Wen | Director Shi Can
Edited | Shi Can
There is no industry that always stands at the center of the social stage, only an industry that dances with the times.
Counting the cooperation between Internet companies and the Spring Festival Gala in the past, it is the norm to announce cooperation news months in advance, and the closer to the Chinese New Year's Eve Spring Festival Gala announcement, it becomes news.
It is reported that the exclusive vertical screen live broadcast copyright of the 2023 Spring Festival Gala was given to WeChat Channels, and Douyin and Kuaishou respectively obtained the horizontal screen copyright. This just reflects the pattern of domestic short video platforms in the beginning of 2023.
So, why did the Spring Festival Gala choose these three platforms this year?
Short videos cannot be without the Spring Festival Gala
This is not the first time that the Spring Festival Gala has cooperated with Douyin, Kuaishou and Youtube. In 2022, the Spring Festival Gala was broadcast on Channels for the first time in vertical format, with a total of 120 million people watching the Spring Festival Gala on Channels that day, and the live broadcast of the Spring Festival Gala can also be watched on Douyin and Kuaishou. With last year's successful experience, it is natural to replicate it again this year.
From the perspective of users, the daily active user scale of Douyin + Kuaishou alone exceeds 1000 million, plus the video number, which constitutes a super traffic market of 1.5 billion. This means that on the day of the Chinese New Year's Eve, the top content Spring Festival Gala will receive 1.5 billion exposures on the three short video platforms.
Although the short video industry has reached the platform period of user growth, it is still on the rise, especially Tencent's "Hope for the Whole Village" video account, which will still maintain a relatively high growth rate in 2023. It can be expected that the cooperation with Channels + Jitter Kuai, because the overall number of users of the three short video platforms is rising", for the Spring Festival Gala, it can also continue to improve the communication effect.
From the perspective of content, the choice of short video platform as the small-screen broadcast platform of the Spring Festival Gala also has the consideration that the evening content is suitable for viewing through the small screen. Hedgehog Commune (ID: ciweigongshe) believes that because users can send comments and emojis at any time with the help of mobile terminals, and add the interactive attributes brought by the small screen, for a longer party, it can greatly enhance the user's real-time interaction, get the fun of participation, and let users watch more.
In recent years, in addition to broadcasting the content of the long party of central and local TV stations, platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou and Channels will also make their own long-term party and live broadcast content, such as Douyin's recent "To Spring" New Year concert, "Stardust with You" live broadcast carnival, Kuaishou's live spotlight festival, "One Thousand and One Nights Old Iron Gala", and Channel's "Global Sunrise Chasing Light 2023 Video Number Live Broadcast"...
In the past few years, doing such long-term live broadcasts with long time and complex scheduling has increasingly become the standardized ability of various short video platforms, which naturally can catch the top content of the Spring Festival Gala, the Chinese New Year's Eve night, and cultivate the habit of users watching the party on the short video platform.
From the perspective of the platform, the introduction of longer content such as evening parties can effectively extend the time of use of users. In the past two or three years, short video platforms have tried to allow users to watch long videos on the platform by introducing long-form videos such as self-made variety shows and dramas, meeting the needs of different users and increasing the overall usage time of users. On this basis, the platform has the opportunity to develop more commercialization possibilities - live streaming e-commerce, advertising and grass planting, and even local life services.
In addition to extending the user's time, the long-term video content such as the Spring Festival Gala can also play a role in attracting new users. To a considerable extent, it is a display of brand influence and industry status.
This year, the Internet industry is waiting for which Internet company will win the seat of exclusive interactive cooperation project partner of the Spring Festival Gala. Until January 18, 2023, when the three Internet platforms of Douyin, Kuaishou and Channels all said that they had cooperated with the Spring Festival Gala, their expectations were disappointed, and the logic of cooperation completely changed.
Exclusive cooperation has become multiple cooperation, and there is no completely "eating alone" company, but the form of cooperation is distinguished. The cooperation between Kuaishou, Douyin and the Spring Festival Gala involves horizontal screen live broadcast, on-demand and short video rights, and WeChat Channels has obtained the exclusive privilege of vertical screen live broadcast.
However, from the cooperation of Video, Hedgehog Commune also observed that Tencent is seeking breakthroughs in individual products and achieving overall growth of the company through a single point of outbreak.
This is different from the first time Kuaishou and Douyin cooperated with the Spring Festival Gala, Kuaishou wants to change the internal organizational strength through the project system, so as to realize the short video war pattern; Douyin has a relatively strong "temporary battle" rescue mood, from the business side, Douyin has also obtained a booster for user growth.
Unlike Tencent, which is a growth company, Tencent is large enough to reach a stage where new businesses that urgently need "quick results" to activate themselves. At the end of 2022, Ma Huateng said within the company that WXG's brightest business is the video number, which is basically the hope of the whole field (the whole company). Looking at it in the next three years, the short video battle of the 2023 Spring Festival Gala is related to the fate of the video number.
Why do you always stare at the Spring Festival Gala?
Luo Zhenyu wanted to promote the app in 2018, and he wanted to sponsor an advertisement at the Spring Festival Gala. After making meticulous preparations, he and the team officially visited the CCTV advertising department.
The leader of the advertising department told him seriously: "If Internet companies want to be on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, there is a small threshold - Internet products can live more than 100 million a day." Otherwise, the moment the ad comes out, your server will crash. ”
After two months, the results of the tender came out - Taobao.
Taobao knew how big the traffic of the Spring Festival Gala was, and they pushed it to various extremes, tripling the capacity of the 2017 Double 11 shopping festival, and as a result, the actual peak exceeded 15 times that of Double 11.
The Taobao team and Luo Zhenyu both sighed: We really don't know anything about the power of the Spring Festival Gala.
Since its birth, the Spring Festival Gala has become a new folk custom for most Chinese New Year. Due to its own cultural attributes and cultural influence, the Spring Festival Gala was originally an important symbol to strengthen the status of a star artist in the industry, the newcomer appeared on the Spring Festival Gala, not far from overnight fame, the most memorable comedian Xiao Shenyang's road to fame, he performed in the northeast in his early years, after appearing on the Spring Festival Gala stage, his career has been singing all the way. In a short time, he took the influence given to him by the Spring Festival Gala.
This convenient path to overnight fame was first captured by WeChat in 2015 during the upswing of the Internet economy. On the day of the Chinese New Year's Eve, the total number of WeChat red envelopes was more than 1 billion, and WeChat Pay was a great success, crushing competitors Alipay and changing the competitive landscape of China's mobile payment. WeChat faced the traffic blessing of the Spring Festival Gala, just like Xiao Shenyang: caught it.
However, the value of WeChat's business leap through the Spring Festival Gala is far greater than the simple "Spring Festival Gala".
WeChat as a social communication software, in 2015, it is in the rising stage of the life cycle. At that time, there were many entrepreneurs who entered the social track to get a piece of the pie, and in the face of countless competitors in the social track, it needed to launch a full-scale battle and win big. WeChat did it, and did it well.
But WeChat did not rely on tough blocking means to annihilate opponents, but released a lot of positive signals, the entire social market to make bigger, in 2016, China's Internet social track ushered in a greater outbreak, the market around strangers and acquaintances two categories of competition field, growth of Tantan, Nice, Pulse, Mei Chat and other large and small products. The subsequent innovation of entrepreneurs around social networking was more or less affected by the battle of the WeChat Spring Festival Gala.
Subsequently, the cooperation between Alipay and Taobao represented the rising development of e-commerce economy; Baidu's strategic intention for the Spring Festival Gala is more focused on seeking the evolution of internal business and the re-emergence of the overall brand; Kuaishou and Douyin symbolize the rising and hot stage of the short video wave; JD.com is different from the former, it has the dual characteristics of online virtual economy and offline real economy, representing the external industry orientation of that period.
But the power of the Spring Festival Gala was not verified on WeChat, as early as 1984, in the first advertisement, major consumer brands have proved it. The brands that can cooperate with the Spring Festival Gala are not idle people, Haier, Midea, Guojiao, Wuliangye, etc., are all "giants" in the traditional consumer market. With the changes of the times, the Spring Festival Gala advertising has also become a microcosm of China's economic development, just look at different years, completed by different sponsors, but coherent research, the Internet economic products represented by WeChat, since 2015, have been the focus of attention of the Spring Festival Gala sponsorship seats.
The influence obtained by cooperating with the Spring Festival Gala is top-down, full of a pyramid-like power transmission meaning, and there will be huge authority and endorsement blessings for the Internet companies that have cooperated.
What can be seen, calculated, and measured is traffic data, and what can be felt, perceived, and evaluated is the audience's emotions, but smart cooperation platforms will make good use of hidden value. Companies that are good at using this part of the value will grow tremendously.
In recent years, deeply involved in the Spring Festival Gala of Internet companies, Kuaishou, Douyin, Baidu, Jingdong have obtained huge returns, massive users are the most basic demand, the main site App will undertake a huge number of users, they with money, technology, computing power, organizational structure, gameplay creativity and other combination punches, to deal with a world's largest online "traffic tsunami".
For the Internet companies that cooperate with the Spring Festival Gala, the Spring Festival Gala is also a position for military training. In October 2019, Kuaishou became the exclusive interactive cooperation project partner of the 2020 CCTV Spring Festival Gala, and the company's combat office area was plastered with Kuaishou cultural posters with the words "K3 Catch", and the top management hoped to tear off the Buddhist label and inject wolf elements into the company's culture. Kuaishou struck while the iron was hot, and in the following year, adjusted the entire organizational culture and entered the more mainstream brand vision.
Judging from the reporting habits of the media, even if the sponsoring partner company fails to withstand the traffic pressure of the Spring Festival Gala, it can be repeatedly mentioned by history, gain brand exposure, and extend the long-tail effect of the brand indefinitely.
Who deserves the Spring Festival Gala? It often becomes a deeply buried topic in the industry, and it is also one of the reasons to look forward to who can become a partner of the Spring Festival Gala
This Spring Festival, the Internet doesn't want to work hard?
Since 2015, every year has been a key moment for several major Internet companies to increase their investment year by year. Judging from the interaction of CCTV's Spring Festival Gala red envelopes, the amount invested by Internet companies has increased year by year, at least nominally, from 500 million in WeChat in 2015 to 1.5 billion in JD.com in 2022.
At that time, if you don't pay attention, the opponent may take advantage of the huge traffic brought by the Spring Festival and the Spring Festival Gala to achieve a reversal in the scale of users or the number of transactions. For example, in 2015, WeChat's "counterattack" on Alipay. Alibaba quickly followed up the "make-up class" and became the red envelope interactive partner of CCTV's Spring Festival Gala for three consecutive years since 2016. At the time of rapid growth of Internet traffic and user scale, the Spring Festival, which can efficiently drive growth, has become a key node that Internet companies must take.
However, since the Spring Festival in 2020, although major Internet companies are still doing actions such as sending red envelopes, collecting cards, and distributing red envelopes, except for the companies that won the exclusive interaction of the Spring Festival Gala, they will be full of strength and put on a posture of "putting satellites" to mobilize the resources of the whole company, and other companies treat Spring Festival red envelopes more and more like a routine.
Looking at the numbers alone, it can be found that although the "brain-burning" gameplay of voucher injection and comparable to Double 11 hinders users' smooth expression, the "Spring Festival red envelopes" of mainstream Internet companies in 2021 still exceeded 12 billion; By 2022, that number has shrunk to about 8 billion; Until 2023, many apps have not even put the "xx billion" logo that will definitely be updated in the icon during the Spring Festival in the past, and the overall scale is only about half of that of 2022, about 4 billion, and the complexity of the gameplay has further increased.
The reason is mainly that the cost-effectiveness ratio of sending red envelopes and engaging in marketing during the Spring Festival is not as good as before - when the major super apps occupy almost all netizens' mobile phones, Douyin, Kuaishou, WeChat, Taobao, Baidu, Alipay, Jingdong and other apps have become products that every user cannot do without, and then the necessity of large-scale new marketing is not great, and more energy will be focused on increasing user time and increasing the consumption of individual users.
In addition, the current traffic growth that festival marketing can leverage is relatively limited, such as the recent self-media Tech Planet said that the New Year's Eve party of a TV station sponsored by a leading e-commerce platform, the increase in platform turnover is not as good as Double 11.
Second, the Spring Festival red envelope interaction is already an "unbearable weight" for large Internet companies that are "reducing costs and increasing efficiency". The smart platform has begun to dilute costs by finding partners.
For example, Kuaishou, which issued red envelopes this Spring Festival - 2 billion - accounted for half of the red envelope quota on the entire network, found Feihe as the "total title". Finding a "title dealer" for Spring Festival red envelope interaction is rare among major Internet companies. But for Internet companies that are "reducing costs and increasing efficiency", it is still clear which is more important to face and inside.
In the end, it may not be that the internet companies are not working hard, but that times are changing. The change of partners of the Spring Festival Gala also indicates that the industry has come full circle and come to a new starting point again. You know, since 2003, twenty years ago, Midea has continuously named the CCTV Spring Festival Gala for more than ten years, and the history of all Internet companies becoming interactive partners of the Spring Festival Gala is only more than half of the history of Midea's title Spring Festival Gala. It is also reported that the total title merchant of the 2023 CCTV Spring Festival Gala is Yili.
External changes have made many Internet companies also rethink the cost-effectiveness of cooperation with the Spring Festival Gala. Since WeChat used the red envelope game to launch the brand and user volume in 2015, the red packet game has been verified to eat all in the Internet world, Kuaishou, Jingdong, Taobao, Alipay, Douyin, Xiaohongshu and almost all first- and second-tier app main companies have independently formulated operation projects for the Spring Festival Gala nodes around the New Year, seizing the Spring Festival dividend, and the wave of red envelopes swept the Internet. For brand merchants, they attach great importance to the "red envelope effect" during the Spring Festival. They are vested interests in the business subject ecosystem
According to the Hedgehog Commune, some employees within many Internet companies follow the project actions of major holidays every year, completing one project and following up another project, and the seamless connection is in full swing. Behind this is an upgrade performance of the Internet company's project system, and it is also a test for the internal organization of the Internet company during the holiday.
Under the three conditions that anyone can do it, everyone can do it, and anyone can do it, the threshold for deliberately choosing to cooperate with the Spring Festival Gala is much higher. Another condition that constitutes necessity is the trend of reducing costs and increasing efficiency in the Internet industry, which makes many platforms have to consider how to spend this huge sum.
This also corresponds to the saying "there are no successful enterprises, only the enterprises of the times". The same is true for an industry. There is no industry that always stands at the center of the social stage, only an industry that dances with the times.