Text | New Entropy, author | Li Lili, editor| Moonmi
Li Ziqi, whose video stopped for two months, recently appeared offline.
On September 23, Li Ziqi appeared at the scene of the Chinese farmers' harvest event, and was hired as the image ambassador of Sichuan farming culture, sitting quietly in the front row, the video is still not updated, the "real problem" in the assistant's mouth seems to have not been completely solved, and netizens have labeled it as "the entanglement of ignorant girls in the mountains and the old fox of capital".
But influencers and capital are not antagonistic. As a popular IP asset, Internet celebrities have commercial realization value and develop to a certain stage, commercialization is destined to be a hurdle that Internet celebrities cannot avoid, without the resources, marketing and promotion brought by capital, it may be difficult for Internet celebrities to achieve large-scale commercialization. But with it, it loses some of its dominance, or even is "elevated".
In the process of capital game, these super Internet celebrities who stand out, who are the lucky ones who have passed the hurdles, and who are the tools symbolized by capital? Is there a perfect relationship between capital and influencers?
<h2>01 The "little white rabbit" of the business world</h2>
From the latest issue of the "Ancient French Salt" video to today, Li Ziqi has been cut off for 72 days. Correspondingly, rumors such as "Li Ziqi alarmed the police" and "angrily rebuked capital" were rampant.
In 2016, before Li Ziqi's Lanzhou ramen video exploded, a mcN head named Liu Tongming approached Li Ziqi, who had only 10,000 Weibo followers. After a hot pot, the two reached a division of labor cooperation in content and operation, Hangzhou Weinian began to provide Weibo resource promotion services for Li Ziqi, and Li Ziqi fully invested his energy in content creation.
Since August 2016, Hangzhou Weinian has registered up to 96 "Plum Ziqi" and "Ziqi" trademarks, in addition to beer and beverages, convenience foods, food, kitchen sanitary ware and other related industries, but also covers lamps and air conditioning, machinery, furniture, arms and fireworks, metal materials and other industries. The scope is beyond imagination.
In July 2017, Li Ziqi and Hangzhou Weian changed the cooperation model, the contract model was changed to the joint venture company model, and Sichuan Ziqi Culture Communication Co., Ltd. was jointly established to prepare the Li Ziqi brand and operate jointly, with both parties holding 51% and 49% of the shares. In actual operation, this company undertook the trademark registration of almost all categories of the "Li Ziqi" brand, and more than 200 trademarks, including "Ziqi" and "LIZIQI", are unique to Sichuan Ziqi.
After deeply binding Li Ziqi, Hangzhou Weinian also began to become the target of capital competition from all sides.
According to Tianyan, Hangzhou Weinian has completed 7 rounds of financing, with a valuation of up to 5 billion yuan. Investors include Huaying Capital, Sina Weibo, Mango Fund, Zhongyuan Capital, ByteDance, etc. Six of the 7 rounds of financing came after Hangzhou Weinian and Li Ziqi were tied. However, Tianyan's investigation shows that the list of 22 shareholders of Hangzhou Weinian does not have the name of Li Ziqi, and the major shareholder, Liu Tongming, the founder of Hangzhou Weinian, holds about 19.45% of the shares. In the list of key personnel, there is no shadow of Li Ziqi.
Li Ziqi, who never brings goods but has a call for super head anchors, the Tmall flagship store named after her, the main body of industrial and commercial registration is Hangzhou Weinian. Previously, the Li Ziqi brand officially announced that it would invest in the construction of a snail powder factory in Liuzhou. In July 2020, Guangxi Xingliu Food Co., Ltd. was established, of which Hangzhou Weinian held 70% of the shares, Hangzhou Chuangliu Food Co., Ltd. held 30%, and Li Ziqi was still not within the scope of shareholders and key personnel.
Therefore, even at the same time as the video stops, the products on Li Ziqi's flagship store are still continuous, and most of the product promotional videos are taken from Li Ziqi's related videos.
Since Li Ziqi does not hold shares in Hangzhou Weinian, this means that neither the Tmall flagship store nor the profit of the snail powder factory can be distributed through equity. Li Ziqi's account on YouTube is also responsible for the operating company. It is understood that YouTube gives content creators a fairly high incentive. According to data from Noinfluencer, an overseas influencer marketing service, Li Ziqi has about $500,000 a month in advertising alliance revenue on YouTube. And Li Ziqi, China's first international Internet celebrity to go out of the circle, how much share he can get depends on the specific provisions of the contract between the two sides.
The direction of the story is still unknown, and for Li Ziqi, it is a lesson of capital. Super Internet celebrities are still tied by institutions, and some ordinary content creators are deeply mired in the quagmire of "creation" and "just food".
Lin Chen, a million fan of Station B who was hit by a video in Wuhan during the anti-epidemic period, released a video in April 2020 about the contradiction between the business order contact and MCN. Specific to this incident, MCN required Lin Chen to carry a business order advertisement in some videos, and if He breached the contract, Lin Chen would be deprived of his account and compensate 300w liquidated damages.
Similar termination experience also occurred on the "Xiangxiang Battle" account, in May 2020, B station 6 million fans UP master "Xiangxiang Battle" suddenly released a farewell video, revealing that because of a dispute with the company, and the company may withdraw the "Xiangxiang Battle" account. Sure enough, after a period of silence, the UP lord returned to the B station with "please, Brother Xiaoxiang".
This simple separation model of commercialization and content creation, if you are not careful, you will bury your own mines, you need to carefully read the terms of the contract before signing the contract, and some Internet celebrities choose to do MCN and tell business stories with capital.
<h2>02 The capital strategy of big IP</h2>
To this day, some people still refer to papi sauce as the "originator of Internet celebrity", and in the case that the business model of Internet celebrities is not particularly clear, she has brought another imagination space to a group of content producers - being selected by capital.
Although Papi Sauce and Zhou Dongyu have talked about their Chinese opera alumni relationship more than once in the show, Zhou Dongyu's thesis was revised with the help of Papi Sauce. But from the perspective of closer capital binding, the intersection of the two is far more than that.
Two months after receiving an investment of 12 million yuan, Beijing Chunyu Tinglei Network Technology Co., Ltd. was established, which was later papitube, as an MCN institution that incubated celebrities, and the most well-known artist is still papi sauce. The company, which is 30% owned by papi sauce, has the largest shareholder being Taiyang Chuanhe, and its well-known artists include Zhou Dongyu, Angelababy, Chen He and so on.
In fact, papitub was incorporated into Taiyang Chuanhe shortly after its establishment, becoming a short video creation and self-media service of Taiyang Chuanhe. A month after the merger, Taichuan Yanghe received a round of 120 million financing.
As can be seen on the official website of Taichuan Yanghe, the short video MCN matrix based on papi sauce has now become a small climate. Food, Hong Kong style, reviews and many other fields are involved, and papitube, which relies on papi sauce to get its first investment, seems to have gotten rid of big IP dependence.
But to a large extent, such a large-scale signing and incubation is more like a capital layout completed by the parent company Taiyang Chuanhe with papi sauce. The company, formerly known as Angelababy Studios and now transformed to work for artists, understands the nuclear fusion effect of successfully creating a big IP in the Internet age.
According to the shareholder analysis of Taiyang Chuanhe, Beijing Quantum Leap Technology Co., Ltd. is also involved, and the shareholders behind this company are more familiar with ByteDance. This can also indirectly explain that from the explosion of Weibo to the entry of Douyin, papitube's Internet celebrities will hardly encounter traffic barriers.
At the same time, Aikeri, Mu Yalan and other Internet celebrities almost disappeared, and papi sauce is still popular, which has its own good strength and capital endorsement.
Papi Sauce is not the only one who has transformed from an internet celebrity to an institution. Since 2019, the UP masters of the knowledge area such as the wizard finance and the half-Buddha immortals that have exploded from the B station have set off another round of transformation in the direction of content creation. This kind of pan-financial science popularization big IP quickly completed the accumulation of fans, and then set up institutions to start cultivating their own business matrix.
Financial knowledge blogger Wizard Finance, when stationed in the watermelon video, made a lot of noise, in the B station exclusive and watermelon video eight-figure opening price in the middle, the wizard chose to terminate the B station, the head did not turn back to the embrace of the watermelon video. In October 2020, WizardTube was established, and the introduction of all platforms was marked with the words "Wizarding Tube Incubation Influencer & Agency Operation". Instead of "fighting" with the platform and MCN agencies, it is better to be the boss yourself.
However, judging from the update frequency of Wizard Finance on the watermelon video, the recruitment of more than a year does not seem to inject vitality into the account, and the interval between months and even longer seems incompatible with the wave of rapidly decaying short videos.
Different from the speed of the wizard's financial month, the half-Buddha immortals who became popular in the B station at the same time maintained the amazing speed of the public number day more 1, the video number more or four more a week. And spare no effort to divert multiple accounts in articles and videos. Although the Wizard Finance and the Half-Buddha Immortal parted ways on the B station, they seemed to have the same destination in the subsequent development. This is a unique "natural selection and survival of the fittest" that belongs to the short video era.
<h2>03 There is no freedom to turn around</h2>
The head IP does not have the liberation of "the harder you work, the more free", but is more deeply bound by "the greater the ability, the greater the responsibility".
Recently, li jiaqi and Wei Ya, the head anchors who fought out, although they held the biggest traffic tilt of Taobao, they seemed to have begun to show fatigue with the naked eye. Behind the beauty and humility, including the first share of Internet celebrity incubation, Ruhan has also begun to spare no effort to accelerate the layout of the next super anchor. But so far, the list of anchors has been updated day by day, and the list of people has remained almost unchanged. Coupled with several inevitable frequent rollover incidents, the spearhead is not only the irregularity of the selection. On a larger level, the anchor's supply chain system does not cooperate efficiently with the expansion of IP.
Li Jiaqi, who wants to do his own thing in the selection, is facing the current situation of squeezing the traffic in the live broadcast room. Li Jiaqi, who is not deeply bound to the United States, is also not as free to come and go as the outside world thinks. In public information, ONE has conducted three rounds of financing in 2016 and 2017, and 2016 and 2017 are the beginning of Li Jiaqi's emergence. In the following four years, Meione and Li Jiaqi were inseparable, and it was difficult to gain the favor of capital.
Even if there is no bundle of interests, it is impossible to build a team of 100 people for the service of "Li Jiaqi" from scratch, and the United States cannot find the next Li Jiaqi, and Li Jiaqi, who is running wildly, cannot press the emergency pause button. Whether it is the extended Neva family or Li Jiaqi's new product show, the essence is to dig deep into Li Jiaqi's personal value. Li Jiaqi, who came from a beauty BA, and his team are handy in improving brand value and brand voice, and it is difficult to carry out the layout of large-scale cost reduction and efficiency increase in the supply chain.
Last year, Li Jiaqi broadcast a hoarse voice and broadcast to the sales figures. In September this year, the live broadcast room was already filled with smoke, and the head anchor began to prepare for Double Eleven. The arms race front of this e-commerce festival is getting longer and longer, and more and more participants are participating. Accordingly, the machine began to run at high speed without any screws that could be loosened. Even the Via couple, who have a slight upper hand in the confrontation with capital, are also running fast in inertia, and it is difficult to move in the whirlpool.
Compared with Li Jiaqi bypassing the supply chain problem, Wei Ya's team has carried out a variety of business formats such as supply chain, red economy, video number matrix and other attempts, although there are 50+ anchor teams, but the number of fans exceeding 10 million is still only Wei Ya, and its second largest anchor "An An Anan" is more than ten times worse than Via in terms of fan volume alone.
Most of these former waves were short-lived, and they only had time to meet with capital. Very few can become capital by chance. A fewer of the chosen ones, married to capital.
On January 28, 2021, Qingdao Qian meow Private Equity Fund Management Co., Ltd., which is 100% owned by Qianxun Holdings, was established, and two months later, Qianxun Academy was launched and launched the Qianxun Academy, an internet celebrity training camp. Although there has been no investment action, Qianxun has mastered the right to speak, and has a capital platform, and the former tool man has lifted the line in the puppet's hand, but it is still difficult.
The problem of continuous Internet celebrity incubation is not only to challenge Qianxun, Ruhan, who was once the first share of Internet celebrity e-commerce, was listed twice and delisted, and the outside world analysis believes that "success is also Zhang Dayi, and defeat is also Zhang Dayi". Successful big Internet celebrities are difficult to realize the dream of the capital market, confined to the big and difficult dilemma.
In the traditional era of television, content producers are chasing the so-called "golden time". When the media can be carried on the body at any time, all time is likely to be prime time. Later, with the rise of pan-live technology, the length of time to create a public figure was once again compressed, and the cyberspace was full of gold.
Li Shi has a paragraph about freedom: "People do not want to be kidnapped, the simplest way is not to resist, not to call the police, but to obey." You take the initiative to tie yourself up and appear to be particularly free. ”
From the moment of cooperation with capital, Internet celebrities are facing an involuntary path of realization. Capital does not have to be indefensible, and Internet celebrities do not need to be miserable. In this era when traffic is king, as long as the demand is still there, the story of capital and internet celebrities will always be updated.