「Core Tips」
After the two head anchors of Wei Ya and Sydney overturned, Li Jiaqi, the top anchor of the whole network, suddenly came to the news of "out of Tao". Will the era of top-stream anchors "sucking traffic to make the rivers and lakes" continue?
Author | Zhang Mengyi
Edited by | Liu Yang
Recently, Li Jiaqi's official Mini Program "All Girls Member Service Center" home page launched the selection of good things function, a total of three beauty and skin care products on the shelves, click on the product link can jump to the brand official website, Mini Program purchase. This signal has been interpreted by many people as Li Jiaqi wants to leave Taobao and build an independent e-commerce platform.
In this regard, the head of the US ONE company to which Li Jiaqi belongs publicly responded that the "All Girls" Mini Program is mainly a pure tool application for consumer convenience, but it is only a function that serves the live broadcast room, and there is no other business plan. "Leopard Change" login "All Girls" Mini Program found that the current selection of good things on the home page has disappeared.
As for how much this matter has an impact on Taobao Live, an industry insider believes: "This is more of Li Jiaqi's personal choice, which will not have much impact on the platform, and now 60% of the turnover of Taobao Live depends on store broadcasting." ”
Since Wei Ya and Sydney overturned, Taobao has accelerated the pace of supporting small and medium-sized anchors and store broadcasts, and vigorously recruited talents outside Taobao station to divert them back to Taobao Live. The diversion of traffic by small and medium-sized anchors, coupled with the "de-heading" of the platform, may be the reason why Li Jiaqi has recently taken action in the construction of his own platform.
However, in the eyes of industry insiders, the popularity and traffic of anchors are not the key to building an e-commerce platform, and it is very difficult for Li Jiaqi to create an independent e-commerce platform without Taobao. The excessive traffic label on his body also makes it difficult for him to develop in the direction of building a beauty brand and a beauty group.
In order to strengthen the moat and prevent the risk of overturning, Li Jiaqi on the one hand reduced his daily live broadcast time, on the other hand, he worked intensively to create the "next Li Jiaqi" - Li Jiaqi's broadcasting team and the Naiva family became the IP that the United States one supported.
With Li Jiaqi, Luo Yonghao, Wei Ya and other head anchors fading out of the live broadcast room, the era of head anchors "carrying traffic to make the rivers and lakes" has also come to an end.
1. Taobao's first anchor "out of Tao"?
The mouth denies "out of Tao", but "Leopard Change" noticed that Li Jiaqi's recent actions of bringing goods outside the Tao tie are not many.
It is understood that the "All Girls" Mini Program was officially launched in early 2021, and at the beginning it was a live reminder tool serving fans, supporting new product information, live broadcast previews, point redemption products, shopping strategies, check-in and other functions.
In the past month, the Mini Program has opened its shopping entrance and organized a market every other week to sell discounted goods provided by third-party platforms such as Jingdong Haowu Street and Penguin Ji Box. In addition to exposing and promoting these products on the home page of the Mini Program, they will also be promoted through WeChat public accounts and official fan groups.
Judging from the current indications, Li Jiaqi may want to try social e-commerce.
The "All Girls" Mini Program launched the "TB Order Conversion" function, and consumers can redeem gifts in the Mini Program after filling in the order information in the Taobao live broadcast room. In this way, the Mini Program can accurately depict user preferences and consumption habits, form a user portrait, and thus lead its fans on Taobao to the WeChat ecology.
In addition, the "More Tools" column of the Mini Program has launched the "My Bargain" and "My Puzzle" entrances, which is very similar to the chopping mode of Pinduoduo. However, this feature has not yet been activated.
From the perspective of the shopping function of "all girls", it is still in the preliminary exploration stage, and there are only three products on the line before, which are the same as the price of Lancome and Armani's official mini programs, there is no significant price advantage, and the attraction to fans is limited. It is difficult to predict whether the follow-up will develop towards an independent e-commerce platform or only as a supplement to Taobao live broadcasting.
The "All Girls" Mini Program's curated good things page
As the top anchor of the whole network, Li Jiaqi's ability to carry goods is beyond doubt, but after the anchors such as Wei Ya and Sydney have flipped over one after another, li Jiaqi's number of fans has not seen a significant increase, and Li Jiaqi's traffic in Tao seems to have reached the ceiling. At the same time, Taobao has increased its support for mid-waist anchors, and the situation of head anchors monopolizing traffic is quietly changing.
At the beginning of this year, Taobao released a live broadcast incentive plan to further support the growth of mid-waist and new talents. The plan adds a new cash reward for anchors, new anchors can get a one-time cash incentive when they settle in and complete certain retention tasks, and MCN institutions that introduce new anchors with high quantity and quality can also superimpose annual box rewards.
In addition, the Alibaba-Tmall talent team is recruiting talents from platforms such as Douyin, Station B, and Xiaohongshu to divert them back to Taobao Live. In the future, Taobao will not focus on one or two heads, but will cultivate one or two hundred central, neck, and waist anchors.
Although Li Jiaqi's growth is inseparable from the development of the platform, it is inevitable that there will be a game between the two. Li Jiaqi's move towards independence can avoid being kidnapped by the platform, otherwise, once a conflict of interest occurs, his risk will be great. Bai Yunhu, an expert in the daily chemical industry, said.
On the other hand, brand merchants have increased their self-broadcast channels, and brands such as Huaxizi and Yuze, which used to rely on Li Jiaqi, are trying to "go to Li Jiaqi". Taobao data shows that in 2021, more than 100,000 brand live broadcast rooms on the Taobao live broadcast platform interact with consumers, of which 43 self-broadcast room turnover exceeds 100 million, 510 self-broadcast room turnover exceeds 10 million yuan, Li Jiaqi live broadcast room traffic is being divided by merchants self-broadcast.
Consumers are also getting tired of frequent online shopping festivals, Baidu search shows that in the past three years, the popularity of user search and information reading on "Double Eleven" has dropped from 500% in 2012 to about 18% to 20%.
As early as 2019, when Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya competed for the "first anchor of Taobao", in order to counter Wei Ya's launch of activities such as "one-dollar purchase" and "the lowest price of the whole network", Li Jiaqi increased the publicity of Douyin and Xiaohongshu, through social media circles, and then diverted to the Taobao live broadcast room, it was this move that made Li Jiaqi officially out of the circle and sat firmly in the position of the top anchor and lipstick brother of the whole network.
Since the second half of last year, major anchors have stepped up efforts to establish private domain traffic and expand other channels outside of Taobao live broadcasting. After Sydney's tax evasion was exposed, Chenfan launched the WeChat Mini Program "Lily Warehouse" to sell inventory women's clothing, and its fans flocked to squeeze the Mini Program almost to the paralysis.
The Qianxun team is also stepping up the layout of the vibrato channel, and vigorously supports the vibrato anchors Beibei Rabbit and Qi Wei. Qianxun's "Bee Surprise Club" and "Shiitake Mushrooms Are Coming" live broadcast rooms have also launched a function to pull users into the WeChat group in the WeChat public account.
In fact, Li Jiaqi has always paid great attention to creating private traffic to the WeChat ecosystem, and Leopard Change noted that Li Jiaqi has two WeChat public accounts - Li Jiaqi Autin, Li Jiaqi Austin Fan Welfare Club, in addition to Li Jiaqi has many personal WeChat accounts managed by assistants and hundreds of WeChat groups.
The operation of private domain traffic can strengthen the stickiness and activity of fans and ensure the popularity of live broadcasts. The launch of points redemption gifts on the Mini Program and the attempt to bring goods show that Li Jiaqi is trying to refine operations and try to master more traffic in his own hands.
2. "Traffic intermediary" Li Jiaqi is difficult to transform
Last year's "Double 11", Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room has not seen the "annual lowest price, ultra-low discount". After a long price war, Li Jiaqi is not willing to be just a "human flesh discount machine", blindly consuming his own traffic and popularity.
Tearing off a single traffic label and deepening their own competitive barriers has always been the direction of efforts of anchors with goods. Wei Ya has long begun to lay out the supply chain system, emphasizing her own channel capabilities; after the bird's nest incident, Simba also took supply chain construction and front-end Internet celebrity incubation as the focus of development. But the label on Li Jiaqi is particularly obvious, do not do traffic intermediaries, how will he transform?
The first is to do independent e-commerce, after all, Li Jiaqi has a strong ability to select products, with a large number of fans, itself is equivalent to a super beauty platform. However, in the eyes of industry insiders, it is very difficult for Li Jiaqi to make a platform for self-reliance portals.
Zhang Yi, CEO of Ai Media Consulting, told Leopard Change that Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya were able to succeed because Taobao created a huge traffic pool. Li Jiaqi leaves Taobao, just like a fish leaves the water. In addition, Li Jiaqi also needs to integrate high-quality, cost-effective products through Alibaba. He emphatically said: "On this basis, it is Li Jiaqi's personality. His popularity and fan base are not the key to building an e-commerce platform. ”
Taobao, Jingdong and other platforms have developed so far, has become more and more like department stores, consumers on the platform to use a good search engine on the line. If you leave the big platform, whether the merchant can continue to support Li Jiaqi, give him a large enough preferential policy to ensure a competitive price, and whether the user is willing to trust the new e-commerce platform like Taobao and JD.com, it is still unknown.
Bai Yunhu is also not optimistic about Li Jiaqi as an independent platform, "Li Jiaqi's advantage lies in bringing goods, and the platform needs the ability to integrate resources, including supply chain resources, IT technology innovation, marketing operation capabilities, etc." ”
In addition, whether from the perspective of cost input, timing or comprehensive capabilities, it is not a good time to do e-commerce independent platforms.
Huang Yunteng (pseudonym), an e-commerce industry person, believes that to do e-commerce independent stations, it is necessary to build an invoicing system, an order system, a financial system, a payment and settlement system, and a chat system. After the system is built, it is necessary to do publicity and drainage, and has obvious brand influence, if it is not professional enough, lack of experience requirements, it is difficult to operate and maintain itself, and some systems can be directly integrated and used, but the price and cost are expensive.
Compared with "out of Tao", Li Jiaqi is probably more inseparable from Taobao. The WeChat public account "Zhu SiMaji" quoted industry insiders in an article saying that in 2020, in order to "poach" Li Jiaqi, the Douyin e-commerce department had offered an offer of 150% of the guaranteed performance scale to Taobao and 2 times that of Douyin fans, but Li Jiaqi still chose to refuse, because although the Douyin DAU had exceeded 600 million at that time, it was still in the growth stage in e-commerce.
As the most mainstream live broadcasting platform in China, Taobao's huge traffic base, mature logistics system and huge business ecosystem are all things that Li Jiaqi cannot refuse.
Li Jiaqi's other way is to create her own beauty brand. At the 2021 Boao Forum for Asia, Li Jiaqi said that he wanted to build a Chinese beauty group and try to be a "Li Jiaqi Group" that combined online and offline. One day, the live broadcast will not take up too much of his time, and he will spend more time delving into beauty and developing new products.
Previously, Li Jiaqi was already the product manager of many beauty domestic products. In February 2020, Li Jiaqi co-created the "Puppy Plate" eye shadow with Perfect Diary. Hua Xizi has also been stationed in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room since the beginning of its birth, and under its traffic feed, one of Hua Xizi's loose powders quickly came out of the circle and became a hit.
Perfect diary "puppy plate" eyeshadow
He once admitted, "I am very experienced and good at beauty, and I can intuitively get feedback from all the girls from the live broadcast room, and these feedbacks are given to the brand side as a reference." Not only that, Li Jiaqi is also good at starting from the blank space in the beauty market to help brands plan new products.
However, Bai Yunhu believes that from the perspective of doing a brand, Li Jiaqi's traffic label is too heavy, and his understanding of the product is more based on traffic logic. "He himself is more suitable for using its flow resources and industrial resources as an investor, from the perspective of investment logic, Li Jiaqi only needs to be an industrial fund." He is likely to participate in the creation of beauty brands in the form of investment in the future. ”
This means that even if Li Jiaqi intends to build her own platform or brand, it is difficult to get rid of the label of traffic intermediary. Being a shopping guide who collects intermediary fees may be the norm for Li Jiaqi for a long time in the future.
3. The era of super anchors is coming to an end
Since last year, the online live broadcast circle has been in constant earthquakes. Taobao head anchors Wei Ya and Sydney were banned and faded out of the screen; After The First Anchor Of Kuaishou Simba was "cut" by the platform, it has lost its former momentum; Douyin's huadan Li Ziqi and MCN company micro-thoughts were shot and scattered, and the update frequency has been significantly reduced since then. The era of super-head anchors stirring up live broadcasts is gradually drifting away.
In the live broadcast room, the color of the head anchor is gradually fading. In the second half of 2021, making a friend has incubated nearly 20 vertical accounts. Huang He, co-founder of Make a Friend, said that what a friend should do is not an Internet celebrity studio, but a shopping mall that can be layered, establish sub-accounts of multiple categories, and form a stable live broadcast model that does not rely on anchors.
Subsequently, Luo Yonghao appeared in the live broadcast room less and less frequently, last year's double 11, double 12 period, Luo Yonghao's average daily sales of more than 10 million, but Luo Yonghao's overall live broadcast time in "make a friend" has accounted for less than 7%.
Li Jiaqi's team developed around its IP and tried to cultivate more "Li Jiaqi".
Some Li Jiaqi fans have found that Li Jiaqi's daily live broadcast time has been reduced to 3 hours, even during the 38 festival promotions. At the same time, its broadcasting team has appeared in the live broadcast room more and more times, and many fans have changed from powder to shea, contention and other supporters. Up to now, the number of fans of the "Li Jiaqi Fashion Anchor Group" Xiaohongshu account has reached 98,000.
Li Jiaqi in live streaming with goods/Visual China
Li Jiaqi's pet dog Never has also become a new IP exploration direction. After Never became popular in the live broadcast room, The United States ONE launched the "Neva Family" with five puppies as the image, and launched the Naiva Family Tmall flagship store in June 2021, which currently has 236,000 fans, and the monthly sales of IP derivatives such as handbags and masks are close to about 10,000 pieces.
In addition to the US ONE, other MCN companies are building a team matrix to reduce the dependence on a single Internet celebrity and pave the way for subsequent development.
As early as March 2021, Qianxun launched a store broadcast service, formed an anchor matrix, and signed anchors such as Lin Yilun, Li Jing, and Li Ai. Via and Sydney's assistant anchors also launched the "Bee Surprise Club" and "Shiitake Mushrooms" two live broadcast rooms, no longer emphasizing a single talent, but using the model of multiple anchors broadcasting together. Wei Nian Company operates a number of Internet celebrities at the same time.
In fact, the platform and the merchant have been suffering from the anchor for a long time. When Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya single-handedly killed "Double 11", the traffic of the platform was increasingly threatened by the super anchor. For the platform, building an anchor system of zhongle le instead of solo lele and avoiding being kidnapped by the right to speak of super anchors is obviously more conducive to the development of the live broadcast ecology.
Brands working for anchors are no longer superstitious about traffic, and the head of the MCN agency told "Leopard Change", compared with the head anchors with high coffee positions, strong bargaining power, and wide and varied live broadcast varieties, uneven and high cost of choice of mid-waist anchors, store broadcasting is more reliable. Store broadcasting can not only reduce the cost of anchor pit fees and commissions, but also obtain public domain traffic at a relatively low cost, quickly pulling new and fissioning.
Bai Yunhu said that the live broadcast model is the same as the previous department stores, CS, and KA channels, just a sales channel, "there is no originality and value precipitation, its sustainability is flawed, for the brand, the most important thing is to return to the 'full-link retail' logic and strengthen the brand's own digital retail capabilities." ”
Some industry insiders said that from the perspective of innovation of live broadcast traffic, the metacosm may be the next outlet, and the rapid development of virtual anchors has given a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises the opportunity to play games in the live e-commerce track.
Although super anchors like Li Jiaqi still represent glittering sales data and massive traffic, the era of super head anchors being over-deified is far away, and the bubble of overheating of the live streaming track is dissipating.