Produced by | ERA Super Piece, | Ba Daren
I don't know if you remember that in the list of "2021 Most Growing Chinese New Consumer Brands" released by Dolphin Think Tank, Li Ziqi's sales in 2020 were 1.6 billion, an increase of 300% year-on-year. Fast forward a year, after experiencing turmoil such as suspension and prosecution in the middle, Li Ziqi has not been updated for more than 200 days, and the achievements of the Li Ziqi brand behind it are more concerning.
According to the public news of e-commerce analyst Li Chengdong, the sales of the Li Ziqi brand in 2021 will be 1.8 billion. Regarding this figure, the super single product first asked for verification from the official channel of Micro-Nian, and there was no response before the press release. According to people familiar with the matter, the sales of the Li Ziqi brand reached 3 billion yuan last year. Combining the two, the approximate range of annual sales of 2 billion to 3 billion or 2021 Li Ziqi brand.
Not only did it not decline, but it continued to grow. Based on this range of numbers, there are probably the following hypothetical scenarios:
Hypothesis one: Li Ziqi brand sales in the first half of 2021 hit hard, the second half of the year because of the suspension, sales declined, but the whole year is still higher than 2020;
Hypothesis two: because of the suspension, online sales declined, but offline channels steadily advanced, so the overall growth compared with 2020;
Hypothesis three: The sales of snail powder and lotus powder, the main focus of the Li Ziqi brand, declined, but Wei Nian developed a new SKU to stabilize the situation.
For each hypothesis, some clues can be found. For example, in 2021 Double 11, the sales of plum snail powder have slipped from the first place; from the second half of last year to the present, the fans of the official flagship store of Li Ziqi Tmall have only increased by more than 100,000, and in addition to the familiar snail powder, lotus powder, and chili sauce, similar categories such as Chinese tea have also appeared in the store.
Regardless of the actual situation, as of now, half a year has passed, Weinian has not reported any layoff news, and the Li Ziqi brand has not had any news of business difficulties. The Li Ziqi brand is obviously more resistant than everyone thinks.
01 The Li Ziqi brand is more profitable than many brands you are familiar with
Looking at the branding of Li Ziqi, it has roughly gone through the following five stages of development:
First, the output of high-quality content (continues until the stop);
Second, tag and begin to establish IP cognition;
Third, IP brand development, test the water;
Fourth, do super single products;
Fifth, the development of the whole industrial chain.
In August 2018, the Taobao store under Li Ziqi's IP was officially launched, and according to the report at the time, within 6 days of going online, the sales of 5 products exceeded 10 million. In the following year, more than 1.3 million of 21 products were sold in the store, with a total sales volume of 71 million. The year before, everyone was still fascinated by her video, and the next year, everyone could choose to taste the delicious taste brought by Plum Ziqi.
When talking about Li Ziqi, an investor in the field of consumption mentioned: "Consumption is too important, "people" are too important, whether they occupy the minds of consumers, do you know how to establish a connection with consumers, the difference is very large. Maybe even Li Ziqi herself did not realize that the potential influence of her content creation style is so great, and the content method she shows satisfies so many people's yearning for a better life.
To put it simply, Li Ziqi himself is a super little red book blogger with extremely strengthened content and complete business links. Pure content planting, eating broadcasting and Internet celebrity goods In this model of powerful high-quality content and IP monetization, it is completely crushed fate.
After the first wave of water test sales proved successful, the Li Ziqi brand entered the deep water area, on the one hand, controlling the number of SKUs, and even trying to reduce some excess SKUs, on the other hand, to create their own super products, representing the product is the "plum snail powder" that later caught fire.
Why snail powder?
Because this is a category with very serious product homogenization, the difference in taste is not the core difference between different brands, so it is destined to be a category that relies heavily on the brand, and people who like it can easily say the name of their favorite brand.
And those years happened to be snail powder with the "Tip of the Tongue of China" and was constantly brought by domestic and foreign food and broadcast, and began to go out of the circle. Even in Liuzhou, around 2019, there are less than 10 factories with planned production capacity.
One is a potential Internet celebrity food that eats brands, and the other is a super Internet celebrity with its own sales channels, and both of them also have fireworks. It's so fitting.
This is also in line with the logic of the birth of new consumer goods: focusing on "narrow crowds", content "vertical", based on traffic distribution efficiency, with rapid iteration of product experience, and then quickly support a large enough niche market.
According to relevant reports, since July 2019, the Li Ziqi brand team began to buy the top selling brand snail powder on the market, conducted internal evaluation, and selected Zhongliu Food as a foundry - this piece must be highlighted as a foundry. For this wave of new consumer brands, the value of foundries is too great. Have a name, have a logo, think about a product style, and the rest of the foundry can help with everything, from research and development, warehousing to logistics. In the past, this cycle was about a year, but now it can be completed in three or four months, or even shorter.
With the great improvement of the efficiency of the industrial chain, Li Ziqi only needs to do a good job of dissemination. Soon, in August 2019, the video "I heard that friends who love to eat snail powder are very cute" was officially launched. The hot video directly drives the hot sales of snail powder, and during the peak period, the monthly sales of snail powder in Li Ziqi's flagship store can reach 500,000+. In the "2019 Taobao Foodie Big Data Report", snail powder sold 28.4 million pieces, surpassing spicy strips and grilled cold noodles, becoming the first place in Chinese characteristic snacks. The IP value and brand energy of Li Ziqi have also made Li Ziqi snail powder successfully enter large supermarkets such as Hema Fresh and Century Lianhua, as well as convenience stores such as FamilyMart and Lawson. In 2020, Li Ziqi announced on the spot that he would directly build a factory in Liuzhou.
The business of snail powder is getting bigger and bigger.
This experience was quickly replicated in other categories such as lotus flour, chili sauce, and red oil dough. Judging from Li Ziqi's flagship store of 6.44 million fans, convenient fast food, punching/meal replacement, traditional pastries, condiments/north-south dry goods are the main commercial monetization layouts. At the same time, with the increase of goods, various products with Li Ziqi related trademarks appeared in front of consumers. The IP value of "Li Ziqi" has risen, and in anecdotal terms, as long as you "sell trademarks and sell logos" in the future, you can make a lot of money.
Top-notch Internet celebrities, continuous high-quality content, various channels including their own online stores, their own super products, their own supply chains, and even government support, it is no wonder that the valuation of Hangzhou Weinian can reach 5 billion.
And the great money cheng became confused after the two sides were estranged. This can't help but make people look at the relationship between MCN and Internet celebrities again?
02 MCN and internet celebrities, never mature cooperation
In the cooperation between MCN and Internet celebrities, MCN, on the one hand, can sign Internet celebrities and incubate Internet celebrities, and carry out a certain degree of control and supervision of Internet celebrities, which improves the efficiency of cooperation between Internet celebrities and platforms - in the stage of Weibo looking for high-quality short video creators in that year, in addition to Hangzhou Weinian, Weibo core partners also have 12 papitubes, one article, two more and so on. It can be said that MCN is the key helper of the platform to improve the operational efficiency.
On the other hand, MCN can directly dock with the brand, help the brand out of the cooperation plan, and can also help the Internet celebrity choose the right brand and product, saving a lot of communication costs. Because of the huge demand, a large number of MCNs came into being. According to Clarian data, as of 2020, the number of MCN institutions in China will remain at 20,000+.
But under the appearance of seemingly clear division of labor and thriving, MCN's relationship with Internet celebrities is not solid. The reason is very simple, the vast majority of MCNs are more like intermediaries, and there is no core ability of traditional film and television and music record companies to provide professional training in the early stage, continuous auxiliary production of high-quality content in the medium term, and complete the entire communication in the later stage. This ability is seen as the basis of traditional brokerage contracts, and actors and singers only need to act well and sing well. The lack of content capabilities and the firm control of channel discourse power in the hands of the super platform also make MCN's position more embarrassing.
In the most concerned commercial realization, most of the MCN's larger value body is still only reflected in the business and business docking, and it is already a very head company's operation to open stores, operate IP, do brands, and extend the industrial chain like Hangzhou Weinian. But the sharing of benefits has always been a difficult thing to balance. The bigger the business, the higher the likelihood that both parties will fall behind in business.
Many MCNs are also looking for new solutions, such as starting to use a lot of Internet celebrities to jointly incubate a brand, rather than relying only on a head Internet celebrity, such as establishing a more standardized cooperation method for Internet celebrities hatched from 0 to 1 and Internet celebrities with certain fans and channels, and continuously improving the adaptability of contracts, such as converting mcN positioning, reducing the body, directly transforming from content MCN or e-commerce MCN to service MCN, specifically helping Internet celebrities to get commercial needs. In the film and television industry, it is common and mature rules to allow brokerage companies and brokers to divide money. But after all, Internet celebrities are not stars, and the uncertainty is too great. After the incident, some capitalists pointed out that it is not good for the entire Chinese business environment for Internet celebrities to challenge the business world so much.
This also reminds MCN and Internet celebrities again from one side: only stable cooperation can win long-term benefits. The road of cooperation between the two sides is still far from maturity.
03 Internet celebrities, running themselves, or running a company
In the official introduction of Wei Nian, it has changed from MCN to a new consumer brand company. The main business is the sale of food. And this is the root cause of the contradiction between the two: Li Ziqi hopes to stick to his own content, his own IP, does not want the loss of personality and image, and the company hopes to sell goods and improve and accelerate the commercial link and process.
Therefore, put aside the various bad pools in the Micro Nian Li Ziqi incident. Before becoming a brand, influencers need to answer a question: whether they are running themselves or running a company.
You can use Luo Yonghao as an example, netizens like Luo Yonghao, to believe that what he does is also good. But this path proved to be commercially unworkable. The stronger Lao Luo's own sense of existence, the more distinct the personality, and the more prominent the double-edged sword-like relationship between him and the enterprise.
Perhaps, Internet celebrities can be like a "spokesperson", on time to attend, the mission will be achieved, words and deeds, in line with the corporate image, this strict spirit of contract in the cooperation between the two sides is becoming more and more obvious. In a higher dimension, Internet celebrities should become the role of business operators, and there are trade-offs and gains, which requires Internet celebrities and enterprises to balance and compromise with each other.
Of course, the premise of all these things should be based on more mature cooperation between the two sides.
Less emotional, more commercial rigor and contractual spirit. The brand road of Internet celebrities should be able to go a little smoother.