Via, don't get off the table

Written by | Wu Xun

Edit | Gong Zheng

Road

In 2021, Weiya was affected by tax incidents and gradually faded out of the public eye. Dong Haifeng, who has been low-key behind the scenes for supporting his wife for a long time, has frequently come to the front of the stage recently.

Bidding farewell to the once high-profile head female anchor identity, Weiya and her husband's latest trend is to choose to set up a new stall in the current hot AI field. It is not difficult to find that the word "private entrepreneur", which is currently highly concerned, has become a new identity recognized by the couple.

#01

Appeared

Dressed in a black suit with a gentle tone.

On October 12, Dong Haifeng appeared at the "3rd China New E-commerce Conference", which is an industry conference with an official background hosted by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Commerce and the CCPIT, and hosted by the Jilin Provincial Government, the Provincial Cyberspace Administration of Commerce, the Department of Commerce and the Changchun Municipal People's Government.

Many people have seen Wei Ya in the live broadcast room, but many Northeast Laotie are still seeing Weiya's husband offline for the first time. In 2021, after Weiya faded out of the public eye, Dong Haifeng, who was once behind the scenes, began to turn and move more to the foreground.

This is not Dong Haifeng's debut.

As early as August 8 this year, a conference called "Redefining the Vitality of Live Broadcast 2023 AI Innovation Conference" appeared on a huge screen in Hangzhou before the Asian Games.

At the conference, Dong Haifeng, the owner of a well-known MCN company, became the leader of an artificial intelligence technology company, and the store was still Qianxun Holdings (hereinafter referred to as Qianxun).

Figure | Dong Haifeng attended the New E-commerce Conference

This trip to the northeast can be regarded as a push to find new business. But that's not the focus of the audience. People in the venue paid attention to whether Dong Haifeng took a selfie with his back to the background board. On the Internet, this is often considered a form of rubbing behavior for public figures seeking a comeback. Although it was not Dong who violated the law before.

It was not until he stepped onto the stage that people found that Dong Haifeng was officially invited to come as a representative of the industry.

If it weren't for Dong Haifeng, people might have forgotten about Weiya.

From 2022, Weiya's voice on the Internet is much less. She paid for her mistakes. During this period, many rising stars also rose, such as the Guangdong couple under Carefree Media.

Is Via really idle?

In the most popular years, Wei Ya was broken into eight petals alone, in addition to busy live broadcasts and product selection, she also participated in the recording of variety shows, accepted interviews, attended offline activities, and once only slept on the road for two or three days.

Xu Zhiyuan of "Thirteen Invitations" commented on her as "an anti-mythological myth". This overloaded work pattern exhausted her. There is a saying that when she returned home, Weiya basically did not speak. So much so that Dong Haifeng felt sorry for his wife, and shouted in the company group several times: "She is my wife, her workload is too big, so her body will be unbearable." ”

But at that time, Weiya couldn't stop. Wei Ya told Xu Zhiyuan, "It is a very important thing to satisfy everyone. ”

#02

Signal

On October 11, Zhu Yong, Director of the Department of E-Commerce of the Ministry of Commerce, Zhang Qianjiang, Deputy Director of the Department of Commerce of Zhejiang Province, and Wu Changhong, Chief Economist of the Hangzhou Municipal Bureau of Commerce, visited Qianxun for investigation. This seems to release a signal: as a leading enterprise in live streaming e-commerce, Qianxun's development and exploration achievements in the past two years are representative and should be taken seriously.

In February 2022, Qianxun successively built a matrix system of Bee Surprise Club, Bee Fun Club and Bee Wish Club.

The former Lord will retreat, but this does not mean that the Lord will be able to retreat from this whole.

On a video platform account of Dong Haifeng, he and Wei Ya's daily life will be posted from time to time. In addition to a more relaxed sense and taste of life in the video, Weiya can still see late-night office meetings. Wearing a black cap, he is no different from the general perception of Internet company managers.

Wei Ya is still busy, but he and Dong Haifeng have changed dance steps - the former front desk has become behind the scenes, and the former behind the scenes has gone more to the front desk.

According to sources, there is still Wei Ya's shadow behind the "Three Bee Clubs", her delicate makeup has hardly changed, and her actions are still stormy. She passed on her experience and lessons to more anchors. It is clear that Qianxun needs these reserve forces to mature as soon as possible, and the industry also needs more mature forces to undertake the rising market demand.

Figure | Weiya was never idle

Mature entrepreneurs never fight unprepared battles. After the big move of establishing the Three Bee Society in February last year, Wei Ya and Dong Haifeng continued to do a lot of foreshadowing. Genuine reflection and testing of market acceptance are indispensable for business people who pursue both business and safety.

At the third quarter of the time-honored brand carnival in April this year, Weiya suddenly appeared as the "chief tutor" of Zhejiang Century-old Brand Research Institute and Guochao College, sharing experience in user operation, cross-border transformation of enterprises, and cultural exchanges. This is seen by some outsiders as a test to see if she has any other active space besides the anchor.

Wearing a light yellow uniform, he is still fluent in expression. When telling his tortuous entrepreneurial experience, he did not shy away from the embarrassment of entering the industry. But unlike more e-commerce anchors, Weiya's sharing has more analysis of the underlying logic and consumption trends of e-commerce live broadcasting, which may not have been possible before.

Figure | Big brands will carry out risk control, but the new products of Guochao want sales

It is a wise choice to strengthen the connection with the long-established brand, and the national tide is revived and there is a large demand for sales conversion of new products.

As early as 2021, when the overall ratio of the number of users who purchased domestic goods to imported goods was 1:3 (data from the "2022 Young People's Domestic Consumption Trend Report"), Weiya continued to invite brands such as adopting a cow, Zhang Fei Langying Shredded Beef, Run Baiyan, Caitang and other brands into her live broadcast room.

Weiya needs to combine these brands with live streaming e-commerce to form a case to form a know-how and material for Qianxun and even the entire live streaming e-commerce industry to empower the market and support new brands.

At the beginning of this year, more than 100,000 items were sold by Qianxunbang Wufangzhai mung bean cake, Yao Shengji hand-peeled pecans, and Zhufu copper art gourd pendants. Deeply bound to the national tide, this kind of resource is a long-lasting stabilizer for Qianxun's next "human broadcast" or "machine broadcast".

The fans haven't completely left. Whenever a hot event occurs in the live broadcast business community, there will still be some voices mentioning Weiya, such as "I want to know how much is the eyebrow pencil in Weiya's live broadcast room".

At this time-honored carnival, Qianxun and Weiya both got the certainty they needed - practical experience and accumulated methodology are the confidence to go one step further.

Stand from the perspective of the big picture, start with the subtleties, and find the essence of the problem. Perhaps because they have been exposed to the rain, whether it is Weiya or Qianxun, they regard compliance as the key to the company's foothold at the head of the tide.

On September 19, Qianxun invited relevant experts from Zhejiang Advertising Monitoring Center to conduct "compliance" training for the company's anchors, and Dong Haifeng and Wei Ya participated together. The husband and wife sat in the first row, looking serious and dignified, and their attitude towards learning was very serious.

From the many actions of this previous and subsequent actions, it can be seen that Weiya is not passive. Choosing to move forward in advance versus conservatism, or retreat, is perhaps the best option for reflecting on past mistakes.

The topic of live streaming compliance is one of the focuses of Weiya's current work.

"Compliance development, live streaming can go a long way." Last year, Xue Jun, director of the E-commerce Law Research Center at Peking University, suggested that the responsibility of the platform should be consolidated, so that it can assume its own legal and social responsibilities, clarify the relevant institutional responsibilities for training Internet celebrities and anchors, and ensure legal compliance.

According to the brand side, the selection of products in the live broadcast room of the "Bee Three Clubs" is now very strict, and it needs to go through 9 checkpoints such as "qualification compliance review", "sample testing review", "preliminary review by professional committee", "review" and "final review", and the final pass rate is less than 3%.

Qianxun's Antelope system has enabled Qianxun's live broadcast room to achieve full traceability of standard compliance, including the whole process of investment promotion, product selection, pre-broadcast and post-broadcast, and built industry-leading compliance capabilities. Taking the live broadcast as an example, consumers can use the Antelope system to conduct post-broadcast evaluation monitoring, fan return visits, customer service monitoring, etc.

This high standard of requirements is considered to be the embodiment of Weiya's maturity, and it is estimated that it is also the best way for her to resist negative voices from the outside world.

#03

up

In the Taobao live broadcast room, a beautiful and generous lady, holding a pair of sneakers in her hand, her lips naturally turned up and down, and she was explaining the characteristics of the product very affinity. In fact, she is a digital person launched by Qianxun.

When technologies such as ChatGPT were not yet popular, it is said that Dong Haifeng visited many industry insiders very early. He sees that AI digital human live streaming will be a major trend in live streaming e-commerce, which can not only reduce costs and increase efficiency for stores, but also promote the further digitalization of the real economy and tap the potential of brand sales.

This initiative stems from Dong Haifeng's long-term thinking about whether Qianxun has the ability to achieve sustainable development.

Over-reliance on top anchors and fragile operating structures plague almost all MCN organizations. The trend of steep changes in the industry is even more worrying.

Dong Haifeng's dividing line for Qianxun was set in 2019, when he said in an interview with the media: Before 2019, it is to copy the "Weiya experience" to more anchors. At that time, there were many of the top 20 anchors of Taobao Live Broadcast.

After 2019, traditional e-commerce operations have reached their limits, costs continue to increase, it is difficult to bring more sales to merchants, and it is necessary to find ways to further reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Under the drastic changes in the industry, the only way to solve the problem of transformation and upgrading can only be innovation, and the self-innovation completed by entrepreneurs from top to bottom means a good start.

At the right time, AIGC offers a new solution.

In the past two years, leading manufacturers have rushed to enter the track of AI digital humans. Baidu has successively released digital human production and live streaming e-commerce operation platforms, while Taobao has taken the lead in using digital humans to fill in the blank time and tap potential during non-prime hours such as late at night. In addition, car companies, consumer goods and even authoritative official media have also adopted digital people as anchors. Market awareness of this area has gradually expanded, and the cost-effectiveness of relevant business models has been further verified.

Figure | Configuring virtual human anchors has gradually become the industry standard

In August this year, Qianxun finally officially launched the AI digital human business and one-stop AI intelligent live broadcast integrated service platform, which aims at the virtual human live broadcast e-commerce dividend driven by 5G, VR, and AR technologies.

Driven by AI-related businesses, Qianxun is also quietly changing the company's attributes, transforming from a slightly traditional MCN company to the most fashionable digital technology company. And Wei Ya and his wife have also transformed from the bosses of a live streaming e-commerce agency to a private entrepreneur full of science and technology.

When big live broadcast companies are frantically involving, such as pit fees and anchor signings, Qianxun is also found to be constantly moving in other fields. Juzi Bio, the "first stock of collagen" listed in November 2022, Delmar, an innovative small home appliance brand listed in May 2023, and Feng Wei, which frequently appears on major platforms such as Taobao Douyin, all have Qianxun figures.

From making money on his own to empowering the industry with technology, Qianxun has completed the reengineering of business logic. And Wei Ya has also quietly upgraded from an anchor to a "private entrepreneur". This is a clear word that echoes the times.

In August this year, the "28 Articles for Promoting the Development of Private Enterprises" was born, which reassured the private economy and created excellent development expectations. As long as it is legal and compliant, private entrepreneurs can have broad space for development. The country also needs more private entrepreneurs with ideas and responsibilities to invigorate the economy.

In this context, a series of business words that echoed the main theme began to appear earlier and more often in the business of Qianxun.

Behind this is a business idea of Dong Haifeng. Since 2021, Dong Haifeng has increasingly felt that his positioning is no longer just a decision-maker of small start-ups, nor can he only consider business at the level of market economy, but to "altruism" at the level of the entire society and the country.

The reactivation of Weiya and his wife has to some extent set a model for the live broadcast industry with constant problems and challenges.

Dong Haifeng once said that Qianxun has always crossed the river by touching the stone, and Weiya is this stone. This sentence also echoes in Via's autobiography "Life is Made to Change".

Weiya wrote in the book: "We are already in an era of rapid change, instead of passively accepting change, it is better to actively embrace change and treat each change as a new opportunity given to us by the times." ”

Private enterprises are the capillaries of the economy and society, political literacy, global vision, innovative spirit is a new requirement for private entrepreneurs in the new era, Wei Ya can come back in front of the stage is not so important, the important thing is that the Taobao live broadcast sister did not disappear, but with a more suitable identity for the current era, continue to be active at the forefront of the industry.