Dad's evaluation is suspected of overturning, Zealer layoffs and unpaid wages, and in the month before 315, the evaluation industry has had a very uneven life.
Dad's evaluation, who is still immersed in the joy of the hundred UP masters, may not think that a winning lawsuit judgment has become the fuse of his "suspected overturning".
In early February, Dad's evaluation sued Xiaohonghua Evaluation for infringement of the right to reputation, and the judgment showed that Xiaohonghua Evaluation was suspected of commercial defamation in the live broadcast of Xiaohonghua Evaluation, and was fined 100,000 yuan; but the judgment also wrote: The court held that "there is a basis for the false publicity of many products of Xiaohonghua Evaluation's father's evaluation, which is stated by Xiaohonghua Evaluation, and the court believes that it has a basis and does not constitute commercial slander".
The news quickly set off a hot discussion in the industry. Just a few days later, Zealer, which was one of the three major digital evaluations in China, was exposed by former employees on Weibo to lay off employees and wage arrears, and the former Zealer at this time was already a leader wang Ziru, who had already jumped to Gree for several months.
In less than a week, two unquestionable head review bloggers have fallen into controversy, which also reflects the chaos of the current evaluation industry, if you extend the timeline a little longer, it is not difficult to find that in the past year, review bloggers have not less "rollover accidents".
In the past, there were many consumers who used evaluation as a reference for purchasing products, but it seemed that it was an enviable industry to always experience various products. In the blink of an eye, the situation has taken a sharp turn for the worse, and people seem to stop believing in assessments.
Why is the assessment industry so controversial, and can it regain the trust of users? We try to analyze the current assessment industry from the following questions:
1. How has the assessment developed in recent years, and what problems have been exposed in the process?
2. What are the ways for review bloggers to maintain operations and achieve profitability?
3. What room for improvement is there in the controversial evaluation industry?
The original intention and choice of assessment
"This is the 27-inch iMac from late 2009, purchased from Hong Kong. Since it was the first time to do an out-of-box video, and I had little experience in doing video editing, I was a bit stretched. Thank you for your understanding. ”
On March 14, 2010, a Youku account called TechMessager uploaded its first video, and under the logo at the beginning of the video, a line of gray small characters was particularly conspicuous - to make China's own technology reviews. Behind this account is the former Zealer who has now jumped to Gree.
Wang Ziru's first out-of-the-box video Image/Network
At that time, Wang Ziru was still an ordinary medical company employee who made a living in Hong Kong, and the previous job of selling insurance was fired from the company because he could not complete the KPI, and the monthly salary of more than 10,000 yuan was deducted two-thirds of the rent alone.
But the love of digital technology makes Wang Ziru still insist on unboxing evaluation after work. In 2010 alone, Wang Ziru updated more than 100 videos, an average of one every three days.
This year, also regarded as the first year of personal evaluation, in addition to Wang Ziru, today's YouTube technology channel "a brother" Unbox Therapy, well-known in the Apple user circle, Weibus, have uploaded their first video in this year.
At that time, whether it was YouTube, Youku or B station, there was no creator income today, and manufacturers had not yet noticed this new field, and the most important factor supporting these review bloggers was nothing more than love for products.
However, this kind of early relatively pure assessment was quickly subverted by the influx of followers and the inevitable pressure of survival.
In 2012, the WeChat public platform was launched, marking the full advent of the self-media era, and the threshold for personal evaluation bloggers was further lowered. The emergence of competitors also marks that review bloggers are beginning to face more severe survival pressure.
Under such pressure, some review bloggers announced a short-term shutdown and looked for a more suitable profit model; some review bloggers began to accept investment from manufacturers. Although the investment-taking bloggers said that their independence and objectivity would not be affected, this also laid the groundwork for the first "collapse" of the evaluation industry.
In August 2014, due to the controversy over the evaluation of the Hammer mobile phone T1, the influential Hammer Technology CEO Luo Yonghao and Zealer's Wang Ziru engaged in a video debate.
Luo Yonghao Wang freely debated Photo/Youku
In the debate, although Luo Yonghao repeatedly interrupted Wang Ziru's statement without grace, he also made public the key issue that Wang Ziru accepted investment from as many as four manufacturers and was difficult to guarantee an "independent and objective third party". Luo Yonghao also said many times that Wang Ziru is not an industry insider and does not know enough about the industry, and Wang Ziru has admitted his lack of professionalism and professional knowledge several times.
This debate was a lose-lose situation, but it exposed two major problems with the evaluation of bloggers at that time: one was that the choice to accept investment under the pressure of survival was extremely narrow, and neutrality was difficult to guarantee. The second is that most of the assessment bloggers are only outsiders, and their knowledge and professionalism are ultimately limited.
After the debate, direct investment in review bloggers has all but disappeared, while the lack of expertise has been further amplified by the rise of new platforms in recent years.
Dad's evaluation of the recent suspected overturning is not unrelated to the limitations of his professional knowledge. In 2015, with the disclosure of the highly toxic ingredients of children's book covers on the market, Wei Dad, a former product testing and chemical toxicology evaluator of the Quarantine Bureau, became a trusted evaluation blogger for many Bao Mom fans under the name of "Dad Review".
At first, dad's products were limited to children's use, but soon, dad's review expanded to include daily necessities, electrical appliances, digital products, drinks, food, and even medicines, almost everything.
Although Father Wei himself has experience in product testing, he is ultimately unable to know all categories and be omnipotent.
Under a power bank evaluation before Dad's review, some professionals pointed out that their evaluation of the false capacity standard was wrong, and misplaced the spot welding schematic; the previous sunscreen review was also questioned by a beauty KOL, using PMMA boards and ultraviolet probes when "operating amateurishly".
Beauty KOL questions dad's evaluation of professionalism Picture/Zhihu @Roll Fu Sauce
The professionalism of highly known assessment bloggers is still the same, and the professionalism of a group of individual assessment bloggers born with the rise of short videos and grass planting platforms is even more predictable.
In addition, the subjective preferences of the review bloggers also affect the attitude towards the product in the evaluation videos.
Wang Bo, who has been paying attention to digital evaluation for many years, told me that earlier review bloggers, such as Zealer, Love Technology, will generally be more tolerant of Apple's product evaluation; and some review bloggers have their own preferences for Huawei/Xiaomi brands, and they will amplify the shortcomings of the other party's products in the evaluation and strictly criticize.
The evaluation of technological items such as digital products, at least there are relatively recognized evaluation standards such as running scores, and the evaluation of cosmetics, clothing and other products, there is almost no unified evaluation standard.
At the same time, as more and more people enter the field of assessment, the pressure to survive for assessment bloggers has not diminished in the slightest. Because only the head institution is expected to be favored by investment, accept product testing, and evaluate according to the requirements of manufacturers, it has become an optional path for many evaluation bloggers.
The quick money and helplessness of "just the right meal"
Accepting the product sent by the manufacturer, and then releasing the evaluation video according to the manufacturer's guidelines, or implanting the product in the video, this behavior is called "just rice" by digital evaluation viewers such as Wang Bo.
"If you see a digital review blogger who sent a video on the day the product was just released or the manufacturer's media unblocking time, then he must have taken the machine sent by the manufacturer, which is a more typical meal." Wang Bo told me.
Jioupai watched a number of different review blogger videos and asked several viewers to find that with the popularity of review videos, similar "just meal" behavior has long been deeply rooted in the evaluation of different industries, and is the most mainstream profit model for current review bloggers.
For example, one of the top 100 UP masters of last year's B station first looked at the review, and when the Glory Magic4 Pro was released on the evening of March 17, the first review of the phone was released, and the phone was still in the pre-sale process.
In the video, the first review spends a lot of time describing the advantages of the phone's high-frequency PWM dimming screen, while the lack of description of the phone is relatively small.
Last year, one of the top 100 UP masters of the B station, "Teacher Hello My Name Is He Classmate", became famous with the 5G evaluation video in 2019, and in the newly released self-aiming lighting video, He Student carried out implanted promotion of Coworth's X1 sweeping machine; in the Previously discussed He Classmate AirDesk video, the implanted promotion product was the Lege Lifting Table.
In cosmetics evaluation videos, manufacturers mostly present them in the form of personal recommendations and red and black lists.
The form of personal recommendation is relatively ordinary, and review bloggers often start from their own experience, describe the color or good efficacy of the product, and attract fans to buy.
Some kind of grass platform sunscreen red and black list parity pie screenshot
Liang Lu, who often browses a certain grass platform, told me that last summer, she brushed the sunscreen red and black list released by two different review bloggers on the platform, two of which were on the red list of blogger A, but they were on the black list of blogger B. In this case, it is basically certain that at least one blogger has accepted the promotion fee.
In the field of car evaluation, car critics have become the mainstream cognition of the car circle.
In an article titled "Guide to The Training of Car Critics", the author dissected in detail the hidden derogatory meanings of words such as "atmospheric appearance", "good spatial expansion", and "novices can easily drive", and in the car reviews we have seen, these words have long become high-frequency words.
So, why has "just rice" become the most important way for evaluators to make money?
Chen Yu runs a channel based on digital unboxing evaluation, and the number of people in the company is only five. He told me that if you do not accept the manufacturer's release, the purchase cost of a flagship mobile phone will range from 4,000-8,000 yuan, and the cost of buying a machine alone will inevitably exceed 100,000 yuan a year. And that's not counting products like headphones, tablets, watches, and the monthly wages paid to employees.
However, if you accept the test from the manufacturer and release the evaluation video according to the evaluation guide, Chen Yu's studio can not only save the cost of purchasing products by itself, but also get cooperation income ranging from 30,000 to 100,000 yuan.
This is only Chen Yu's small-scale studio offer, according to the previous evaluation price circulating on the Internet, as the domestic head digital evaluation agency, Zealer has Wang Ziru appeared in the first phase of the evaluation, charging up to 800,000.
In addition, many domestic digital products have media unbanned time, often on the night of the press conference, the first batch of media evaluation will send out evaluation videos, seizing the hottest and most profitable wave of traffic.
If you wait until the product is officially released, self-procurement and then go through the entire evaluation process, it has been about half a month since the first batch of evaluation videos were issued, and the number of views and comments of the evaluation videos sent at that time is likely to be far less than that of the first batch.
Review bloggers value the traffic of the first review, and even if there is only a one-day gap, the traffic has a huge difference. In September last year, Apple's iPhone 13 series divided a number of B station review UP masters into two batches to release the first round of experience videos, and the second batch of HotGuys and other review UP masters expressed strong dissatisfaction with this.
The iPhone 13 was unblocked on September 21 last year, and self-purchases need to wait until October
In the current fierce competition in the evaluation industry, the cost of bloggers to purchase products and shooting costs is huge, but it is difficult to match the benefits obtained by only relying on their own videos; and the products are in the hands of manufacturers, in order to obtain the most valuable first wave of traffic, cooperation with manufacturers "just rice" has almost become the only way.
However, in addition to "just the right meal", there are also a few review bloggers who choose to take a different path.
In the field of digital products, a personal review UP owner with 930,000 fans chose to purchase mobile phone reviews on his own, and his main way to make a profit was to open a Taobao store to sell mobile phone cases, films and other peripheral accessories. In addition, there are also review bloggers who choose to open digital product recycling businesses or run their own online mobile phone stores.
In the field of car reviews, in recent years, many automotive media platforms have intended to attract head evaluation bloggers to cooperate in the form of exclusive ownership within the cycle. For example, the well-known "No. 38 Evaluation Center" in China announced in 2019 that it had a 48-hour exclusive video cooperation with The Car Emperor, and announced that the Car Evaluation Center had achieved profitability through this.
No. 38 car review and understand the car emperor to achieve profitability
However, when I asked Chen Yu about the feasibility of these two cases, Chen Yu said that to make a profit through the accessories, it is necessary to have a relatively large fan base to support, and small studios like him not only have urgent needs to monetize, even if they sell accessories, there may not be too many fans to pay.
And platforms like No. 38 sign up are "the most powerful in the evaluation of the treatment", like them, evaluation bloggers, it is difficult to have such an opportunity, it is impossible to expect this to make a profit.
The assessment wants to get rid of the controversy and can't
Although the "just meal" evaluation has become the mainstream now, for Wang Bo, he still retains "limited faith" in the evaluation blogger.
On the one hand, as a digital enthusiast, he himself has a certain degree of recognition ability, not to be completely "taken away", on the other hand, even if it is a video, there is still a part of valuable information and content.
Chen Yu told me that according to most of the evaluation bloggers he knows, in the cha-rice video, it will not "reverse black and white", but will mainly state the advantages according to the requirements of the manufacturer, and the shortcomings will not occupy too long, but "definitely will still mention some", in this piece, the requirements of each manufacturer are not the same.
Wang Bo also told me that there are also some digital review UP masters, which will put secret codes in the introduction of the review, such as "HotGuys" video will add "No proper meal in this issue" at the end of the introduction; "First look at the review" has previously set up a "sneak peek" category for the cha rice video, and the videos under this category are all just food videos.
Some review bloggers will mark the inappropriate food code picture /Hotguys B station
However, these are people with a certain degree of discernment, based on the information they know and the expertise to make judgments.
What we cannot deny is that when a consumer who does not understand, but intends to refer to information to assist in the choice, sees a video cloaked in evaluation, only talking about the advantages of the product, just like reading the parameters, there is still a great probability of being misled, and even impulsive consumption.
Therefore, even if you choose to accept the "just meal" put by manufacturers in order to survive, and want to continue to develop for a long time, today's evaluation should further explore the space of "evolution".
"Just rice" may not be the root cause of the evaluation being questioned, "careless rice", "food that flaunts its independence and objectivity" and "lack of effective information" are the root causes of fans' loss of patience.
In order to continue to develop, first of all, review bloggers need to balance the quantity and quality of the "just rice" ads and the non-advertising categories of self-evaluation videos, to ensure valuable information output, and long-term single "just rice" reviews are bound to consume the patience of fans.
Secondly, it is to pay attention to the fun and creativity of the "just meal" evaluation, just like the situation presented by the advertisement, the hard and soft wide are not pleasing, but the creative advertising can make people marvel, and the same is true for the evaluation.
Third, the more perfect the image, the greater the shock when it collapses. Review bloggers still need to maintain the honesty of fans in the "right meal" and "wrong meal" reviews, and it is best not to carry out unrealistic self-promotion and flaunting.
After all, for review bloggers, monetization and survival are actually just as important things as maintaining a bond of trust between fans.
Write at the end
The idealized assessment industry may look like Consumer Reports magazine. Founded in 1936, this evaluation agency does not accept shareholders' shares or any type of advertising.
Today, Consumer Reports has about 8 million subscribers and is a symbol of the credibility of third-party assessments.
Consumer Reports Magazine Photo/Web
However, the annual price of the Consumer Report subscription is $59, or about 375 yuan, which is a slightly high price that may be difficult to get nearly 10 million orders of support in China.
For a variety of reasons, the evaluation industry we have seen has become less idealistic and more realistic, and consumers' trust in evaluation has also begun to be eroded.
Where there are products, there will be evaluations, people are destined to continue to buy products, and the demand for evaluations is destined to be exuberant. The frequent "evaluation overturning" incident is just another manifestation of people's pursuit of better and more valuable evaluation.
From this point of view, the assessment bloggers under the controversy want to complete their self-innovation and transformation, which seems to be helpless and wavering.
Resources:
1. The History of Zealer's Development: The Moon and Sixpence of the King, Two Wild Men;
2. "From "Rejection" to "Congratulations", Bloggers Find a New Posture for Just Meals", TopKlout Crowley;
3. "One hand "pulling grass", the other hand "just rice", evaluating the blogger's final game, the probability is to overturn? Tiger Howl Business Review.
*In the text, Wang Bo, Liang Lu, and Chen Yu are pseudonyms