Zhang Da, fired.
As the most unpopular artist among netizens in recent years, he is on the road of "whitewashing".
Previously, the topic that Zhang Dada faced was-
#张大大滚出娱乐圈 #
After staying up for a few years, instead of rolling, the painting style became like this:
"I never expected that Zhang Da was my only connection in the entertainment industry."
From the past thousands of people scolded and disliked, to now millions of people begging for wheat, Zhang Da has become the "Wishing Pool King Eight" who responds to requests, or the harmless kind of people and animals - although it is not loved by everyone, but compared with the past and now, it can be regarded as a salted fish turned over.
Behind this, how exactly is it transformed?
-1-
Zhang Da's MCN on Douyin shows that it is Worry-Free Media.
When I saw this logo, I would probably know why Zhang Da changed it.
A hot artist on Carefree Media is still Liu Genghong. In April and May 2022, his fitness whirlwind roared by, and no one did not jump with him. At that time, it also coincided with the explosion of "Sister Lang 3" on Wang Xinling, and the Xinling boy and the Genghong girl dominated the Internet and contracted almost half of the entertainment topics.
Zhang Da and Liu Genghong's live broadcast pays great attention to the spread of topics, and on the basis of matching the characteristics of artists, it shines again. Just like a second-hand baby on an idle fish, it can be polished with one click.
The secret lies in "creating a topic".
This kind of thinking, in fact, is a media-style way of playing - with the patience and flexibility of doing media content, creating a "happy for all" Internet topic.
And what is the topic? It is the focus that regardless of the size of the media, new and old, it is willing to chase, and the root of marketing numbers and self-media will also spontaneously spread.
This is the source of traffic.
Only, it depends on the positive nature of the topic. Under the worry-free operation, whether it is Liu Genghong or Zhang Da, it is the old cucumber painted green, and there is a new feeling.
According to the public data of Worry-free Media, when they took over Zhang Da, the number of fans was only more than 500,000, Lianmai rose by 2 million fans within 24 hours, the fans quickly exceeded 5 million, the number of exposures was 220 million times, the likes exceeded 800 million, the views were 17.81 million+, and as of press time, the fans had reached more than 7.3 million.
Zhang Da's current most criticized point is that "the script traces are too heavy", which is precisely caused by the active actions of Carefree Media in topic creation. But not just any script can produce follow-up topics, but you need to be familiar with all aspects of the communication chain to make the "script" have a positive effect.
Familiarity with media communication and social platform voice is the key to creating a "successful script".
Of course, whether the public eats this, it needs to be reasonably controlled and optimized, which also involves another media advantage: professionalism.
In terms of communication, the new and old media thinking is actually a false proposition, the essence is to distinguish whether there is "professional ethics". Are "self-media" and "social media" new? A lot of garbage is produced endlessly, without any transmission value.
Professional traditional media thinking can at least avoid "garbage" - forming meaningful topic depth and breadth.
From this point of view, Zhang Da and Liu Genghong are to Worry-free Media, both make full use of the mass communication appeal and complete the iteration of a traditional artist.
In fact, this is similar to another topical anchor, Zhang Lan. As a media darling at the end of 2022, Zhang Lan also used media thinking to do live broadcasts, creating one entertainment headline after another with extremely strong topic content.
Similarly, Zhang Da is extremely entertaining, but this is destined to be incomparable with Liu Genghong, who focuses on fitness and has a higher national degree, so he can go relatively far enough. A negative description of "too much entertainment" is "gossip", and this field is generally considered to be inferior, and in the media industry, gossip versions are generally difficult to sell branded advertising.
So, there are advantages, and there are disadvantages visible to the naked eye - the ceiling is too low.
Zhang Da plays "Wishing Fountain King Eight"
-2-
Worry-free is in the media gene.
The founder, Lei Binyi, comes from the media industry and worked for Phoenix.com for 3 years since 2011 before founding Worry-Free. Compared with other online media, relying on Phoenix Satellite TV, the traditional media attributes of Phoenix Network are more important.
At that time, Lei Binyi was one of the heads of wireless business in the video sector of Phoenix.com, and his specific position was the director of the video copyright procurement department. There are two key words: video, wireless.
Phoenix Network's videos, usually, most of them come from Phoenix Satellite TV, cutting the program and publishing, and Lei Binyi also needs to do external content procurement, which needs to test the familiarity of user cognition and purchase properly; Wireless, on the other hand, is a mobile phone terminal business. This is in line with his later founding of Carefree Media based on mobile short video and live broadcast.
In June 2014, Lei Binyi switched to YY Entertainment. Presumably, here, he deeply touched Internet celebrities, live broadcasts and other matters, and became the source of his entrepreneurship.
Lei Binyi, founder of Carefree Media
In 2016, Lei Binyi founded Carefree Media. According to his own words, he once told the media that at the beginning of its creation, he hoped to "become Internet celebrities" of stars. But at first, Lei Binyi later elaborated: "At that time, I felt that the time was not ripe, the whole society did not understand the stardom of Internet celebrities and the networking of stars, and many stars did not understand short videos and live broadcasts. ”
Indeed, in 2016-2017, when he founded the company, only Kuaishou had a certain user base on the short video platform, and Douyin still had a gap with Kuaishou at the end of 2017, and only after the Spring Festival in 2018 did Douyin fully catch up.
At that time, the live broadcast was mostly a show type, and the live broadcast with goods had just sprouted on Taobao, and it would not become a popular track until a few years later.
According to insiders, when Carefree Media started its business, there were three founders, including Lei Binyi, and it was known as the "Three Musketeers" internally. In 2018, Carefree Media began to embark on the fast track. By the end of 2022, there are 3,000 employees in Worry-free, which is regarded as a medium-sized factory in the Internet field.
This means that strong internal management mechanisms are required. In July 2019, Lei Binyi recruited Li Lin, former vice president and chief talent officer of Phoenix.com, to join him as president. Among the worry-free senior management and early core employees, there are also former senior executives and employees of Phoenix.com.
Therefore, Carefree Media has a very strong trace of Phoenix.com.
Unlike Netease, Tencent, Sohu and other former portals that created a batch of entrepreneurial teams, entrepreneurs from Phoenix.com, the "fifth largest portal" that year, are really rare, and now worry-free, but add a touch of brilliance to the Phoenix family.
From this point of view, the background color of worry-free is very pure -
Strong media attributes.
This is also why when they create Internet celebrities, they can always be strongly oriented to "topic planning", which is relatively consistent with the media's ability to grasp hot spots.
-3-
Previously, "Extra and Sister Mao Mao" revealed during the live broadcast that when he signed Wuyou, the boss Lei Binyi gave him a monthly salary of 60,000. That was five or six years ago, and if what was said was true, the arrogance of the worry-free signing Internet celebrity can be seen.
However, not all industry insiders revealed that only the head has a "guarantee". With the worry-free now known as 9W signed Internet celebrities, 90% will not have a guarantee, but will receive water content operation, after being on the track, get live broadcast or bring goods commission.
Around 2018, among the Internet celebrities initially signed by Carefree Media, "Extra and Mao Mao Sister" and "Big Wolf Dog Zheng Jianpeng & Yanzhen Couple" are the only two recognizable, and by 2019, when President Li Lin joined, there were only 3 more than 10 million fans, and the other was a spicy Dezi of the food track.
For the creation of online native Internet celebrities, worry-free is also leveraged with "topics".
When "Big Wolf Dog Zheng Jianpeng & Yanzhen Couple" signed Worry-free, they just had one million fans, and then Worry-free planned a series of videos of "Chartered Public" - filming their own rent collection process. They wore drag boards, carried snakeskin bags, and carried large strings of keys, completing the rapid growth of fans. In just one month, it has exceeded the 10 million fan mark, and has more than 52 million fans so far.
In a word, it is the same as the way to create celebrity Internet celebrities later.
Some worry-free employees have posted on the Internet, saying that they use variety shows to do live broadcasts and short videos, that is, they must carry out preliminary planning, script writing, topic selection, and the on-the-spot performance of stars or Internet celebrities. But the core is - to output the topic and detonate it on the whole network.
Of course, this is called a "script".
Compared with many Internet celebrities' scripts, from the current observation, worry-free assistance to Internet celebrities to do the planning, based on the characteristics of Internet celebrities themselves, integrated into social topics, while attracting traffic, attracting media attention.
In fact, this is similar to the star setting in the entertainment industry, and the authenticity must be tested in the end.
Being a native Internet celebrity, muffled to make a fortune, but the worry-free reputation spread out, or after the successful launch of Liu Genghong. Celebrities have a clear driving effect on the reputation of the worry-free industry.
A company, the reputation is there, the model is through, the management is up, and the next step is self-evident.
"Entertainment Spring and Autumn" found that Carefree Media has recently been recruiting legal managers with IPO financing experience, and may be preparing for IPO listing. However, the former "first stock of Internet celebrity" Ruhan Holdings (a company founded by Zhang Dayi) was delisted two years ago, can Worry-free Media carry the next "Internet celebrity stock"?
-4-
Zhang Da, who signed a contract with Worry-free Media in January this year, actually tested the water and brought goods live in 2021. In June of that year, Zhang Da started a live broadcast on Taobao, but netizens did not pay, from the choking before the start of the broadcast to the continuous boycott after the broadcast, so that Zhang Da had to hastily collect the army, and ended with writing an apology.
In the hands of worry-free, the "dead horse" as a living horse doctor can also be regarded as playing a new trick.
For Zhang Da's content planning, Worry-free Media is also constantly iterating. Before the writing of this article, "Entertainment Spring and Autumn" learned that Carefree Media is making adjustments based on feedback, and it is not convenient to speak out to the outside world at present.
What will be the end of Zhang Da's road to "whitewashing"? Needless to say, it will still fall on "bringing goods" in the end.
However, given that Zhang Da had too many "black spots" before, after this wave of noise, will there be a rebound, or even a situation of being "eaten" by traffic?
And do the onlookers really like it or is it just watching a play?
On February 15, China News Network commented that Zhang Dada's popularity was because "internal entertainment thirsty for people for a long time", praising Zhang Da's "down-to-earth". But a week later, some media called Zhang Da's live broadcast - farce. On February 22, the official account of the Qilu Evening News "Qilu Viewpoint" commented: "This wishing live broadcast room has been constantly performing antics and setting off a farce carnival on the Internet. ”
"Entertainment to death" is the norm on short video platforms, but it is also the most criticized place.
For Zhang Da and Carefree Media, after the explosion, it is the beginning of the real test.
Written by | Jack Lee
Curated | Editorial Department of Entertainment Spring and Autumn