Wei Ya, the anchor with goods who was rectified for tax evasion, came out with the news of the rebroadcast.
On February 13, some media reported that Wei Ya is seeking a comeback, or will be re-broadcast on Taobao in March this year at the latest, when Wei Ya's store will be restored to Taobao, and the future will still be carried out in the form of live broadcasting, and the account name and fans will not change. The current related article has been deleted.
However, the media received a negative answer when asking both sides for verification.
The news of Wei Ya's comeback is related to the recent live broadcast of an account called "Bee Surprise Society" in the Taobao Live BroadcastIng App, according to media reports, the anchors who started broadcasting under this account are all the supporters who originally appeared in Wei Ya's live broadcast room, which is regarded as a signal that Wei Ya may want to come back.
The general manager of the marketing department of an MCN institution once revealed to the media, "In fact, people in the live broadcasting industry in Hangzhou said so many years ago."
So the question is: is it really possible for Via to replay?
First, the possibility of replay is minimal
Two months ago, after Wei Ya's tax evasion incident, the Inspection Bureau of the Hangzhou Municipal Taxation Bureau pursued Wei Ya's taxes, collected late fees and fined a total of 1.341 billion yuan in accordance with the law, and subsequently, her Taobao store, Weibo, Douyin and other accounts were banned.
The market capitalization list had calculated at the time that the figure of 1.341 billion yuan had set a new record for celebrities and Internet celebrities to be fined taxes: before her, film and television star Fan Bingbing had been fined 884 million yuan in 2018.
Judging from the amount of tax evasion and the severity of the penalties, Via's situation is even more serious.
Let's make a simple comparison: Wei Ya evaded taxes of 643 million yuan, and other underpaid taxes of 0.6 billion yuan, a total of 703 million yuan; the other two anchors Sydney and Lin Shanshan, who were also fined and banned, evaded personal tax taxes of 30.3695 million yuan and 13.1194 million yuan.
From this perspective, the possibility of Via's comeback is minimal.
First, by its very nature, Via's behavior was more serious.
Guotai Junan pointed out in a research report that the live e-commerce at this moment is just like the Taobao Tmall platform in 2008-2012, full of vitality and ready to go.
But at the same time, in the process of rapid development of a nascent industry, it is bound to be accompanied by disorderly and negative factors. For example, the anchors of the live streaming industry have irregular words and deeds, data fraud, counterfeit and shoddy goods, false publicity, etc.
Typical is another super head anchor Simba, who was criticized by public opinion in 2020 for selling fake bird's nest, fined 900,000 yuan, and the Kuaishou account was banned for 60 days.
The difference is that Via and Simba face very different penalties, simba can still be replayed after the lockdown period ended, he returned on March 27 last year, and handed over a record of 2.335 billion sales.
The reason is that the nature of making mistakes is different.
Simba's mistake in the live broadcast selection and other links, there is also the possibility of "the unknown is not guilty", more is a moral problem; Via's mistake has touched the legal red line, the previous notification to Via shows that the tax authorities have repeatedly reminded and urged her to rectify the problem of tax evasion, but the rectification has not been thorough.
The nature of the mistake is different, the punishment is different, and the replay space is different: Simba can still be a "good comrade" as long as he corrects and guarantees that he will not make it again, but Via is difficult.
Second, the punishment of Wei Ya, the greatest significance for the industry is a warning.
Behind Wei Ya's penalty, the live broadcasting industry is ushering in a round of strong supervision, and since September 2021, the live broadcasting industry tax inspection has officially landed.
It was also from then on that the outside world discovered that the original live streaming industry has long become the hardest hit area for tax evasion. At the first time after the notification of Wei Ya's case, Xinhua News Agency and other official media have published articles saying that thousands of anchors have taken the initiative to check and pay taxes.
The tax department has emphasized that the platform economy is a new form of economic development, and in the process of rapid development, the tax violations of some network anchors have disrupted the order of tax collection and management and undermined the market environment of fair competition. The tax department investigates and deals with the tax violations of relevant network anchors in accordance with laws and regulations, which is conducive to the long-term standardized and healthy development of the platform economy.
Therefore, the severe punishment of Wei Ya is actually a regulatory release of the determination to rectify the live streaming industry, and it is also a necessary and necessary stage to guide the industry from disorder to order.
Second, Via's best time has passed
Even under extreme assumptions, Via can replay smoothly, can she return to her previous position?
The answer is likely to be no.
First, from the perspective of the industry, the overall live broadcast e-commerce is developing in the direction of "decentralization", the rise of brand self-broadcasting has accelerated, and the strong voice of the head anchor has begun to be diluted.
On the one hand, the essence of star anchors is a decentralized trust medium, and their advantages, first of all, are higher fan stickiness, followed by strong traffic aggregation capabilities, which constitute their strong voice in the selection and pricing strategies in the past, and these advantages uniformly reflect their strong cargo effect;
On the other hand, star anchors naturally have scarcity and are the carnival of a few brands, while brand self-broadcasting is more popular and belongs to the vast majority of brands.
On this basis, in the future, brand self-broadcasting and star anchor live broadcasting with goods, the probability will maintain a long-term coexistence situation, but the two will inevitably move towards differentiation: merchants self-broadcast to normalization, head net reds will more undertake the role of new product promotion and brand marketing, and may rely on their own huge traffic to do C2M reverse customization of supply-side reform.
This actually brings about the brand in the era of live e-commerce equalization, the equalization of the middle waist and the tail anchor, self-broadcast will be included in the daily store operation, become the general existence of water and electricity, the purpose is to reduce costs and increase efficiency, to achieve sustained business growth, and the head anchor with goods, is the brand to achieve sprint transaction options.
But there is no doubt that in the longer term, it is difficult for star anchors to be as popular as before.
Second, it is difficult for consumers to trust an anchor who has made a big mistake, and key trust has been lost.
Economics regards trust as a product of the game behavior of the two sides of the exchange, and the one-time game pursues short-term interests, which is not conducive to the establishment and maintenance of trust; repetitive games pursue long-term interests and may produce trust.
Obviously, whether it is Li Jiaqi, Wei Ya, or Simba and Luo Yonghao, the trust they have built in the fan base in the past is the result of repetitive games, and as their fans become more and more numerous, this trust relationship will be strengthened and continuously amplified. This is also the core advantage of their difference from the mid-waist anchor.
But once there is a rift in this relationship of trust, it is difficult to repair.
Third, the "lowest price" is no longer the specialty of the head anchor, they have lost a key advantage.
We have seen that since 2021, the contradiction between the brand side and the head anchor has begun to be frequently exposed. "Low price" is no longer the exclusive use of the head anchor, the head anchor also chose to part ways with the brand because of the lowest price, last year's double eleven, Li Jiaqi and L'Oréal because of the price dispute.
After the Weiya incident, Soochow Securities once commented that the core reason for the head anchor to gather a large amount of traffic is not "excellent content", but "large discounts", in the past, their growth has formed a Matthew effect cycle of "high traffic sales - high bargaining power - from the brand side to a lower discount - more traffic and higher sales".
In other words, the super head anchor is essentially a "discount e-commerce", not a "content e-commerce".
In the long run, when super-head anchors can no longer grasp the higher bargaining power as before, they need to rely on content rather than discounts to attract consumers, which will be a more difficult test.
Third, turning to the backstage may be the best way to retreat
Another more likely way out for Via is to go behind the scenes and continue to play to her past strengths as a live operations trader.
As early as February 2017, Wei Ya and her husband Dong Haifeng decided to incubate their own MCN institutions, and Qianxun Culture was born, with the main businesses including incubation of Internet celebrity anchors, short video content production and delivery, and global content marketing.
Then in 2018, Qianxun was no longer limited to MCN institutions, and began to develop in the direction of collectivization, such as the creation of the Beijing Star Live Broadcast Base and the Hangzhou Super Supply Chain Base.
At present, Qianxun has subsidiaries such as Qianhe, Qianyu, Qianxi, and Qianbo, with a variety of businesses such as content production, marketing, operation, e-commerce, brokerage, IP licensing/copyright, and community/knowledge payment.
In An interview with the media in May last year, Dong Haifeng divided Qianxun into two stages of development:
The first stage is from 2017 to 2019, and the main direction of Qianxun is to lay out anchors, hoping to transfer Wei Ya's experience in growth to more contracted anchors.
The second stage is 2019 so far, Dong Haifeng said, "After we have contacted a large number of brands, we found that the traditional e-commerce operation can no longer bring too much sales to the merchants, and the cost continues to increase, so we want to use our humble search to find whether we can empower the brand side, and help the brand side reduce the pressure of their operation through the overall ability of humility." ”
To put it simply, now Qianxun wants to do two things well: incubate more capable anchors and help brands do a good job in live broadcast operations.
Qianxun Culture has many star anchors such as Lin Yilun, Li Jing, Li Xiang, Qi Wei and so on.
Now, when Wei Ya is likely to be difficult to enter the live broadcast room, the anchor resources signed by Qianxun Culture in the past will become a new business carrier for Qianya, and for Wei Ya, turning to the background may be her best retreat.
A person familiar with the matter has told the media that after Via stopped broadcasting in December last year, her live broadcast team was not disbanded or laid off, and they resumed their work after a week of vacation, and are currently temporarily serving other anchors.
The live broadcast account of the "Bee Surprise Society" that we mentioned at the beginning of the article actually belongs to the subsidiary company of Qianxun Culture.
On February 12, the live broadcast room was first broadcast, with more than 1.07 million users pouring into the live room, and the next day, the number became 2.97 million. Now, the store has close to 700,000 followers.
The two-day 700,000-strong fan rate shows that Via's influence has not completely disappeared, but for Via's "replacements", the biggest challenge they face is whether the traffic attracted by Via's residual heat can stay? When live streaming evolves in the direction of no longer competing for price but content, how can they remain competitive?
This is also a problem that the culture of humility must face up to.
Like the channel changes driven by every traffic dividend change, the competitiveness of the live e-commerce track will also experience the evolution path of traffic dividend - refined operation - supply chain efficiency.
In this evolutionary process, the brands that are sensitive to changes in traffic measurement and the fastest response will enjoy the first wave of dividends, and the head influencers will incubate a number of "talent brands", but in the long run, operational efficiency and supply chain efficiency will determine the length of life of the brand.
The same is true for humility. In the past, Via enjoyed the first wave of dividends from the rapid rise of live e-commerce, and now, can she and the humble search behind her eat the longer-term dividends of this industry? The possibilities are still there, but the road is clearly more difficult than simply streaming with goods.
IV. Conclusion
In an interview in 2021, Dong Haifeng once mentioned that Qianxun should do the hydropower and coal of the live broadcasting industry, and he also said bluntly, "Wait until the day, if Wei Ya can't live broadcast for various reasons, Qianxun is still a sustainable development enterprise." ”
He probably didn't expect that it wouldn't be long before Via would really be able to livestream, and in the most undignified way.
The good news is that when the most iconic figures in an industry, at an extremely heavy price, become a key turning point in the development of the regulated industry, then this awakening is enough to shock the deaf:
Don't be overly greedy, don't challenge the rules, and don't challenge the memory of the Internet.