On the evening of April 24, the number of fans of Liu Qihong's Douyin account exceeded 45 million. In just one week, its number of followers grew by more than 30 million. On April 21, the number of fans of the account jumped from 20 million to 30 million, and the douyin account that rose by tens of millions of fans in the previous day was Still Andy Lau.
Compared with Andy Lau's national popularity, Liu Qihong is a big difference, so his popularity is even more amazing. Before turning red, Liu Qihong was often mentioned as a good brother of Jay Chou, and as a singer, he sent out his masterpiece "Rainbow Paradise". In addition, after participating in the fifth season of "Where Daddy Goes" in 2017, as the "father of the little puffs", his career has improved somewhat.
"Fitness guru" is another label attached to him. In fact, he has experienced the trend change of inspirational weight loss to national fitness, participated in a number of slimming and fitness variety shows such as "Super Weight Loss King", "Lose My Life", "Come on Good Figure", and published the "Qihong Fitness Book" in 2004.
Liu Ishong is about to turn 50 years old, and his life has indeed changed due to fitness. In the 30 years of entering the industry, he has jumped from a tepid artist to the top of the short video platform. A fitness industry observer analyzed to first finance and economics that Liu Qihong's popularity was because during the epidemic period, people's demand for home fitness surged, and he created a most popular, even genderless popular fitness exercise, filling the vacancy of the star anchor who mainly focused on basic fitness in this period. There is nothing special about his basic movements, but the clever coordination with Jay Chou's song "Compendium of Materia Medica" has formed a circle-breaking jumping exercise video that has been widely disseminated, triggering a follow-up effect from Internet celebrities to the public.
"Cloud Fitness" under the epidemic situation
Recently, Xu Yingying, a white-collar worker who has been at home for more than a month, led her whole family to jump on Liu Qihong's shuttlecock exercise. She recalled to First Finance and Economics that she first noticed Liu Qihong because of a hot search related to Liu Qihong's wife Wang Wanfei. In the video, Wang Wanfei, who danced with Liu Qihong, gradually lost her strength, clenched her teeth, and deformed her movements, like an ordinary person who was forced to practice by the coach.
Xu Yingying thought it was very interesting, and followed a live broadcast that night, and then her mother, husband and son all joined in. She is almost zero-based in fitness, her mother has insisted on running every day, her husband has the fitness habit of practicing equipment, and her son, who is more than four years old, is "joining in the fun".
Xu Yingying feels that the aerobics in Liu Qihong's live broadcast room are more suitable for people who usually have no exercise habits, and may not reach the intensity required by those who have long-term fitness, her husband soon feels that it is not interesting, she can persist for up to an hour, and the 60-year-old mother can follow the whole process almost every time.
"The atmosphere in his live broadcast room is still quite happy." This is one of the most important reasons why Xu Yingying is willing to follow Liu Qihong, "During this time, everyone is idle and bored at home, and finally one thing can release the backlog of negative emotions, and exercise can really let you run out of reality a little."
Fitness changes in all shapes, carrying various slogans to lead the trend for a period of time. As early as the TV era, there was a popular Zheng Duoyan slimming exercise, in recent years, including the "swan arm" including a variety of shaping exercises, fitness exercises in the short video platform popular. Since the epidemic, the demand for home fitness has surged, and a number of successfully operated head accounts have appeared on the fitness track, covering multiple subdivisions such as weight loss, yoga, and shaping.
As early as the beginning of 2020, overseas fitness expert Pamela quickly became popular in China, and opened personal accounts on platforms such as Station B, Little Red Book, Weibo, and Keep, and entered Douyin on April 12 this year. Station B fitness UP master "Saturday Wild Zoey" has 9.1 million followers. At the beginning of this year, kuaishou anchor "Cat Ning Counterattack" became popular with a 100-day counterattack weight loss punch card video. On Douyin, the number of fans of "Liu Fang's Body Etiquette", which focuses on plasticity, posture and simple fitness movements, has reached 16.66 million. According to Xinjiao data, Liu Fang's live broadcast sales reached 91.86 million yuan in the past month.
As early as June 27, 2018, Liu Qihong settled in Douyin. In December last year, he signed a contract with the head MCN agency Worry Free Media. Liu's popularity is closely related to the promotion and marketing of this MCN head agency. Worry-free Media previously praised the "big wolf dog Zheng Jianpeng & Yan Zhen couple", the account currently has more than 50 million fans, and the live broadcast sales in the past month reached 43.406 million yuan.
After Liu Lihong signed a contract with Worry-free Media, he initially tried to copy the model of the former husband and wife with goods, but the response was flat. According to Feigua data, from December 19 last year to February 17, 2022, Liu Qihong and his wife did a total of 9 live broadcasts with goods, and the sales of goods were 7.236 million. In February this year, Liu Qihong began to transform into a fitness live broadcast, the number of fans began to grow significantly, his star status is more advantageous than the average ordinary fitness blogger, and the deep binding with Jay Chou's songs, and the planning of stars such as Zhong Liti and jumping will further push the popularity.
TikTok is behind it
Chen Haoyu, project director of an MCN institution in Shanghai, analyzed that Liu Ruihong's popularity is inseparable from the vigorous support of Douyin and the tilt of traffic resources.
"Douyin will focus on supporting the IP of a certain track every once in a while. Recently, the epidemic situation, seeing that everyone has fitness needs, has focused on supporting Liu Qihong. In Chen Haoyu's view, Liu Qihong's explosion and the popularity of Zhang at the beginning of this year have the traffic tilt of vibrato for vertical tracks. Previously, around the strategy of rural revitalization, Douyin invested in the content creation of the three rural areas of the traffic resource support platform, and Zhang, who recorded the daily life of the northeast countryside, quickly became popular in 3 months, rising by nearly 20 million fans.
The daily growth of short videos has entered a bottleneck period, and Douyin has innovated in content by supporting accounts on vertical tracks, reducing the tiredness of use and enhancing user stickiness. In November last year, ByteDance announced organizational adjustments, watermelon video and today's headlines merged into Douyin, Douyin officially became the core growth engine of ByteDance Group, so it also suffered from the dual pressure of traffic monetization and user growth. At the same time, the WeChat video number is soaring. According to Tencent's fourth quarter and annual financial report for 2021 released last month, the video number DAU (daily active) in 2021 exceeded 500 million. It will also bring some sense of crisis to Douyin.
Chen Haoyu believes that Liu Qihong's explosion is a major benefit for the platform, "A while ago, everyone paid attention to the content of all aspects of the epidemic, and the attention to the ecological content of Douyin was not so high, and the daily life was reduced." After supporting a Liu Qihong came out, everyone flocked to drive the traffic of the entire platform."
Live streaming with goods, brand cooperation, personal peripherals, fitness courses, etc., is the profit model of the previous fitness Internet celebrities, of which live streaming with goods is a mainstream direction for fitness bloggers to monetize. Liu's last live stream was on March 19. "In fact, he is very good at bringing goods, selling fitness-related foods, such as health foods such as protein powder, or sports-related equipment, body-shaping clothes and the like." Xu Yingying noticed that Liu Qihong mentioned during the live broadcast that things must be eaten and used by the whole family before they can be recommended to everyone, which seems to be paving the way for the subsequent live broadcast with goods.
Liu Qihong's Douyin account, in addition to the singer certification, another certification is "high-quality e-commerce master". Liu Ruihong's agent mentioned in his Xiaohongshu account that they will be very cautious in the selection of cooperative brands, and the premise of cooperation is that the product ingredient list is passed, "there are too many bad ingredients, there is no need to talk so much."
As fans soared, Liu's commercial value received widespread attention. On April 21, in response to various rumors on the Internet about brand cooperation quotations, Worry-free Media and Liu Qihong Studio issued a joint statement saying that they had recently received cooperation consultation from the brand side, but now they want to focus on providing more high-quality live broadcast content for fans. In Chen Haoyu's view, for Liu Ruihong, the focus is on the influence and more fans. "He shouldn't be in a hurry to liquidate, because after the fans have risen, monetization is a natural thing."
Some Shanghai MCN institutions struggled to survive
Liu Qihong's popularity has made many people think that in the midst of the epidemic, MCN institutions are the most profitable industry at present, but this is not the case. In the Shanghai area, many medium-sized companies are in trouble due to the epidemic, and some have even begun to plan to find another way.
Chen Haoyu told First Finance and Economics that in a large group covering the relevant responsible persons of MCN institutions in Shanghai, someone launched an investigation, and it was found that more than half of the Douyin content ecological companies in the group were in shutdown.
As the head of a medium-sized MCN company, Chen Haoyu feels very confused: "In fact, like catering, a particularly large company or a particularly small one is fine, the most uncomfortable thing is the middle company, which operates very well under normal circumstances, but if it is stopped for more than two months, the entire capital chain will be affected." ”
There are a variety of profit models in the Douyin ecology, some companies are entertainment anchors, and entertainment anchors are divided into monetization, some companies have their own supply chains, with their own goods; and many of them are the same as Chen Haoyu's company, the profit model is brand operation, that is, the douyin account operation of the agent brand, responsible for the overall operation planning. "We want to work as a team and land on the ground to monetize live streaming." Now the team is not together, the logistics have stopped, the goods cannot be obtained, and many things cannot be done, only stopped. ”
Before the outbreak of the epidemic, Chen Haoyu's company and a fitness mirror brand's cooperation planning has all been negotiated, "now it is stopped, there is no way to do it." People don't want money to drift." Chen Haoyu said: "We have 3 brand operations in hand, and we have to pay us more than 100,000 yuan every month, but now it has stopped for special reasons." The team's salary cannot be paid, and some people may jump ship and leave, and the whole project will be yellow. ”
Chen Haoyu revealed that most of the live streaming anchors he knows stop working at home, "some want to transform entertainment anchors and are not very adaptable, do the anchors with goods, they can't do it alone, they must cooperate in many ways, and the operation must be present at the same time." He took the women's live broadcast as an example, the anchor himself set up a shed at home, the effect is greatly discounted compared with the company's professional live broadcast room, "the scene is not good, the lighting is not good, the anchor is no longer strong, no one watches, the audience will directly cross out when they see this scene, even if they can live broadcast there is no traffic."
"Many Douyin ecological companies must be able to combine the three dimensions of people, goods and fields to be able to monetize, and the cooperation between anchors, supply chain ends, and the whole team is very important." But now people, goods, and fields can't be together, and many brands in Shanghai, that is, Party A, have stopped working, and it is more difficult for Party B to do it. Chen Haoyu said.
(Chen Haoyu is a pseudonym in the text)