Huaxizi, colorkey, etc. are just out of this consideration.
However, with the improvement of new brand awareness, coupled with the rising costs of raw materials, labor and other costs under the pressure of corporate profitability, this logic has not been established, brand owners do not want to be kidnapped by big anchors, Yuze who stopped cooperating with Li Jiaqi in 2020, L'Oréal who fought with Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya in 2021, are all the same. Behind the common reason for the dispute, the "lowest price", is the brand's desire for profits.
Behind the dispute between brands and Internet celebrities, the more thought-provoking question is that under the general trend of Manufacturing in China and upgrading Chinese brands, where is the significance of Internet celebrities with low prices as the core, and whether they have encroached on the space for brand upgrading; whether high-income Internet celebrities are contrary to the low-price logic that drives the development of the live streaming industry; whether low-cost live broadcasting has squeezed the space of other channels...
In the past two years, a series of national actions and the current social public opinion have been reflecting on and making corrections to "fast". 2022 is a critical year for the Internet celebrity industry after the outbreak of contradictions, and the year of decisive battles - it is time to stop and think about how to "slow down" and start again!