Image source @ Visual China
Text | Narrowcast, author | Pang Mengyuan, design | High cleanliness
Reducing costs and increasing efficiency, and achieving double growth of users and revenues are the core problems that Station B now has to solve.
Because of the diversity and complexity of the model and the natural restraint of identity, this generation of community-based companies has long been in the stage of constantly "finding themselves" in terms of business boundaries, management concepts, development rhythms and business realization.
This uncertainty and difficulty will manifest itself on multiple levels, including, of course, investment. Specifically, it is necessary to grasp the "balance between choosing a profitable time point and investing in long-term development opportunities".
In contrast, Station B is the most enthusiastic and effective investment among China's new generation of community-based enterprises, with nearly 160 shots so far.
If you draw concentric circles at the center of the circle with Station B as the community, Station B's investment in direct relevance to the essence of the community is in the first link closest to the center of the circle, including animation and its upstream and downstream, MCN and UP masters, and some vertical interest communities acquired in the early stages. This link of investment is the most important, the largest number, the strategic position is relatively stable, and synergies have emerged.
The second ring is to have a certain community base in content, but more popular attributes, and at the same time, it can bear the investment of multiple profit needs in the results, specifically games and long videos. The investment of this link pays attention to precision and balance.
The third ring is the farthest relationship with the original community business, but it does not mean that they are not important, but at present, Station B still needs more capabilities to have strong connections with these businesses, such as investment in consumer goods, investment in the supply chain of internet celebrities and so on. This link is an exploratory investment.
On the whole, the investment idea of Station B is clear, with the community as the core, according to the different degrees of importance to maintaining the community temperament and promoting the development of the community, expanding outward layer by layer.
The innermost investment is the most important for the community and the most unshakable in the community position. The investment in the second ring is actually flexible. In contrast, the outermost investment may be greatly slowed when the company encounters pressure.
01 First Ring: Core Circle Layer
In terms of quantity, investment around community content accounts for the majority of investment in Station B. The main content of the B station platform is both the ACG content with the animation as the core of the early formation, and the PUGV content created by a large number of UP masters.
The purpose of this part of the investment is to establish the ability of Station B to control the core content areas of the community.
The production chain of animation is very long. From the original IP, to the adaptation, production, distribution, operation, all the way to the production and sale of derivatives. Each of these links has a variety of subdivisions, such as the original IP can be a network text or a comic, and the production can be divided into 2D and 3D. This leads to a very wide range of investment in animation in Station B.
Therefore, Station B will merge and acquire the industry's leading production unit Painting Culture, and have repeatedly invested in the production of "Spirit Cage" and "Three-Body"; it will also invest in the white paper culture focusing on two-dimensional animation, and its representative work is "100,000 Cold Jokes".
In the FIELD OF IP, Station B has invested in the incubation and development of animation IP as the core of molecular interaction, which represents the IP as "Inhuman", and has launched comics and comic animations. In November last year, Station B invested 600 million yuan to acquire the original comic network Youyouqi; in February last year, Station B participated in the non-public issuance of ordinary shares of Palm Reading Technology.
In addition to the traditional animation industry, Station B has also made some virtual reality-related investments, including virtual idol platforms, two-dimensional IP operators, AR and digital virtual performance solution providers.
For example, the investment in @Luo Tianyi's operator Henian Technology, which began in 2016, and the investment in Yahaha Studios, which is committed to creating 3D interactive content and social platforms, has completed three consecutive rounds of financing within six months of its establishment.
In February this year, Station B acquired Qianyu Network. Qianyu Network once operated a virtual idol society, also developed a virtual idol live broadcast auxiliary software, and is now operating a resource sharing platform such as illustration, Live2D, modeling and other resource sharing platform peacha. In November 2021, peacha was upgraded to access the homepage of the live broadcast area of Station B and renamed as "Bilibili Creative Workshop", and the original user system has also been connected with the account system of Station B.
Station B's investment in MCN and individual UP owners has accelerated from the second half of 2020.
In 2020, some UP masters were poached by watermelon videos, although the community ecology is not quickly cultivated by digging a few creators, and the "digging" incident itself did not cause much harm to the creative ecology of Station B, and even did not bring imaginary benefits to the watermelon video, but more or less gave Station B a wake-up call: to strengthen the comprehensive connection with the UP master.
After that, Station B invested in Wufeng Technology, which has a boring life of @Zhu, and @IC lab has light behind it. This year, Station B continues to bind creators, strategic investment in canning farm culture and Weiwo Technology, the representative of the former is UP Main is @ Eclipse, and the representative of the latter is @ Crooked Nut Research Association.
Among these creators, @Eclipse Belongs to the popular gastronomy field of Station B and is an indisputable big IP; @Crooked Nut Research Association has its own style in form, relatively standardized production, and efficient output, content with topicality, and cultural exchange attributes.
Station B will also sign up the UP master through the acquisition of MCN institution Super Electric Culture, and there are currently more than 200 UP signed by Super Power, including @China BOY Super Gorilla, @A Phantom Jun, @Runaway And so on.
Investing in creators is just one way to optimize and guide content in your community. Last year, Station B launched a Story Mode that can accommodate more scenes and multiple screens, which is simply a vertical short video, which can be regarded as the effort of Station B on the tool side.
As for the effect of Story Mode in Station B, a specific performance is that @Shuai Nong Bird Brother, who has accumulated more than 3 million fans on Douyin, has risen by nearly 1.45 million fans in 15 days after arriving at Station B.
In fact, Station B also made a move to acquire vertical interest communities in 2018, of which the acquisition of cat ears in the two-dimensional community can be described as successful. At the moment, the internal circulation of this community is good, guaranteeing an excellent state of profitability and innovation.
Even in today's three-ring investment structure, this successful acquisition and integration can be seen as a stable understanding of The B station's core circle.
02 Second Ring: Intersecting Battlefields
On the basis of stabilizing the community, Station B needs to break the circle and create more profit opportunities. From the perspective of content investment, games and long videos more reflect the needs of this level.
Here, Station B plays a role that is more of a platform (channel). To some extent, the investment work of B standing here has a strong similar logic to Tencent's investment logic, that is, it chooses to invest in the upstream of their respective industrial chains, that is, investment in the supply chain.
However, investment in these two areas is more intense in both the existing pattern and the existing competition, especially the number of high-quality projects that can be traded in the long video industry chain is very small, and after a boom, the investment cost performance is also in the process of a sharp correction.
The way of Station B is still to start from its own characteristics.
The starting point for investment in the game is that the user population and community atmosphere of station B determine that some categories of games are very suitable for this kind of grass, and station B has also won objective benefits through game publishing, and even opened the time window for listing.
Since its listing in 2018, Station B has been deliberately emphasizing the rationalization trend of reducing the proportion of game revenue and the construction of diversified income capabilities, but Station B has not stopped shooting at games, and still increases investment in game research and development after proposing "cost reduction and efficiency increase".
The reason why we continue to invest heavily in games is related to the large profit margins of the industry on the one hand, on the other hand, the games are also in line with future trends, especially for the meta-universe to make reserves.
2021 is the year with the most game shots in Station B, reaching 21 times, most of which are exclusive investments. Station B's game investment involves mobile games, online games, VR games and other aspects, including companies with capabilities in animation design, three-dimensional creative art and other new technologies.
Station B favors game companies with IP capabilities. On April 2 this year, Station B acquired a mobile game company that had just been established for 3 months, Magic Explosion Network, which had a number of games such as "Baby Bee: Abyss Angel" and "My Hero Academia: The Strongest Hero". Station B, which has invested in Celadon Games twice in a year, became famous with the blockbuster game "The Strongest Snail", and was finally listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which is the only game company listed in 2021.
The Strongest Snail
In the field of long video, Station B invests in about 10 companies. Long video content complements the original less granular content of Station B, and is more popular, which can bring new users, content payment, and growth possibilities in brand naming and advertising sponsorship.
B station subjectively and objectively should not go through the history of long videos again. The copyright richness that Station B can obtain is not as rich as that of Youaiteng, but Station B has its own community atmosphere, and can select the content that users in the station like and are conducive to the development of the community within a more accurate range.
The first investment in the film and television field of B Station was in December 2016, and the investment object was tianya culture that participated in the production and distribution of Stephen Chow's work "The Mermaid", which was only a shallow taste at this time, and frequently shots to pursue the circle breaking in 2020.
In March 2020, Station B bought a large number of classic old movies. Five months later, Station B took a 9.9% stake in Huanxi Media for HK$513 million. Since then, works by Joyful Media such as "The Sky of the Wind Dog Boy" (a project finalized before the investment) and "Win the Championship" have been broadcast on Station B, and the response has been good. Station B also launched a behind-the-scenes documentary program for "My Motherland and Me" and "My Hometown and Me" produced by Huanxi Media.
This year, Station B took a stake in the free whale that produced "Embroidered Spring Knife" and "Assassination of a Novelist". One of the founders of Liberty Whale is director Lu Yang, and the shareholder is Lei Jiayin. Lu Yang also maintains close friendship and business ties with Guo Fan and Rao Xiaozhi, all three of whom are a new generation of Chinese directors influenced by the Hollywood model, pursuing a sense of futurism, new technologies and story frameworks. Free Cool Whale itself will also make investments in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain.
Station B also invested in a company focused on film visual development, Niandong Culture, which has established an exclusive cooperation with Base Fx, the industry's top film visual effects company, and has participated in the production of "The Wandering Earth" and "Three Lives and Three Worlds and Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms".
In terms of content, Station B tends to be futuristic, sci-fi, IP-oriented and serialized content companies, because to a certain extent, sci-fi and animation enthusiasts are similar. At the same time, science fiction content also has the potential to attract big customers such as cars.
In May last year, Station B also invested in rabbit culture focusing on the production of short dramas, and its "Don't Think Strange" series with the main suspense. At this stage, when the community content is upward and the film and television industry is shrinking at the same time, short dramas have become an intersection field, and Kuaishou has made short dramas into a new product form with both content and commercialization.
In order to support the development of short dramas, Station B has also launched a "light theater" for short dramas, but it still needs to be constantly explored in order to find a way for this rising intersection to be compatible with its own community.
In addition, Station B has also invested in the field of documentaries. After "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City" became popular in 2016, Station B realized the value of documentaries to the community, documentaries have a sense of knowledge and long tail in content, and are the best category in the field of long video of Station B, so it is also more important to invest in this part of Station B.
03 Third Ring: The Possibility of Many
The future of Station B includes the increase in revenue scale and the in-depth construction of business models, of which e-commerce is the scale capability that Station B wants most but is most difficult to improve.
This is a common problem for the content community to build backwards business models.
Physical e-commerce involves supply chain, branding, marketing, delivery, after-sales and other links, and the content community that Station B is good at are two different things in many links. Once e-commerce develops, it is necessary to pay attention to maintaining a balance with the original community atmosphere.
In November 2021, Station B acquired Yongyi Payment, a cross-border platform payment service provider of Internet +, to lay a good payment foundation for future e-commerce business. In fact, in 2020, Station B wholly acquired the Internet red supply chain platform Jackfruit Global Purchase, which can be regarded as paving the way for E-commerce on Station B. At present, Station B is also trying the e-commerce of derivative logic through member purchase on the platform.
In addition, Station B also invested in the MCN institution Ruhan Culture, which took the "net red + incubator + supply chain" model, incubating red anchors such as Zhang Dayi, Daikin, and Bugs, covering 200 million young female fans.
Station B's investment in consumer brands has a reference experimental nature, especially in the path of the content community relying on its own grass planting ability and marketing position to reverse investment in consumer goods, and finds the role of investment. Of course, Station B's participation is directly related to the consumer goods investment boom in the previous two years, and it is also related to Shanghai's own business base.
The consumer brands invested by Station B include Li Ran, a male personal care brand, more than thirteen Hanfu costume brands, Bossie, a genderless clothing brand, and a Western food chain brand such as Charlies Pink Burger, which focuses on burgers. These brands are more in line with the characteristics of the B station crowd, are young, future-oriented, personalized, and related to community culture.
Station B's investment in the electric vehicle brand Extreme Krypton Intelligence is another case. Consumers of new energy vehicles show a trend of rejuvenation, and their cognition of automobiles tends to have the attributes of light consumer goods that combine "companionship" and "smart toys". At the same time, car brands have always been big customers of content advertising platforms, Lincoln and Xiaopeng have done content marketing at Station B, and investment in Extreme Kr will also help Station B learn more in the automotive field.
Based on these cases, it can also be seen that Station B is exploring a certain combination between consumer investment and community-owned content, especially the content of large projects. In other words, the self-owned content generated by Station B based on its own supply chain investment logic and unique community atmosphere is the grasp of participating in consumer brand investment.
Among them, many attempts at commercialization of "Spirit Cage" can be studied as an effective case in the future.