Divide Li Jiaqi's final feast: I am afraid that I will not be able to squeeze on the boat, and I am even more afraid that the ship will not go far

Everyone has a mountain above their heads

Author | Li Xintong

Cover source | US ONE official website

Li Jiaqi, a symbol and symbol that is fanatically, connects the hot desire for consumption at one end and reflects the booming e-commerce ecology at the other end.

In the 109 days since Li Jiaqi disappeared, the brands that worked closely with him have become helpless, and fans have waited in uneasiness and anticipation. The return at the right time allowed all kinds of pent-up emotions to gush out and explode in this Double 11 episode. This long-simmering force is trying to push him to new heights.

fight to the death

On Double 11 this year, Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room is more difficult than ever to enter. Ma Li is the head of the marketing department of a domestic base cosmetics brand, and her company has sent more than ten groups of products to Beauty ONE, all of which were unsuccessful.

"This Double 11, Li Jiaqi is very cautious in the selection of beauty products, all of them are partners who have cooperated for many years, and brands that have cooperated once or twice before are difficult to enter at this node."

Zhang Nan, the person in charge of a live broadcast agency operating agency, felt this way.

In order to send the products to Li Jiaqi's live broadcast camera, the beauty brand served by Zhang Nan began to prepare 3 months in advance, when the news of Li Jiaqi's comeback had just begun to circulate in the industry. In addition to the exclusive products reserved for the live broadcast room, the company that signed the annual cooperation framework with Li Jiaqi also required each channel to reserve 20% of the products to prepare for Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room to replenish stock. After Li Jiaqi's return in September, the brand couldn't wait to enter the live broadcast room, constantly adjusting the stock and product mix according to the sales volume of each show.

In the past two months, customers have continuously found Zhang Nan and proposed to enter Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, but the products and solutions sent have fallen into the sea. Zhang Nan told Snow Leopard Finance, "MeiONE must consider all aspects of product safety, risk, endorsement, etc., even products with high profits may be rejected." ”

This year's makeup market is sluggish, and many brands have taken Li Jiaqi as a lifesaver. But after his return, Li Jiaqi was very cautious, not only cautious when facing the camera, but also more rigorous in product selection. For him, the record of Double 11 is crucial, and there is no room for error in food and ammunition.

The horn of the charge had not yet been officially sounded, and the smoke of gunfire had begun to fill.

In Li Jiaqi's self-made variety show "All Girls' Offer 2" (hereinafter referred to as "Offer 2"), a group of beauty brand owners gathered on the stage, Li Jiaqi and assistant Wang Wang sat behind the camera to observe their words and deeds, and then entered the living room to start business negotiations. Among the merchants participating in the program, there are many international brands such as Sisley, Estée Lauder, MAC, SK-II and so on.

An eyeshadow palette of South Korean makeup brand 3CE, the brand said that it must buy two plates to use the allowance, and the two sides were deadlocked. Li Jiaqi said: "As long as you give this price, we are confident that the product will be sold out." When negotiating with Winona, Li Jiaqi also offered attractive conditions: "This year, Winona must sit first in the category." ”

In this variety show dedicated to showing Li Jiaqi's "extreme pull" with the brand, after several rounds of confrontation, most brands chose to give in and "endure the pain" to accept Li Jiaqi's Double 11 plan. Whether it is real bargaining or performing according to the script, this show has pushed fans' expectations for Li Jiaqi and Double 11 to a high point.

In order to expand the volume of Double 11, in addition to variety shows, Li Jiaqi also launched the "Li Jiaqi Small Class" on October 17 to help consumers make shopping decisions and sort out shopping guides according to the needs of different fans. On October 18, the "Li Jiaqi Double 11 Strategy Document" was paved with Little Red Book and Douyin while the iron was hot, and KOLs did a good job of product strategy in advance in case users could "copy homework".

On October 24, the first day of the Double 11 pre-sale, Li Jiaqi appeared in front of the camera as promised, and 460 million people watched his live broadcast, with an estimated GMV of more than 15 billion yuan.

More important battles are yet to come, and he is ready for a backwater battle.

Undercurrents surge

Li Jiaqi left the live broadcast room for 3 months, and the beauty brand behind Zhang Nan could only wait.

This year 618, the brand originally bet all its treasures on Li Jiaqi, not only prepared nearly 100 million yuan of goods, but also took out a marketing budget of 20 million yuan, bent on rushing to the ranking in the promotion activities. The sudden suspension caught the brand off guard and pressed the inventory worth nearly 10 million yuan.

Since July this year, the brand's sales have fallen off a cliff, with a monthly sales gap of nearly 2 million yuan. Zhang Nan told Snow Leopard Finance that at least 30% of the beauty brand's sales in 2021 came from Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room.

Magic Mirror market data shows that during Li Jiaqi's suspension of broadcasting, most of the sales data of brands with high correlation with it declined to varying degrees, including many brands with reduced sales.

Taking Huaxi Biotech's skin care brand Quadi as an example, in 2020, Quadi entered Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room for the first time, achieving revenue of 391 million yuan that year, a year-on-year increase of more than 500%. On Double 11 in 2021, the sales of Quadi in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room reached 334 million yuan, accounting for 94% of Quadi's total sales in that month. After Li Jiaqi stopped broadcasting in June this year, Quadi's sales fell by 71% year-on-year the following month.

For beauty brands that work closely with Li Jiaqi, Li Jiaqi has become an indispensable "sales channel".

During Double 11, she couldn't enter Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, and Ma Li's beauty brand contacted 10 head anchors and twenty or thirty waist anchors, but she still regretted it. In her opinion, Li Jiaqi not only means sales guarantee for the brand, but also means the improvement of popularity and influence, "which cannot be achieved by finding more waist anchors."

This is Marley's sixth Double 11 and she has never felt so much pressure. "We saved the marketing budget from July to September and left it all for Double 11, but we may not be able to achieve the same results as last year." Ma Li told Snow Leopard Finance that now the marketing department is in a state of full sales, and everyone has a mountain above their heads.

Platforms and consumers are also waiting for Li Jiaqi.

The weak sales of merchants are a microcosm of the slowdown in the growth rate of the entire Tao e-commerce. According to a research report by CITIC Securities, the implementation of the e-commerce anti-monopoly law, the impact of the local epidemic, and the diversion of emerging channels represented by Douyin have led to pressure on the growth of Taojie platforms, with sales of skin care products from January to September 2022 decreasing by 11% year-on-year and makeup by 21% year-on-year.

After losing Weiya and Li Jiaqi, Taobao Live once fell into an embarrassing situation of being leaderless and having no successor. In the face of the continuous emergence of top anchors on Douyin and the Kuaishou Simba family firmly occupying the top position, Taobao urgently needs Li Jiaqi to launch a charge and achieve a counterattack at the home of Double 11.

In the promotional image of Double 11 anchor fans released by Taobao, Li Jiaqi and Luo Yonghao, the head anchor of Douyin who was poached, ranked in the first echelon. On the afternoon of the first day of the Double 11 pre-sale, Li Jiaqi appeared in the most conspicuous publicity position and traffic entrance on the homepage of Taobao Live.

Li Jiaqi's iron fan plums have been watching live broadcasts since 2019, and for her, shopping in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room is like going to a sweet date. After Li Jiaqi disappeared, she lost her enthusiasm for "chopping hands" and dived in the "All Girls WeChat Group" every day, waiting for the moment of replay.

After Li Jiaqi's return to Double 11, Li Zi plans to stock up on all the products that were missed in the second half of this year and will be used in the first half of next year. In her opinion, "Double 11 without Li Jiaqi has lost its soul and meaning, and shopping has lost its purpose and enthusiasm." Similar views are not uncommon among Li Jiaqi's fan base.

Waiting, expecting, and eagerly looking forward to it, when the emotions of brands, platforms and consumers continue to accumulate, Li Jiaqi, who has been pushed to the front, is trying to rush to a new GMV peak.

After the

Taobao, Double 11, Li Jiaqi - the combination of 3 keywords means that this is a battle that cannot be lost. But what about after the victory?

Inseparable from Li Jiaqi's brands, force yourself to prepare for leaving Li Jiaqi.

Lin Jun, channel director of a mother and baby head brand, told Snow Leopard Finance that since 618 cooperated with Li Jiaqi last year, they began to try store broadcasting, which will be the most important business position next. Since last year, they have been consciously reducing their investment in top anchors and investing their budget in store self-broadcasting.

Snow Leopard Finance and Economics observed that the brand's store view data last year was usually around 30,000, and this year's number of viewers usually reached 100,000+, and there were more than 800,000 views on the first day of Double 11 pre-sale.

"Taobao will organize a storecast qualifying tournament for nearly a month before Double 11, and the better the results, the more traffic support the platform will give." Lin Jun told Snow Leopard Finance that from the beginning of this year, their company's store broadcast ROI can be stable at about 2, contributing nearly 10% of sales per month. But in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, the brand can only rush sales on the bottom line that is not lower than the cost.

On Double 11 this year, the brand also appeared in Li Jiaqi's mother and baby live broadcast, and prepared nearly 1 million sets of products. "We only cooperated with Li Jiaqi for super-head anchors, and the rest are female middle-waist anchors, on the one hand, they are in line with the brand's user portrait, and on the other hand, the pit fee is cheaper." Lin Jun said that in the future daily live broadcast, he will increase the budget of store broadcasters and waist anchors, and give more profits and repurchase funds to his own store broadcasts.

The beauty brands that used to hug Li Jiaqi's thighs did not want to be trapped anymore, vigorously supported brand store broadcasts, and sought an antidote to the emptiness after the carnival in advance.

Ma Li's beauty brand has set up a store broadcast team since this year, and the daily cost is only 1000~2000 yuan. "In the first half of the year, the loss of store live broadcast is normal, 12 hours of broadcasting a day, and the data and ROI can stabilize after half a year." She told Snow Leopard Finance that during the promotion, the pit fee of super-head anchors for beauty categories will rise by 20%~30%, and the explosive products and new products that want to be pushed can be sent to the live broadcast room, and regular products are still precipitated in their own stores to improve the long-term repurchase rate of fans.

As of 8:30 p.m. on October 24, the live broadcast viewing data of Estée Lauder, Winona, Shiseido, and L'Oreal flagship stores were 6.79 million, 3.6 million, 2.78 million, and 2.74 million, respectively.

This means that even with the blessing of traffic and sales, there is still the ability to wrestle with the brand, and Li Jiaqi can hardly become synonymous with "the lowest price on the whole network".

On Little Red Book, Li Jiaqi's Double 11 Beauty Guide was complained by netizens that many products were "not cost-effective". Some items of international big brands such as Helena, Clarins, and La Mer are about 100 yuan more expensive than 618. A user told Snow Leopard Finance that the prices of some products in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room are similar to those of other anchors.

Taking Guerlain Essence Water as an example, in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room and Bee Surprise Club, the price per milliliter is exactly the same, "you can buy it in other live broadcast rooms without grabbing it". The Dyson V10 Slim vacuum cleaner costs 2890 yuan in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, and the price of the Jingdong flagship store is only 2490 yuan, and coupons can also be stacked. Dyson HD08 hair dryer red, Cobos t10 sweeping robot and other small household appliances, the price of Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room is also 50~300 yuan more expensive than Jingdong.

Will the excitement of Double 11 be short-lived? The signs that can be seen are that the MCN and platform behind Li Jiaqi are preparing for his possible downhill road.

After the beauty session on October 24, ONE arranged special live broadcasts for mother and baby, home appliances, home decoration, etc., and added a "broadcast assistant field" to the daily live broadcast. Li Jiaqi only appeared in the live broadcast room during the prime time from 8 o'clock to 10 o'clock, and the rest of the time was an assistant broadcaster. While expanding its category, ONE is also cultivating more successors.

Taobao adjusted the display of live viewing data in the live broadcast room in the early stage of Double 11, capped at "10 million+", and the number that the super-head anchor was proud of was hidden. On the anchor report card released by Taobao Live, Luo Yonghao, Shiitake Mushroom and waist anchor became the key mentions, and Li Jiaqi's name rarely appeared.

The smoke of Double 11 is still filling, and Li Jiaqi is still in the spotlight, constantly impacting higher GMV. Before the last e-commerce feast in 2022, everyone is desperate to squeeze on Li Jiaqi's ship, and for all parties involved in the game, a sense of relaxation will be the biggest enemy.

(The characters in this article are pseudonyms)