How can the "top stream" ice pier conquer the world? The reasons behind this are not simple

The ice pier was completely on fire.

Recently, with the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the mascot ice pier stood on the wind outlet, becoming a "top stream": related products are sold online for seconds, and there are often long queues in front of the offline Winter Olympic franchise stores, many customers are even willing to queue up in the cold wind for several hours in order to buy the ice pier, even the Prince of Monaco wants to bring back two ice piers for his twin children, and topics such as "how to have an exclusive ice pier" frequently dominate the hot search list, and its popularity can be seen.

Why does everyone love ice piers? What is the meaning behind it?

1

The reason why the ice pier can fire out of the circle is first of all due to its ingenious image design.

As we all know, the giant panda as a national treasure of the mainland, its humble image has long been famous in the world, and the mascots of previous major events are almost indispensable to the figure of the giant panda, from the mascot of the 1990 Beijing Asian Games "Panpan" to one of the mascots of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games "Jingjing", each giant panda has left a very deep impression on the world.

The "ice pier" that came out of nowhere this time has once again brought people a refreshing feeling.

The shape of the head shell of the ice pier is taken from the ice and snow sports helmet, decorated with a colorful halo, and its design is inspired by the National Speed Skating Hall "Ice Ribbon" of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the flowing bright color lines symbolize the track of ice and snow sports; the heart-shaped pattern of the left palm represents China's warm welcome to friends from all over the world, coupled with the image of the giant panda, with the energy-rich ice crystal shell, a strong sense of futurism, the sense of the times and the sense of speed are overwhelming, which is really cute and eye-catching, unforgettable.

However, the popularity of the ice pier is not only because of its shape, but also because its many designs highlight the connotation of Chinese culture.

According to the introduction of Cao Xue, head of the ice pier design team, "the ice pier wears an ice shell and has an ice ribbon on the face, which everyone thinks is very good-looking, in fact, there are basic laws behind the beauty of the form, and the important law is 'contrast and unity'." "Careful observation can be found that the contrast between black and white, hard and soft, transparent and opaque in the visual of the ice pier highlights the unique beauty of yin and yang harmony in traditional Chinese culture; in terms of meaning, it resembles the overall image of an astronaut, allowing the panda to jump out of the silly and cute monistic image and become full of science and technology."

It can be seen that the design of the ice pier is not simply stacked with Chinese elements or rigid sets of traditional cultural symbols, but in a more modern and popular way, the traditional Chinese characteristics are integrated with modern scientific and technological elements and ice and snow sports characteristics, telling the Chinese story to the world, three-dimensional and rich. This not only fully demonstrates the new look of modern China, but also perfectly fits with the Olympic spirit; coupled with the meek and easy-going giant panda itself has the beautiful meaning of kindness, unity, peace, mutual assistance and harmonious coexistence between man and nature, on the occasion of the world-renowned Beijing Winter Olympics, the ice pier is favored by everyone and becomes inevitable.

Further, behind the explosion of the ice pier is the prosperity of the "new national tide" and the increasing economic strength and cultural self-confidence of the Chinese people.

With the rapid development of the mainland's economy and society, in recent years, the "new national tide" consumption is becoming a new favorite of the market, the market share of domestic mobile phones, domestic sportswear, domestic cosmetics and other products has gradually risen, and a number of local brands such as Li Ning and ANTA have risen phenomenon-level. The ice pier, which integrates many Chinese cultural elements, can also be regarded as another vivid sample of the "new national tide".

The reasons for the increase in the popularity of the "new national tide" are manifold: First, the strength of local brands in the mainland continues to increase, and great progress has been made in design and development, profit model, overall quality, etc., and has been more and more recognized by the Chinese people; second, young consumers represented by the "Z generation" have increasingly become the main force in the consumer market, and their special growth experience has made them have strong patriotic enthusiasm and national self-confidence; third, the experience of the whole country uniting to fight the epidemic has greatly strengthened the cohesion of the Chinese people and the sense of national identity. As a result, it is also more advocating the purchase of domestic products.

Of course, the "new national tide" represented by the ice pier can become popular, and the root cause lies in the confidence and confidence of the mainland's rapid development. It can be seen that not only the ice piers, more and more "Made in China" have begun to be recognized and sought after overseas, and the energy contained in the "national tide" is blooming day by day, telling the world about China's traditional culture and showing the self-confidence and style of a big country, but also conveying the harmonious concept of friendship and peace, sharing and integration with the world, which is obviously more exciting than the best-selling products.

2

It is worth noting that the explosion of the ice pier also heralds the arrival of a new outlet, that is, virtual IP.

For a long time in the past, affected by multiple factors, a wave of star chasing and star-making has been set off in China, and new synonyms such as "traffic stars", "Internet celebrities" and "fan culture" have emerged in an endless stream, and live idols firmly occupy the position of "top stream". However, in the past two years, more and more star artists have exposed various negative news, superimposed on the country's rectification of the chaos in the entertainment industry, the phenomenon of idol "collapsed houses" has appeared frequently, and many brands have suffered huge losses as a result, and the once hot traffic stars seem to have become uncontrollable risks.

However, for virtual IP, because it is a virtually constructed character image, the appearance and human settings can be customized on demand, so there is basically no risk of "collapsing". According to a study by the Head Leopard Research Institute, 62.6% of users in 2021 like virtual idols because they will never have negative news and will always be in perfect condition.

Because of this, more and more companies have begun to actively layout virtual IP, such as Hatsune Mirai, Luo Tianyi, A-Soul and other virtual idols are more and more popular with the majority of users; at the same time, traditional industries have also begun to try to develop virtual IP marketing, such as McDonald's, Asus, Li Ning, L'Oréal, Huaxizi and other companies have launched their own brand image, with the help of VR, AR and other technologies, "dimensional wall breaking" has gradually become a new marketing means; in addition, relying on the popularity of the fan economy, More and more virtual IP appears in scenarios such as live streaming with goods, New Year's Eve parties, and advertising endorsements, and has achieved quite desirable results.

The ice pier of the mascot of the Beijing Winter Olympics is naturally another successful case of virtual IP.

At present, vigorously developing the digital economy has become a national strategy, and with the maturity of digital technology and the enrichment of various application scenarios, the market demand for virtual IP is continuing to increase, and the entire industry still has a large room for growth. According to the data of Ai Media Consulting, the core scale of the mainland virtual IP core industry will reach 6.22 billion yuan in 2021, driving the industrial scale to exceed 100 billion; the qubit report points out that it is expected that by 2030, the scale of the mainland virtual IP market will exceed 270 billion yuan.

As far as the mainland is concerned, although the traditional culture has a long history, classical masterpieces and many characters in it, there are not many that appear as virtual IP and have lasting vitality. In addition, although the mainland animation industry has developed rapidly in recent years, and new virtual IP represented by Happy Goat, Pig Man, etc. have emerged, compared with Europe, the United States, Japan and other countries, the mainland's virtual IP industry is still in the early stage of development and needs to be further improved.

How should the virtual IP industry develop in the future? The experience from Disney may give us some ideas.

Disney is Hollywood's giant film industry, but also the world-famous IP incubation factory, over the years has been creating a steady stream of enduring animated film works and IP images, can be described as a textbook example. The reason why Disney has been so successful is mainly due to the following three competitive advantages:

The first is outstanding IP content production capabilities.

This is the foundation of the IP industry chain, if you can't launch excellent IP, everything will be impossible to talk about. To this end, Disney not only focuses on improving its own IP originality and production capabilities, but also continues to gather various IP resources, and even spends a lot of money to acquire well-known IP giants such as Pixar, Marvel, and Lucas. Relying on its outstanding production capabilities and strong resource reserves, Disney has accumulated the IP of dozens of classic anime such as The Lion King, Snow White, Frozen, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Finding Nemo, etc., laying a solid foundation for the development of the industry.

The second is a mature and complete industrial chain.

Disney is not satisfied with the production of IP content, but further monetizes and penetrates IP in the broader derivatives market. Specifically, Disney not only firmly grasps the copyright of the film, but also has a quite mature and complete industrial chain, covering online and offline, making full use of the influence of IP image, attracting people to choose from various channels and consumer goods around them, thus transforming intangible IP into tangible wealth.

The third is the three-dimensional diversification of derivatives operations.

Usually, after the film works are broadcast, Disney will immediately carry out a series of activities to cooperate, including the promotion of film and television soundtracks, the performance of stage plays, the construction of related projects in theme parks, and so on. For example, the theme song of "Frozen", "LET IT GO", was made into more than 20 language versions for promotion, and eventually won the Oscar; "The Lion King" was made into a musical, touring all over the world... These practices not only further consolidate the status and vividness of THE IP image in the hearts of consumers, give the relevant virtual characters a more lasting vitality, but also greatly enhance the commercial value of IP and its derivatives.

All of the above are worth our reference and reference.

Having said that, the explosion of the ice pier allows us to appreciate the huge potential of the domestic cultural virtual IP again, but it is obviously far from enough to rely on only one ice pier. Only by continuing to dig out more high-quality IP in other fields and giving a more complete operating system can we truly support the growth of the mainland virtual IP industry and even the entire digital economy, and can we better convey Chinese culture to the world and tell the Chinese story.

Looking forward to more "ice piers" in the future!

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This article was originally created by "Suning Financial Research Institute", and the author is Fu Yifu, a senior researcher of Xingtu Financial Research Institute