Little Red Book needs many Dong Jies

Text | Dou Xuan

Edit | Qiao Qian

Produced | 36Kr future consumption

WeChat ID | lslb168

No one expected that the latest e-commerce live broadcast came from Xiaohongshu, which did a tepid live broadcast.

A few weeks ago, Dong Jie started her second live broadcast on Xiaohongshu. This live broadcast of more than 6 hours, relying on the style of anti-shouting and slow-pacing, sold more than 30 million sales, of which the Ms MIN cardigan with a unit price of 5,200 yuan and the umawang ballet shoes with a unit price of 4,932 yuan were sold out and removed, successfully ranked first in Xiaohongshu, and even Dong Jie's own reputation and popularity also ushered in a wave of reversal.

According to 36Kr Future Consumption, Dong Jie's live broadcast this time is the result of in-depth cooperation between his team and the official team of Xiaohongshu. In the near future, Xiaohongshu will upgrade the "live broadcast business" to an independent department to manage live streaming content and live e-commerce and other businesses in a unified manner. This means that the strategic position of the e-commerce live broadcast business has improved, and this year will carry more Xiaohongshu's growth expectations.

In the past few years, Xiaohongshu has tried many attempts in e-commerce, but has failed to achieve obvious results. "Last year, Xiaohongshu live streaming e-commerce spent a full two months doing user interviews, and finally determined the direction of doing consistency with the community content ecology." A person close to Xiaohongshu revealed to 36Kr Future Consumption.

After the big anchors appeared and left the scene in turn, when the entire live streaming e-commerce industry turned from high speed to low speed, Xiaohongshu began to test a road that no one had traveled. And the cooperation with Dong Jie is the beginning of this road.

Segmented needs for live streaming that are seen

In fact, this is not Dong Jie's first live broadcast on Xiaohongshu.

According to people familiar with the matter, in December last year, the staff of Xiaohongshu e-commerce was already talking with Dong Jie about the cooperation of live streaming e-commerce. Also on January 13 this year, Dong Jie opened her first live broadcast in Xiaohongshu.

But no one expected that the effect of the second live broadcast would be so "beyond expectations", and the live broadcast room that night "kept selling out, constantly replenishing, and even starting to replenish a month's pre-sale." ”

Celebrity goods are not new. But Dong Jie's live broadcast, from explanation to product selection, the style is obviously different from most celebrities on the market.

Dong Jie's style, in one word to describe is "slow", without the urging of "321 fast order", without noisy loud shouting, Dong Jie and the assistant's explanation is gentle and soft, very similar to a chat between friends.

Dong Jie's live broadcast room

Different from the brightly lit store-style live broadcast room, the set of Dong Jie's live broadcast room is also arranged as a corner of the living room with light French style, and the lighting is soft.

This is a quiet, life-like, and texture-seeking live broadcast room, and many netizens commented that it was "healing live broadcast", and some even said that "after watching it, it can ease my mental internal friction".

The selection of products in Dong Jie's live broadcast room does not follow the common "nine pieces and nine on the car" routine on the market, but focuses on niche designer brands with medium and high prices and the pursuit of aesthetics and texture, many of which are in the price of 1,000 yuan. According to 36Kr Future Consumption, Dong Jie and the Xiaohongshu team will do four rounds of product selection before each live broadcast, Dong Jie himself will personally check the check, and Xiaohongshu officials are also deeply involved in product selection, brand matching and other links.

If on other platforms, the high unit price may not be so applicable, but in the Xiaohongshu user group with strong consumption power and pursuit of quality, you can buy textured products that cannot be bought in other live broadcast rooms, but it hits the needs of this part of users.

There are three main sources of Dong Jie's selection, one is the brand that Dong Jie likes or uses every day, the second is the purchase preference brand of Dong Jie's fan portrait, and the third is the Xiaohongshu e-commerce user preference or the brand supported by the official itself - on Xiaohongshu, the designer brand itself is the category to focus on.

A niche brand that appeared in Dong Jie's live broadcast room

Dong Jie's live broadcast brought goods is not sudden at all, she herself has long accumulated the character of the sister next door who "loves life" in Xiaohongshu. Before opening the delivery, Dong Jie already had more than 1 million fans in Xiaohongshu and maintained a more frequent update for more than a week.

The theme of this live broadcast "Dong Life" is the grass planting IP that Dong Jie has been operating since soon after she settled in Xiaohongshu, and she often shares her daily life and good things under this theme. Before starting this live broadcast in February, Dong Jie's team also made a number of notes and videos to warm up.

Obviously, Dong Jie's content style and product selection violate the successful formula of live streaming e-commerce. But its final effect may also show that users have a demand for content and experience in addition to low prices in the live broadcast room. Last year's explosion of Oriental Selection also relied on very distinctive knowledge content and became a new benchmark for Douyin live broadcasting.

As Doris, the founder of the Dao Art Research Institute, mentioned when disassembling Dong Jie's live broadcast, during the live broadcast 1.0, the price was low and there were many promotions, but now it has entered the live broadcast 2.0 period, no longer relying on large currency to lower prices, but the era of fragmentation, verticalization, and crowd loosening of the territory.

For live streaming e-commerce entrepreneurs, this may be a new idea.

Restart live streaming e-commerce, can Xiaohongshu do a good job?

Dong Jie's outing also makes people look at Xiaohongshu's e-commerce business. In the past year, since the departure of the previous head of e-commerce, Jace, the e-commerce business has been managed by Conan, COO of Xiaohongshu. But in 2022, Xiaohongshu's focus is still on commercialization, and e-commerce has become a secondary sector.

However, just last week, according to Latepost, Xiaohongshu will upgrade the live broadcast business to an independent department, unified management of live content and live e-commerce and other businesses, under the responsibility of Yinshi, the former head of Xiaohongshu's community ecology department.

This means that in terms of structure, Xiaohongshu will increase its attention to the live streaming e-commerce business this year. At the beginning of the year, Xiaohongshu also tested the video entrance on the homepage grayscale, replacing the original shelf e-commerce entrance. These actions show that in the next year, live streaming e-commerce may become the most important growth point of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce business.

In a relatively low-key year, Xiaohongshu is not without action against e-commerce. In March last year, Xiaohongshu launched product notes, and users can see the purchase link directly under some of the planting notes. At the same time, the integrated strategy of number stores launched in 2021 is also continuing, and even in self-operated e-commerce, Xiaohongshu has also relied on trendy sports categories to make a small oasis of its own brand. However, the volume of this business is not large at present, and the GMV target of more than 100 million has just been set this year.

Overall, the relationship between Xiaohongshu's e-commerce and community content has become closer. But more importantly, which direction should Xiaohongshu's e-commerce go?

In the past few years, Xiaohongshu has tried self-operated e-commerce, live streaming e-commerce and other directions, and even recruited Li Jiaqi's assistant Fu Peng to create a benchmark for the platform's live broadcast, but no great effect has been seen.

I have to admit that Xiaohongshu is difficult to compare with a giant platform like Shake Kuaitao, both in terms of price and traffic. If you want to tear a hole in the e-commerce business, you may have to take a differentiated route.

Dong Jie is not the first star that Xiaohongshu has cooperated with recently, as early as last year's Double 11, Xiaohongshu signed a contract with Jiang Sida to start live broadcasting.

In Jiang Sida's live broadcast room, the characteristics of Xiaohongshu's high unit price have been presented, and bicycles with a daily price of 20,000 yuan and ASICS co-branded shoes of up to 4,000 yuan can be quickly sold out.

After Dong Jie came out of the circle this time, Xiaohongshu CMO Zhiheng directly said on his Xiaohongshu account, saying that Dong Jie was the benchmark of Xiaohongshu live broadcast. A person close to Xiaohongshu revealed to 36Kr that Xiaohongshu really hopes to make Dong Jie and Jiang Sida a benchmark, so that partners can see specific cases to make judgments, and can also be used as the object of imitation by other star bloggers.

According to 36Kr Future Consumption, the cooperation with Dong Jie has also given Xiaohongshu a more specific understanding of what tone, style, and user hobbies it is suitable for. However, Dong Jie's current live broadcast frequency is only once every 1-1 and a half months, and Xiaohongshu will continue to cooperate with a series of stars in the future. A week after Dong Jie livestreamed out of the circle, female star Zhang Li also opened her premiere in Xiaohongshu.

Zhang Li's style in Xiaohongshu's live broadcast is also completely different from the store style that she himself has tried on Douyin, and also pays more attention to keywords such as the prominence of personality and relaxation atmosphere. In her premiere, you can faintly see some experiences that have been verified in Dong Jie's live broadcast room.

At the same time, Xiaohongshu has also begun to launch a series of support programs. Just last Monday, Yinshi, the new person in charge of live streaming e-commerce, had already appeared at Xiaohongshu's e-commerce live broadcast fashion partner conference. At this conference, Xiaohongshu announced the launch of the "Fashion Spark Plan", which provides tens of billions of traffic support for fashion merchants and anchors, as well as support policies such as pallet selection, marketing tools, and platform services. At the same time, Xiaohongshu announced at the conference that it will launch REDlabel, an original niche design platform for fashion categories.

Xiaohongshu recently held the e-commerce live broadcast fashion partner conference

Fashion is the category that Xiaohongshu live streaming e-commerce plans to focus on this year. According to 36Kr Future Consumption, in addition, this year's key categories include home, sports outdoor, beauty and personal care. These are also Xiaohongshu's strong content categories.

"Planting grass attributes" is still the focus of Xiaohongshu's live broadcast room, so the target of goods is also aimed at groups such as original designers, or industry professionals such as star makeup artists and perfume testers.

With the current volume of tens of billions of GMV of Xiaohongshu e-commerce, it is not too difficult to make an increase through a case like Dong Jie. But if the e-commerce business wants to truly form a scale, Xiaohongshu also needs many Dong Jies.