Image source @ Visual China
The text | the most talking FunTalk, the author | Gao Huanhuan, the editor | Wang Fangjie
Is Liu Ruihong a muscular man who jumped out of a crack in a stone? Otherwise, how could he have gone from being lonely and nameless to becoming a top Internet celebrity with more than 50 million Douyin fans in just half a month? The last time he soared like this was Sun Wukong.
No! According to the information that "Most Talk" knows from many parties, in the strict sense, the Liu Qihong you see on the mobile phone is not only Liu Qihong, he is more like a product conspired by several MCNs and traffic platforms, and the fitness god, the past artist, Jay Chou's best friend, the little puff father... all form part of the properties of this product.
"We define it internally as 'phenomenal'," the head of the marketing department of Worry-Free Media told "The Most Talking" on April 25, when talking about Liu's exit. As the behind-the-scenes driver of the popular fried chicken, Worry-free Media shared this huge victory.
In the industry, Worry-free Media can be called an Internet celebrity factory, and there has always been a legend of "thousands of Vibrato Internet celebrities, half of which are worry-free media". But even in its past record, the first Internet celebrity big wolf dog Zheng Jianpeng & Yan Jizhen couple, accumulated to 50 million fans, it took more than a year.
In contrast, Liu Qihong was much faster. He is the sole partner of Worry-Free Media, which signed a contract in December 2021, as its exclusive partner on the Douyin platform. On April 19, 2022, Liu Qihong's Douyin fans reached more than 16 million, and at 9:30 p.m. on April 26, the number of Douyin fans exceeded 50 million, surpassing Li Jiaqi, the first brother of live broadcasting, who currently has 44.76 million Douyin fans.
One night rose 10 million fans, 7 days rose 34 million fans, live broadcast viewers exceeded 100 million, Liu Qihong on the internet red production line, created a new record for vibrato live broadcast in 2022. At the same time, on platforms such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu, there are more than ten topics that have been read over 100 million to discuss him, which is really comparable to the speed of rocket-like popularity.
In the internet celebrity world, red represents commercial value.
The person in charge of the marketing department of the above-mentioned worry-free media told "The Most Talking" that after Liu Qihong went out of the circle, the number of cooperative customers he took the initiative to find increased a lot.
Similarly, on April 25, as an MCN institution that exclusively signed Liu Qihong's b station, Xiaohongshu and Zhihu, Lina, the founder of Zhiwai Culture, in her circle of friends, invited business and selected children's watch brands for Liu Qihong's wife vivi (Wang Wanfei) and prepared to live stream with goods.
But the next day, Lina told "The Most Talking" that Liu Ruihong did not take advertising in the short term, and now it has not changed, and the existing cooperation has not been promoted, "or want to take everyone to fitness first."
The accelerating flow train suddenly braked. But sooner or later it will restart. Because Liu Qihong's popularity is not accidental, but a deliberate manufacturing of commercial institutions with rhythm and high investment. You can even understand him as the "Lingna Belle" of the online fitness class.
And "Lingna Belle" brings people not only joy, but also the desire to buy.
The customer service of lululemon Taobao store told "The Most Talking", influenced by Liu Qihong, there have been many users who have consulted yoga pants and sports T-shirts recently, and the recent orders have increased significantly, overall, the order volume of Lululemon online has increased by about 5% to 10%.
It can be seen that at present, Liu Qihong is not allowed to take up advertising, probably only because the MCNs have not yet thought out how to anchor the commercial value of this "Lingna Belle". As the above-mentioned worry-free media person told us, "For the time being, Liu Ruihong's Douyin quotation has not been determined."
01
In November 2021, Wang Wanfei shared the news of her family's settlement in Shanghai on social media, so many people believe that Liu's mainland career began at that time, that is, five months before now. Too short a time, for his popularity to add a little mythological color.
In fact, as early as 2018, Liu Qihong had already focused his career on the mainland, especially Shanghai. In that year, Liu Opened a gym KH.TRAINING STUDIO in Changning, Shanghai.
But for more than three years before becoming a fitness anchor, Liu's career path had been bumpy.
First of all, affected by the epidemic, KH. TRAININGSTUDIO is recently closed, this high-end route of the gym currently has 5 coaches, a personal training class is about 800-1200 yuan range, the store manager Don has appeared in Liu Ruihong's vibrato live broadcast room, a fitness industry person familiar with Don told "The Most Talk", "He has followed Liu Qihong for five years, it is considered to be the elder bar, of course, Liu also gave him a lot of original dry stocks, and now he is very hard."
Also in 2018, Liu Also began to test the waters of short video business. The works released by it are mainly to record life moments, and there are only a few health science videos, although it bears the "star aura", but it cannot join the traffic "wolf" action in the field of short video alone.
As a result, Liu Began to seek transformation. In 2019, he signed a contract with Taobao Live to become a star anchor, but unfortunately the first live broadcast turnover was only 800,000 yuan.
The turnaround came at the end of the second half of 2021.
At that time, because he watched a video of Liu Qihong letting his son grow long hair for a child with cancer, Zhiwai Culture decided to cooperate with him, including the decoration of his Shanghai mansion, furniture display, and Zhiwai Culture was helping him contact the right brand cooperation.
This house, Wang Wanfei had taken photos in November last year, and now it is also the background of Liu Qihong's live fitness class. It is not difficult to see from the white main tone, the parquet marble tile floor, and the carved white piano at the center of the picture that the style and furnishings within the framing range take care of the aesthetics of one, two and three lines, and even more sinking markets, taking a largest common divisor.
The "Liu Qihong's Latest Cooperation Publications in April" provided by Zhiwai Culture to "The Most Talked" shows that Liu's personality is "the godfather of national fitness", "muscle daddy", "development of fitness equipment" and so on.
In December 2021, Liu Qihong signed another contract with Worry-free Media and switched to Douyin e-commerce, selling milk powder, meal bags and toys. From December 19 last year to February 17 this year, in two months, Liu Qihong and his wife broadcast 9 live broadcasts, with a total of 6.6542 million yuan. This achievement is a little worse than other anchors with sales of more than 100 million yuan in a single game.
On February 18, Liu Ruihong re-found a new positioning, and finally gave up carrying goods and began to try fitness live broadcasts. The first time, it gained 247,300 viewers, and overnight rose to 7,956 fans, ushering in the first small peak of his personal live broadcast career. In the two months since, the number of fans has gradually accumulated to 5 million.
02
What really brought huge traffic to Liu Qihong, but what was completely out of the circle was three dramatic "live broadcast accidents".
On April 5, Liu Lihong accidentally leaked armpit hair during live fitness, and was warned for the first time by the vibrato system, and he shaved his armpit hair for this. Unexpectedly, soon because of the excessive size of the pectoral muscles, he was judged to be "breastfeeding edge", so he put on a down jacket and continued to jump. "(Wearing a down jacket) our last stubbornness." Liu wrote on Weibo.
Then, he casually said "I wish Jaylen good health" was misjudged by the system to involve medical health and was banned.
Coach Liu, who abides by the live broadcast specifications but has been repeatedly "injured" by the platform review system, has completely gone out of the circle because of these three bans, and the topic of Liu Qihong and live cut clips on major platforms has emerged in an endless stream, and the Weibo topic of "Liu Qihong's response to wearing a down jacket and jumping exercises" has even reached 200 million.
Perhaps, the misjudgment of the platform review is not intentional, but wearing a down jacket to jump aerobics and speaking with super traffic stars is obviously creating a topic. The conversation then explodes on social media, a common routine in online marketing. Sure enough, soon, the fitness anchor Liu Qihong, the product on the internet red production line, was successfully marketed.
In the fifth fitness live broadcast on February 24, the number of viewers exceeded 1 million for the first time, and the live broadcast rose by 59,400 fans. After seeing the obvious growth momentum, Liu Qihong began to concentrate on the live broadcast of fitness, and the live broadcast data also rose all the way.
Behind all this, it is inseparable from the promotion of MCN. Lei Binyi, the founder of Worry-free Media, sent about 40 circles of friends in a month, nearly half of which was related to Liu Qihong, and as Liu Qihong's external partner, Lina said that she could not lose, and she sent a circle of friends saying that she could send 400 messages.
McN agencies spare no effort because every Internet celebrity that is created has huge commercial value.
Taking Worry-free Media as an example, its signed anchors have more than 80,000 people, in addition to Liu Qihong, there are also nearly 20 million pink people such as the big wolf dog Zheng Jianpeng & Yan Zhen (50.8 million fans), Redundant and Mao Maojie, Spicy Dezi, Zhang Xinyao, Liu Siyao nice, Wen Genie and so on.
According to the official website of Worry-free, the total number of fans on the whole network of its company exceeds 1.8 billion, and there are more than 2,500 cooperative brands. Lei Binyi described the company's "star-making" strength as follows:
"When the contract was first signed in 2018, Mao Maojie had more than 600,000 fans, Guangdong couples had less than 1 million fans, and although Wen Genie had 7 million fans, there was no commercial realization. Now, Mao Maojie has more than 30 million fans, More than 50 million fans of Guangdong couples, and more than 20 million fans of Wen Genie's two accounts, and the advertisements are full. ”
Soon, Liu Will also bring returns to mcN institutions.
According to media reports, a business source from a head advertising company revealed that since the fire, Liu Qihong's Douyin business cooperation offers a number a day. Now there are brands that want to be exposed in a 60-second short video of Liu Qihong, and the price is 500,000 yuan. This is still the number of bargains.
Last week, "The Most Talk" obtained a cooperation quotation from Platforms such as Xiaohongshu, b station, and Zhihu, and a short video content ranged from 70,000 to 150,000.
Of course, now, the MCN agencies have reached an offensive and defensive alliance and decided not to let Liu Qihong take the advertisement for the time being. But "The Most Talked" found that there were already signs of advertising implantation in its live broadcast room. Two days ago, his whole family had worn Li Ning brand sportswear. "Although there is no oral broadcast, it should be soft advertising implantation, which is also a brand cooperation method often used by celebrities after becoming popular." A person in the advertising industry said.
In addition, "Most Talk" learned that a local brand customer in Shanghai directly sent products home in order to cooperate with Liu Qihong. The person in charge of another Hangzhou underwear brand sent a circle of friends to ask for an opportunity to cooperate with Liu Qihong, and finally used the goods lala to achieve the express transportation of the product.
Even a sports brand saw that Liu Qihong's 66-year-old mother-in-law in the live broadcast room was wearing her own sweatpants, and also took the initiative to contact cooperation.
03
In addition to the institutions behind it, the creation of a star anchor is also inseparable from the feeding of platform traffic.
Last week, a publicist of Douyin e-commerce told "The Most Talking" that Douyin is making efforts to exercise and fitness this track. As of December 2021, the number of sports and fitness creators with more than 10,000 fans has exceeded 60,000. In 2021, the number of Douyin sports and fitness videos increased by 134% year-on-year, and the number of creators increased by 39% year-on-year; fitness anchors increased by 208% year-on-year, and live broadcast revenue increased by 141% year-on-year. According to its introduction, on April 12, Douyin signed a contract with Pamela, the "weather vane of the fitness world".
According to Chen Haoyu, project director of an MCN institution in Shanghai, "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. ”
And Liu Ruihong's turning out to be a good time for Douyin, because the previous platform brother Luo Yonghao wants to go back to engage in technology entrepreneurship and is gradually fading out of the live broadcast room.
In Chen Haoyu's view, Liu Qihong's explosion has its inevitability, he and Zhang students at the beginning of this year became popular in Douyin, behind which there are platforms for the traffic tilt of 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.
From a larger perspective, there is also a sense of crisis brought about by the outside world. Since last year, the WeChat video account has broken the circle through the live concert of Xicheng Boys, Mayday, Cui Jian, and Zhang Guorong after AI restoration, and the cumulative number of viewers of the four concerts has exceeded 100 million. "When the video number is more and more able to create a national hotspot, douyin will have a sense of crisis."
The data is the best comparison. 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, which was 280 million in the previous year, while the douyin main station, the speed version and the volcano version accumulated nearly 700 million daily active.
How long Liu Qihong can still be hot is unknown, but in addition to Zhang And Liu, there will definitely be the next Liu and Zhang Qihong. Because they are both a product of traffic and a container for commerce, everyone needs them.