Is short videos and live streams without anchors OK?
If this kind of short video appears between your fingers, you will quickly cross it or watch it carefully: there is no protagonist in the whole process, the picture relies on stickers, the explanation depends on dubbing, the content is not logical, and no one is always on camera...
It is reasonable to say that this kind of short video content will not be paid attention to, but recently many netizens have found that similar short videos without real people on the Internet seem to have increased. However, unlike the previous practices of washing, mass production, shoddy production, and illogical practices of marketing numbers, the memory points of these video content are quite solid, and there is also a unique creative style, such as from the hands of professional institutions...
This may be another way out for mcN institutions to think after the storm of Li Ziqi and Xiao Xiangge.
MCN tried to be anchorless
"Once the Internet celebrities signed by MCN are on fire, they are actually a double-edged sword."
Li Yuan (pseudonym), the head of operations of an MCN in Tianhe, Guangzhou, told The Notes that at present, including her institution, many MCNs have suspended the incubation and signing of new Internet celebrities and instead developed a short video content account subject without a main broadcast mirror - the name of "no anchor".
According to relevant industry sources, many MCNs have begun to focus on incubating creator accounts with no main broadcast mirrors, pure stickers (animations), and pure dubbing, but the content is quite high: its purpose is to replace traditional live anchors, create anchorless (no IP) accounts, and begin to promote them on various video platforms.
Li Yuan also pointed out that in the past, whenever an Internet celebrity terminated or left his job, the MCN agency would usually immediately find and sign a new Internet celebrity artist. At her peak, her MCN had nearly 50 signed influencers and video bloggers. But now, mcn signed only 10 internet celebrities, of which 6 expired in May this year, and the company decided not to renew it.
"Now that there are artists who have terminated their contracts and left their jobs, our company will not push new people, but enrich the content planning team." Li Yuan revealed that at present, the company's main external recruitment positions are all content creation and planning related talents, and at the same time began to register new short video accounts to expand its diversified content matrix.
Among them, the main body of each video account corresponds to a content creation team. The output content screen is mainly based on data, stickers, and animation demonstrations, replacing the traditional short video main broadcast mirror commentary form, that is, not allowing the video account to have a strong connection and bundling with personal IP or Internet celebrity anchors. "Even if the content creation team is one or two less people, the account can at least operate normally."
"In other words, it is an iron video account, a flowing content team, and no longer creates anchors or personal IP." Li Yuan stressed that this trend and change in the industry is only because many MCNs have suffered in incubating Internet celebrity anchors and personal IP.
In the past year, there have been many examples of Internet celebrity anchors having disputes with MCN, being hyped up by the media, and even going to court. Among them, the most well-known is the dispute between the top Internet celebrities "Li Ziqi" and "Xiao Xiangge" and MCN, and as of now, the account of "Li Ziqi" has been suspended for eight months. This situation has also made many MCNs wake up.
"When there is a dispute, fans will sympathize with the Internet celebrity anchor and scold the capital for being ruthless, but MCN is also one of the victims!" From Li Yuan's point of view, in the process of incubating Internet celebrities, MCN has invested a lot of promotion costs and platform resources, and behind the popularity of all anchors is the result of their joint efforts with the MCN team, which is by no means a unique achievement.
However, once the Internet celebrity anchor "expands" or causes the car to roll over due to personal reasons, the cost and resources invested by MCN in its personal IP will also be wiped out in an instant, and the loss is often as high as hundreds of thousands, millions or even tens of millions. "In the industry, it is also often the case that after the Internet celebrity anchor becomes popular, he has a huge influence and begins to blackmail MCN and ask for resources without hesitation."
"Previously, our company incubated several short video anchors, all of which were after a small reputation, either wanted to jump ship or wanted to go it alone, and they all made a fuss about terminating the contract." Li Yuan stressed that although MCN has tried to use contracts to restrain Internet celebrity anchors and strengthen management, as long as it is a person, there is subjective thinking, and it is difficult to control and constrain people when they are popular.
Perhaps it is a precautionary measure to avoid the difficulty of managing after the anchor becomes popular, or perhaps it is because the anchor's personal reasons lead to overturning, resulting in heavy losses to MCN, and recently some MCNs have gradually tended to create a pluralistic short video content account without real people appearing, and no longer put all the chips on the individual signed Net red anchors. "In doing so, we also hope to fundamentally avoid the generation of artificial risks."
However, compared with the short video that uses the "appearance" of the Internet celebrity anchor, it seems to be more difficult and challenging to incubate the "pure dubbing + picture" content subject of the ownerless broadcast mirror. Can MCN go down this path?
Video content without anchors is difficult to promote
"Since there is no anchor (on camera), the video content is much more difficult to do, exhausting the individual!"
Zhang Chi (pseudonym) is a content planning specialist at MCN in Yuhang, Hangzhou. Originally, he and his colleagues were responsible for the daily video creative planning of a well-known Internet celebrity under the company, but at the beginning of this year, the anchor jumped ship due to dissatisfaction with the company's management system, which also led to the suspension of related accounts, a large number of fans, and MCN's losses were relatively heavy.
After that, Zhang Chi's company decided to incubate a number of theme (style) anchorless short video account entities, and transferred him to a video content team that mainly focuses on new model evaluation and shopping guide.
Unlike the general auto self-media that relies on the main broadcast mirror of the Internet celebrity to participate in the analysis and interpretation, the car video account he is responsible for, the picture is mainly based on the vehicle data (data) picture demonstration, funny memes, and the commentary is dubbed.
"Now think about it, the anchor really has the advantage of the anchor, and the real person appears on camera, especially the beautiful female car can narrow the distance between the audience and the audience." He told him to understand the notes that compared with the short video account with the Internet celebrity anchor as the core, the short video content without real people appearing on camera is generally slow, and the interaction volume is also very sluggish.
As for the reason, Zhang Chi believes that it may be related to the lack of influence of the main body of the internet celebrity and the lack of trust of the audience, "If there is no real anchor sitting in, the entire video content looks like it is really not much different from those marketing video accounts that rely on editing all the content of the opening picture." ”
Zhang Chi revealed that it is precisely because it is difficult to open the gap between the video creation of the non-main broadcast mirror and the content of the marketing number, therefore, even if similar videos are done well, the animation (image) is exquisite, and the completion rate is not as good as the fraction of the video of the Internet celebrity anchor (only less than 3%). The completion rate of similar car anchor review videos is often above 15%.
In order to improve the playback and completion rate of short video content without a master broadcast mirror, and replace the existing traditional Internet celebrity anchor account as soon as possible, the company began to learn from the practices of other peers - the current mainstream practices are two: one is to strive for professional interpretation, data analysis and insight in the industry; the other is to fully animate the output content.
"Because these two directions are beyond the reach of low-end marketing numbers, the input-output ratio is too low." He told him that since March this year, the account he participated in the creation has begun to analyze the sales data of related models and industries, and the next step is to get involved in the interpretation of the financial reports of car companies and raise the threshold of creation.
In addition, some of the company's popular science short video accounts without main broadcast mirrors began to try to do animation versions, with exquisite paper animation and better special effects, facing the small white user group, popularizing simple scientific and technological content, "These two issues do have certain effects, but the speed of inducing fans is still lower than that of similar live-action main broadcast mirror accounts." ”
It is not difficult to see that after losing the "bridge" between the content of the Internet celebrity anchor and the audience, the main body of short video content creation without real people appearing on camera is difficult to gain considerable traffic in a short period of time. In addition, in order to distinguish itself from the marketing number, MCN also has to work content production.
On the mainstream video platform, understanding notes has indeed found a lot of PGC content without a master broadcast mirror, covering areas such as animated science popularization, financial review interpretation, new car shopping guide, good thing reviews, etc. It can be seen that similar diversified content creators have begun to compete with Internet celebrity accounts for users.
However, in addition to the short video content without the main broadcast mirror, is there no other way for MCN to get rid of the neck of the Internet celebrity anchor card?
Can a virtual person replace a streamer?
If MCN creates a short video content creation subject without real people appearing in order to avoid "human" factors leading to disputes and account overturning, then what if virtual characters and virtual idols who will never "collapse" and are very "obedient" are used to act as short video protagonists?
With the rise of the concept of "metaverse", virtual idols and virtual characters have recently been frequently mentioned by the media as a major derivative of the digital world. In the past year, Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance and other major manufacturers have also begun to lay out business related to virtual characters.
Not long ago, some media reported that Station B acquired a virtual idol research and transportation company, aiming to strengthen its live broadcast business. According to the data released by Station B, from June 2020 to June 2021, a total of 32,412 virtual anchors began broadcasting. In this regard, Ai Media Consulting also predicts that the virtual idol market size will exceed 300 billion yuan in 2022.
"The purpose of MCN to get rid of real internet celebrities and anchors is to avoid disputes or collapses, but they dare not easily use virtual characters." Ma Xin (pseudonym), an investment partner at an MCN in Xiamen Lake, told Understand Notes that for a large number of content agencies at present, it is good to replace Internet celebrities and anchors with virtual characters that do not roll over and are absolutely obedient, but compared with incubating real anchors, the cost and marketing resources required for virtual idols are not easily affordable by any MCN.
Therefore, on the track of virtual idols, the outside world can see the powerful Internet manufacturers, and few MCN institutions are willing to incubate virtual idols as anchors.
"Even for 2D virtual character animation videos, the production cost per second is often as high as about 1,000 yuan, and three-dimensional ones dare not think." Ma Xin said that the cost of a high-quality, three- or four-minute 2D animation short video is usually around 180,000 yuan, which is equivalent to the annual salary level of ordinary Internet celebrity anchors for one year.
If it is the animation production of 3D virtual characters, the input cost will be much higher, the production cost per second is usually between 5,000 and 12,000 yuan, and the short video of just a few minutes will "burn" mcN millions of dollars of funds, and broadcast a daily broadcast that will be an amazing number, "Not to mention the small and medium-sized MCN, even the industry head may not be able to burn it." ”
In other words, the content creation of the inexpensive masterless broadcast mirror has become the first choice for MCN to get rid of the risk of card neck, overturning and dispute of the Internet celebrity anchor.
Ma Xin revealed that the medium-sized MCN only needs a content creation team of three or four people with certain film and television production capabilities to achieve the production and dissemination of videos without real people, and the cost of realization is much lower than that of virtual characters.
"Now the cost of making a short video of a virtual idol can even allow MCN to pull together an entire team." Because of this, MCN can allow more funds to be invested in the marketing promotion of the main body of the account, rather than the production cost.
"What's more, the success rate of hatching virtual characters is not high, don't you listen to the Internet claiming that there are tens of thousands of virtual idol characters appearing on camera, in fact, how much can people remember? In the end, is there only a few Luo Tianyi, Liu Yexi and so on? Ma Xin admitted that such a low success rate, if MCN does its best to incubate virtual characters, once it fails, it will be a disaster.
【Conclusion】
It is not difficult to see that the phenomenon of frequent overturning of KOLs (personal reasons) and disputes between Internet celebrities and MCNs has made many MCNs start to think about new production methods. Some MCNs began to take precautions and put the "anchorless" content creation into action.
Compared with the seemingly tall but expensive virtual idols with high incubation failure rates, the diversified video creation forms without real people appearing in the camera, because of their low cost and simple implementation, seem to have become a new choice and new trend of MCN's round of anchorlessness. But is this more challenging form of content creation really competitive?