"Why does a man who doesn't even want to run for me with a Keep medal say he loves me?"
Source| AI Blue Media Exchange
ID:lanmeih001
Author|Yan Ye
Editor|Wei Xiao
On the first day of March, when college student Wang Lin was lying in the dormitory casually flipping through the circle of friends, he suddenly received a @reminder from his girlfriend:
"Thanks to the medal that the baby ran for me, the Demon Sword badge that I cherished in my heart finally belongs to me." The accompanying picture is a "Sword of Angels and Devils" medal handed out by the Keep online running event.
Below this circle of friends, there are many Wang Lin and girlfriends and mutual friends came to like, and some of them commented to their girlfriends: "It's so good-looking", "I really envy", "I also have to let my boyfriend run a piece for me".
Looking at the envious comments of his friends and the happy text of his girlfriend, Wang Lin suddenly felt that even if running was very painful for him, as long as he could make his girlfriend happy, it was also a "sweet burden".
Wang Lin told AI Blue Media Exchange that in order to get this medal, he ran 14 laps on the playground one afternoon, and also spent 69 yuan on the registration fee on Keep, which fulfilled his girlfriend's wish.
And this all stems from his girlfriend's phrase "love me, go and run a Keep medal for me".
Who would have thought that in the invention and innovation of the Internet, a small medal has become a carrier for couples to express their love, and has also become their latest social currency.
On Little Red Book, there are more than 50,000 notes related to the "Keep medal". These notes involve user-made Keep medal walls, Amway in different medal styles, sharing unboxing, strategies for obtaining medals, and complaining about lightning protection. Among them, a note with the highest number of likes of 118,000 wrote "Show me the medals my boyfriend runs, accumulate a full sense of happiness", in the comment area, there are many female users @ their boyfriends, asking their boyfriends to run medals for themselves, and some users slightly sour said that they want to run for themselves.
Meanwhile, on Douyin, #Keep Medal# received 2.38 billion plays, and #Keep Medal Unbox# also received 10.949 million plays. In these videos, users hold Keep medals handed out by different events, either "running for their future girlfriend" or "immersive unboxing" to get higher traffic.
As the popularity continues to rise, Keep medals have also begun to be paid attention to by the capital market.
On the 4th of last month, Weibo user @hanxuhanxu posted that "chatting with Keep's friends, I really didn't expect ah, trying so many monetization models is not smooth, and the result is selling 500 million by selling medals."
In this regard, AI Blue Media asked Keep for confirmation, and the other party replied that "it is not so high".
Of course, regardless of the actual revenue figures, it is a sure thing that Keep has reaped a wave of traffic and dividends with medals.
Perhaps, for the company, which has submitted two listing applications on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange last year, the medals business can add fuel to its dream of setting foot on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Keep medals to witness love
In this day and age, a "I love you" is far less important than 99 roses or a ring. In exchange for the post-00s who have just entered the society, even a medal is far more tangible than a fluttering word "love".
This is the original intention of Yang Wei, a junior this year, to let her boyfriend run Keep medals for herself.
Yang Wei said that the first time she knew about this kind of medal was on Little Red Book, and the most out-of-the-loop "Sanrio" joint Yugui dog medal suddenly poked her aesthetic. In order to be able to pocket this medal, she specially downloaded Keep and followed the tutorial to find the event page of this medal. The rules of the event state that in order to win a medal, you must run as short as 2.023 kilometers and need to "finish the race in one go".
This is really a painful errand for Yang Wei, who has failed to test 800 meters for many years.
However, she also learned through Xiaohongshu that many sisters chose to let their boyfriends run for them, and by the way to test each other's sincerity towards themselves. So, Yang Wei communicated with her boyfriend, let the other party spend 39 yuan on the registration fee, and let him use one afternoon to run the corresponding kilometers on the playground, and finally got his wish to win this "witness love" medal.
By now, Yang Wei already has Keep medals from different IPs including Yugui Dog, Magic Card Girl Sakura, Three-Body Problem, Little Prince, etc., all of which were run for her by her boyfriend with his legs.
"I made an appointment with my boyfriend to run for me a month, which is both ritual and deepens the relationship between us." Yang Wei said.
For young people like Yang Wei, the Keep medal brings meaning far beyond the scope of medals: on the one hand, it brings them satisfaction, allowing them to get attention on social platforms, on the other hand, it has also become a love lie detector for some couples.
In the "Sports Shopping" column at the bottom of the Keep APP, the "Medals" challenge has been mentioned from the original "Activity Center" section to the location of the home page. After clicking in, you can see that there are currently a large number of medal activities with different IPs and styles waiting for users to choose. Among them, there are IP medals such as HelloKitty, Buzz Lightyear, Three-Eyed Boy, and Chichititi, as well as original medals such as Sakura Sweet Dream, Mirror Future, Sword of Angels and Demons, and Pilgrimage Heavenly Road.
And to get these good-looking limited medals, users have to pay more than sweat.
Take the "Blooming Covenant|Magic Card Girl Sakura Online Second Bullet" activity, which has been participated by 21,573 people so far, as an example. APP shows that the registration time for this medal activity is from March 9 to April 29, users can choose to run 1KM, 4.01KM, 10KM, 20KM four different activity groups at one time, and the medals obtained are divided into the "physical medal package" with an entry fee of 39 yuan and the "virtual medal package" of 19.9 yuan, each package will get a route skin and two dynamic stickers in addition to the medals.
At the same time, users also need to complete the challenge according to the regulations in order to receive the medal.
In other words, only those who have completed the corresponding number of kilometers can they qualify for the purchase of medals.
Keep medals, feed the second-hand market
It is this "sense of superiority after sports" and "sense of achievement after gaining attention" that makes these medals become darlings on social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin.
On Xiaohongshu, users with more than 20 medals abound. Some users have also purchased display frames for these medals, and some users have tutorials to make these medals into key chains, pendants and other accessories, all of which have received a lot of comments and likes.
On Douyin, after searching for "Keep medals", in addition to videos posted by users, you will also find various middlemen selling second-hand medals. Among them, a large number of out-of-print medals are the mainstay, and the price is much higher than the purchase price in the Keep mall.
For example, the original price of "Cupid's arrow brooch" was bought at 65.55 yuan in a Douyin shop, and the original price of 69 yuan "Sword of Angels and Devils" was sold for 88 yuan in a Douyin shop.
Relying on keywords such as "you can get it without running" and "out of print", these medals are quite moist in the second-hand market. Although the sales volume is not very high, it also proves that the flow of Keep medals allows second-hand dealers to see business opportunities.
Of course, it is not only second-hand dealers who see business opportunities.
On Idle Fish, Keep has become a popular business among college students. AI Blue Media Exchange randomly selected a substitute runner, and the other party said that it would charge according to different kilometers. The price of 1km is 1 yuan, the price within 5km is 2 yuan, and the price of 10km is 4 yuan, if you buy, you only need to pay and provide the account password of the Keep APP to ensure that the pure manual running is completed on the same day.
He also said that he himself is a marathon enthusiast, runs every day, and taking over the running business is just a convenient thing, and has sold more than 140 orders and earned about 800 yuan.
Similar generation runs, there are at least hundreds of idle fish platforms alone.
It can be said that the Keep medal, which has gradually become the social currency of young people, not only allows Keep to see full dividends, but also wins business opportunities in the secondary market.
It seems that there is a scene of the blind box and other trendy games that swept the market.
Can the medals business solve the urgent need?
For the company that submitted its prospectus for the second time and aspired to have a place on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the medals business may become a lifesaver after the gradual decline of sports and fitness dividends.
This can be seen in the increase in the weight of the "Medals" page.
As mentioned earlier, in the new version of the Keep APP, the "medal activity" has been upgraded from the second-level page to the first-level page, and the "posting of medals" has also become an important part of the community. Many users will post their running medals and accompanying "online marathon certificates" here, and call these "rivers and mountains they have built".
The event center page has also been covered by various medal challenges.
According to the app, popular activities such as "HelloKitty Freeze Motion | Sweet Limited Online Run" and "Angel and Demon Sword | Super Girl Supergirl Series Online Run" have been participated by 130,000 and 70,000 people respectively. According to the registration fee ranging from 39-69 yuan, the income of these two activities alone is about 10 million yuan.
According to the "Monthly Calendar of Events", the "Love Magic|Love in Close Series" event, which will start in March, has received 3,862 subscriptions.
At the same time, Keep's prospectus shows that from October 2021 to May 2022, Keep launched three online themed running activities, with more than 1.1 million paying users participating in the activities, and the total amount of commodity transactions generated by the event registration fee exceeded 50 million yuan.
Obviously, the explosive medals business has brought enough attention and not low revenue for Keep.
However, as Keep, which aspires to become the world's largest smart fitness platform, the medal dividend can only temporarily alleviate the urgent need.
According to the prospectus, Keep's operating income from 2019 to 2021 was 663 million yuan, 1.107 billion yuan and 1.619 billion yuan, while losses were 735 million yuan, 2.2 billion yuan and 2.9 billion yuan.
It is clear that there is no harmonious ratio of income to loss.
In this regard, Keep also explained in the prospectus that "due to increased confidence in long-term profitability, as of September 30, 2021, it strategically increased spending on traffic acquisition and branding to further acquire, activate and retain users." ”
This means that Keep has increased its marketing expenses in order to retain users. This also continued to this year, Keep told AI Blue Media Exchange that this year Keep will cooperate with more head IPs in the medal business, and increase the proportion of self-operated investment including design resources, operation resources, and some internal incentive mechanisms.
However, despite increased spending on operations and marketing, its conversion rate on the user side is not optimistic.
According to Keep's updated prospectus in September last year, Keep's average monthly member retention rates were 70.8%, 73.3%, 71.7% and 69.4% for 2019, 2020 and 2021 and the six months ended June 30, 2022, respectively.
Clearly, after a wave of peak demand for stay-at-home exercise during the pandemic in 2020, member retention has shown a downward trend.
During the interview, many users also said that they were not interested in Keep's member content, and similar content has a "free flat version" on Xiaohongshu and B station platforms, and the only thing that can attract them is the medal business.
In fact, in order to attract users to pay, Keep does spend a lot of thought.
At the beginning of last year, Keep vigorously promoted its "Keepland" gym business, saying that it had completed its goal of working with 100 gyms in Beijing in 2022 and will expand to 150 in 2023. However, the prospectus shows that in the first quarter of 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022, Keepland's revenue accounted for 4.5%, 1.9%, 1.9% and 1.7% of Keep's total revenue in the same period, respectively.
This proves that the returns that gyms have given Keep are not satisfactory, and this business was rarely mentioned in the prospectus updated last September.
Other aspects, including fitness classes, light meals, fitness equipment and other products are all measures that Keep is trying to drive user consumption. However, the competition for these fitness products in the market has never stopped, and fitness and sports platforms such as Mint Health and Gudong have also launched their own products, while platforms such as Taobao and Jingdong are also at the forefront of seizing the minds of users.
In the face of internal and external pressure, the explosion of the medals business can certainly bring new users and new opportunities to Keep, but in terms of the long-term development of the platform, perhaps, how to retain the users attracted by the medals, differentiate among many fitness products on the market, and improve the effectiveness of marketing expenses and many other problems can be effectively solved, in order to open the door of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for Keep.