镜观台（ID:JINGGUANTAICN）原创
Text丨Qiu Tianyi, Xie Yuanyuan
Editor丨Cao Huimin
Over the years, the Spring Festival Gala has become a battleground for Internet companies. And this year, it is Jingdong and Xiaohongshu who hug the "thighs" of the 2024 Spring Festival Gala.
At the end of January 2024, JD.com announced that it would become an interactive platform for the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, and the platform will launch an attractive gift package of "100 million 1 cent physical gifts + 3 billion red envelopes + 100 Lantu cars";
Betting on the Spring Festival Gala is inseparable from the pressure and anxiety of JD.com and Xiaohongshu. Therefore, both platforms are eager to achieve traffic and user growth through the big IP of the Spring Festival Gala.
At the beginning of 2023, after Xiaohongshu's daily active users exceeded the 100 million mark, it gradually fell into a growth bottleneck. With the help of the Spring Festival Gala, Xiaohongshu not only wants to break through the dilemma of traffic growth, but also wants to promote the buyer e-commerce business that has just entered the right track.
JD.com, which chooses a low-price strategy, will face pressure from declining revenue growth, high costs, and difficulty finding new users in 2023. Returning to the Spring Festival Gala this time, JD.com hopes to tap more sinking traffic. According to a report by LatePost, JD.com needs to pay at least hundreds of millions of yuan in sponsorship fees for the Spring Festival Gala this time. Behind the huge investment, it is mainly to alleviate the growth pressure and reach more sinking users.
Recalling the 2015 Spring Festival Gala, WeChat invested 500 million yuan in red envelopes in exchange for the binding of 200 million personal bank cards, completing Alipay's 10-year struggle in two days, and the number of WeChat Pay users rose to 300 million in the next three months. Since then, major companies have begun to actively participate in the Spring Festival Gala.
However, not every sponsor who cooperates with the Spring Festival Gala can get the desired results. Previously, after Baidu, Douyin, and Kuaishou appeared on the Spring Festival Gala, the traffic had grown rapidly, but the retention situation was not very optimistic. Among them, Baidu's financial performance in the current quarter of 2019 was affected due to the large input cost of the Spring Festival Gala, and JD.com's first Spring Festival Gala in 2022 also encountered the same dilemma.
This means that even if it is launched in the Spring Festival Gala, Jingdong and Xiaohongshu may not be able to make a steady profit this time.
Spring Festival Gala Marketing: "New Wine in Old Bottles"
At the end of January 2024, the news that JD.com and Xiaohongshu would join the Spring Festival Gala spread all over the Internet. Among them, Xiaohongshu's live broadcast of grass planting, and JD.com's penny to take away physical gifts, 3 billion red envelopes, and "large-scale" lottery to send 100 cars are all highly anticipated.
According to a report by LatePost, this year's Spring Festival Gala, JD.com will link all its businesses to carry out lottery interaction. Jingxi APP, which focuses on the sinking market, also participated for the first time, and even touched overseas in terms of the scope of interaction.
Photo/Jingdong (left), Xiaohongshu (right) Spring Festival Gala promotional poster
Source/Jingdong, Xiaohongshu, screenshot of Jingguantai
It can be seen from the interactive coverage of the Spring Festival Gala that JD wants to mobilize the entire business side, so that the traffic of the Spring Festival Gala can reach all nodes, further reach the sinking market and increase transaction volume, and expand overseas markets at the same time.
This is not the first time JD.com has cooperated with the Spring Festival Gala. In 2022, JD.com participated once.
According to QuestMobile data, on January 31, 2022, Chinese New Year's Eve, JD.com's daily activity reached 151 million, an increase of 81.4% from the previous day, ranking first among all apps.
In the Q1 financial report of that year, JD.com's average user shopping frequency in the first quarter hit a new high, and the ARPU (average user contribution revenue) value was close to the highest positive in three years.
However, the number of active purchasing users of JD.com, which was stimulated by the Spring Festival Gala and increased, fell back quickly after experiencing a wave of sharp increases. In the 12 months to the end of March 2022, the number of JD.com's active purchasing users reached 580.5 million, a year-on-year increase of 16.2%, while the 2022 Q3 financial report disclosed that as of the end of September of that year, JD.com's annual active users were 588.3 million, a year-on-year increase of only 6.5%.
Jingdong participated in the Spring Festival Gala for the first time, but the final effect was not satisfactory.
In the eyes of the market, when JD.com participated in the Spring Festival Gala for the first time, due to the complexity of the gameplay, the red envelopes were promoted, and the long cycle that lasted until the Lantern Festival made users feel tired.
And this time, the 100 million 1 cent physical gift packages launched by JD.com will import the traffic of the Spring Festival Gala in a more cost-effective way and further convert them into transaction volume. Compared with the complex gameplay in 2022, the simple and crude 1 cent purchase can better convey the determination of "low price".
What's even more eye-catching is that JD.com will also give away 100 VOYAH cars in the 2024 Spring Festival Gala lottery.
This large-scale marketing campaign is related to JD.com's accelerated layout in the automobile market. At present, in addition to car manufacturing, JD.com has laid out the business line of the entire cycle of automobiles, including upgrading the purchase of complete vehicles, sales of auto parts, car maintenance and other businesses.
Marketing expert Lu Shengzhen told Jingguantai: "When Jingdong cooperated with the Spring Festival Gala for the first time, it inertly ate a bowl of leftovers in accordance with the traditional "discovery of golden red envelopes" gameplay of the Spring Festival Gala. Although it has consolidated its position as the head e-commerce, it has not surpassed Pinduoduo and Taobao in terms of user share. This time, JD has obviously changed its strategy, focusing more on its own logistics system and supplier system, which can actually share the cost of JD's input. ”
Although Taobao, Jingdong and other Internet giants have taken turns to cooperate with the Spring Festival Gala, they have taken out marketing routes such as "scattering red envelopes" and "live broadcast parties" to promote traffic growth. But Xiaohongshu, who went to the Spring Festival Gala for the first time, did not choose to copy their old routines.
Xiaohongshu officially announced that it will build a live broadcast room called "Everyone's Spring Festival Gala" directly next to the Spring Festival Gala studio. The live broadcast room will play the tidbits in front of and behind the scenes of the Spring Festival Gala, and invite the Spring Festival Gala actors to interact with the audience in the live broadcast room.
At the same time, the live broadcast room will also hang the link to the props that appear on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala to sell the same style of the Spring Festival Gala. At present, the platform is already preparing related products.
Picture/"Everyone's Spring Festival Gala" promotional poster
Source / Little Red Book
At the same time, Xiaohongshu has successively launched the outfits of celebrities on the rehearsal road of the Spring Festival Gala, and in the notes of the Spring Festival Gala topic, users are guided to make an appointment to watch "Everyone's Spring Festival Gala", and they can also receive red envelopes after making an appointment. Up to now, the "Spring Festival Gala" account on Xiaohongshu has received more than 140,000 fans, and the number of reservations for "Everyone's Spring Festival Gala" has exceeded 500,000.
According to Internet analyst Ding Daoshi, this kind of differentiated marketing is mainly based on the characteristics of Xiaohongshu's products.
"Xiaohongshu is cooperating with the Spring Festival Gala based on its own advantages, and the grass planting model of this platform has a strong social nature, which is suitable for interactive marketing in the Spring Festival Gala. And at present, Xiaohongshu is vigorously developing e-commerce, and it is logical to use live streaming as the foothold of Spring Festival Gala marketing this time. ”
It is worth mentioning that the investment of JD.com, which has made another effort in the Spring Festival Gala, and Xiaohongshu, which has tried it for the first time, may not be lower than the investment cost of JD.com's first sponsorship of the Spring Festival Gala. Although the Spring Festival Gala has been complained about a lot, if you want to become a sponsor of the Spring Festival Gala, you still need to spend a huge amount of "ticket fees".
When JD.com sponsored the Spring Festival Gala for the first time, it took out red envelopes and goods worth 1.5 billion yuan, and the investment far exceeded that of previous opponents such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Baidu. For this Spring Festival Gala, a person from JD.com who has just left said that the marketing pressure on JD.com on the Spring Festival Gala project this year is significantly greater than that in 2022.
Jingdong and Xiaohongshu have their own "difficulties"
Xiaohongshu has been looking for opportunities for traffic growth and breaking the circle, especially after putting commercialization on the process in 2023. On the other hand, JD.com is now also stuck in how to find more sinking traffic.
Most of Xiaohongshu users are urban white-collar workers with high demand, high quality requirements and high repurchase rate, and 70% of them are female users. With the rise of the "other economy", how to develop the majority of male users has become the focus of Xiaohongshu.
In the past two years, male users' searches and discussions on beauty care-related content have been hot, and the consumption of beauty has increased significantly. According to QuestMobile's 2023 Male Consumption Insights Report, as of April this year, the number of monthly active and unique users of the male audience in the beauty KOL industry reached 224 million, an increase of 91.4% over the same period in 2022.
In order to reap the dividends of the "other economy", in 2021, Xiaohongshu launched the "Male Content Incentive Program", calling on more male creators to settle in and create more male-oriented content such as automobiles, digital, and sports.
The platforms themselves are constantly supplementing the content that men are interested in, such as sporting events.
Xiaohongshu has become a strategic partner of CCTV Olympic Games and has received intensive exposure from CCTV's financial media matrix. After the Beijing Winter Olympics, Xiaohongshu vigorously supported skiing, short track speed skating and other content, and invited sports stars such as Han Tianyu and Xu Mengtao to settle in.
Source/Visual China
According to data from Xiaohongshu Business News in November 2023, among Xiaohongshu's 260 million monthly active users, the proportion of male users who pay attention to digital, automobile, finance, outdoor and other categories has increased from 10% to 30%, and it continues to grow.
Despite this, Xiaohongshu still failed to achieve its goals. At the beginning of 2023, Xiaohongshu's daily active users exceeded 100 million, and after the monthly active users exceeded 260 million, the growth gradually weakened.
At the beginning of 2023, Xiaohongshu set an annual revenue target of 24 billion yuan. However, later, according to the actual situation in the first half of the year, the annual revenue forecast was lowered, from 24 billion yuan to 18 billion to 20 billion yuan.
According to media sources, Kappa, the head of Xiaohongshu's community content, has left his post not long ago. In 2023, Xiaohongshu had set a goal of reaching 140 million DAUs in 2023, but after experiencing growth in the second half of last year, DAUs still did not reach 120 million.
After the blockbuster launch of "buyer e-commerce", Xiaohongshu will finally be on the right track on the road of e-commerce exploration in 2023. However, compared with Taotian, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Douyin, etc., Xiaohongshu e-commerce still has a gap in terms of goods, volume, price, supply chain, after-sales service, etc. In particular, the imperfection of the after-sales service system has become the focus of consumer complaints.
At the same time, Xiaohongshu's relatively limited traffic pool cannot support the huge traffic demand of live broadcast e-commerce. It urgently needs to break through traffic barriers to improve its e-commerce business strategy.
Xiaohongshu urgently needs the next traffic entrance, which is why Xiaohongshu chose to hug the "thighs" of the Spring Festival Gala.
On the other hand, JD.com has to face the problem of peaking traffic dividends in the Internet industry and rising customer acquisition costs, and user competition is becoming more and more fierce. According to the e-commerce newspaper, a person from JD.com commented, "All businesses lack growth points this year, so we must seize any opportunity." ”
According to the data, JD.com achieved revenue of 247.7 billion yuan in the third quarter of 2023, a year-on-year increase of 1.7%, while revenue in the second quarter was 2,879 yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.6%. In contrast, JD.com's revenue and revenue growth declined in the third quarter.
JD.com is in a growth dilemma, and consumers' purchasing preferences have also changed, gradually focusing on value for money. Especially under the rapid growth of Pinduoduo and the encroachment on the market, JD.com obviously felt the pressure and "urgently" plunged into the sinking market.
JD.com has made every effort to launch a low-price strategy, excavate the sinking market to the greatest extent, and strive to attract more price-sensitive users. In 2023, JD.com will launch a subsidy of 10 billion yuan and open up POP investment.
However, under the measures of low prices and subsidies, JD.com's revenue not only declined in the third quarter, but even if it promoted "cost reduction and efficiency increase", its costs continued to increase. According to the data, JD.com's main operating cost in the first three quarters of 2023 was 662.4 billion yuan, compared with 645.3 billion yuan in the same period of 2022, an increase of nearly 17.1 billion yuan.
"The second sponsorship of the Spring Festival Gala has a side of business pressure for JD.com, and there is also a side of shaping its own brand demand. No matter how much traffic media there is, most of them are small fights and can't solve JD.com's big problems. Lu Shengzhen believes that "the brand value and traffic concentration ability of the Spring Festival Gala are incomparable to other media, and it has two major traffic sources at home and abroad." JD.com has previously encountered domestic e-commerce in overseas markets, and its domestic monthly activity is also lower than that of Taobao and Pinduoduo, and there is even a downward trend. Now the choice of the Spring Festival Gala is also forced by the market. ”
The various parties that bring together the national traffic "gift package" have become a must for the major Internet. Station B's 2023-2024 New Year's Eve party was won by Taobao, Pinduoduo sponsored CCTV's New Year's Eve party, and JD.com sponsored Hunan Satellite TV's New Year's Eve party.
In terms of the competition for traffic, the competition between major Internet manufacturers has become fierce. Under this trend, sponsoring the Spring Festival Gala may be the best choice for JD.com and Xiaohongshu.
How long does the "medicinal effect" of the Spring Festival Gala last?
As a national IP, the viewing data of the Spring Festival Gala should not be underestimated. According to the Economic Daily, the "2023 Spring Festival Gala" has reached a total of 11.011 billion people across all media. On the TV side, the total viewership of parallel channels nationwide reached 20.61%, and the total viewership share of the national TV market reached 76.29%, an increase of 2.19 percentage points over 2022.
The scale of new media live broadcasts and overseas dissemination have reached a record high. The former reached 766 million, an increase of 64% over 2022.
Under this traffic market, WeChat, which was the first to "eat crabs", has achieved particularly significant results.
In the 2015 Spring Festival Gala, WeChat, as a sponsor, had a total of 11 billion interactions with "Shake It", and a total of 1.01 billion WeChat red packets were sent and received on Chinese New Year's Eve. With the help of the traffic of this Spring Festival Gala, WeChat rushed into the mobile payment market in one fell swoop and rewrote the market structure, so that Alipay's market share fell from 82.8% to 68.4% that year.
The success of WeChat has become the "benchmark" for the sponsors of the Spring Festival Gala since then, and the gameplay of WeChat red envelopes has also become an old tradition of the Spring Festival Gala interaction.
However, not all sponsors can take advantage of the Spring Festival Gala to achieve a great leap forward in development.
Taking Baidu as an example, in 2019, Baidu distributed a total of 2 billion red envelopes for the Spring Festival Gala during the Spring Festival.
After appearing on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala, the number of daily active users of Baidu APP instantly soared to 300 million, including more than 100 million new users. However, after Chinese New Year's Eve, the retention rate of new users in Baidu APP within 7 days was only 2%. In the first quarter of 2019, Baidu also suffered its first loss after listing due to the cost of red envelopes during the Spring Festival.
In fact, in recent years, the increment brought by the Spring Festival Gala has been decreasing, but the input has risen higher and higher, and the input-output ratio has become lower and lower.
In addition to WeChat and Baidu, there are also many large manufacturers sponsoring the Spring Festival Gala, but most of the effects are the same as Baidu.
During the 2020 Spring Festival Gala, Kuaishou DAU soared to 282 million, but it fell back to 250 million in just one month, which was basically the same as before the Spring Festival Gala. The same is true for Douyin, which reached 580 million on Chinese New Year's Eve 2021. But after the Spring Festival, the daily activity of the main Douyin station fell back to around 4.9-510 million. According to QuestMobile, neither platform has a user retention rate of more than 30% after the Chinese New Year.
It's 2023. The limelight of the Spring Festival Gala was also directly ceded to the liquor brand.
The reason for this phenomenon is partly due to the fact that users are bored and numb to the increasingly complex gameplay that has no new ideas in previous years. Such a result also forced large manufacturers to think about whether sponsoring the Spring Festival Gala is still a good deal?
Because this kind of attention is explosive, if the product or subsequent service cannot continue to bring value to users, there will be a decline in data. But even if there will be a loss of users, most companies will still make money by cooperating with the Spring Festival Gala. Ding Daoshi told Jingguantai, "Internet companies should have made accurate calculations internally before launching. Only when it feels that the input-output ratio is appropriate, will enterprises cooperate with the Spring Festival Gala. For example, in the past few years, Alipay and WeChat have gained a lot of new users through the Spring Festival Gala, although many users no longer use them after grabbing red envelopes, but the relevant data still has a good improvement. ”
However, the success of the predecessors of the Spring Festival Gala may not be replicated by the younger generations.
In Lu Shengzhen's view: "Increasing the Spring Festival Gala is of great significance to the promotion of Jingdong APP. It can not only increase the number of APP downloads and the number of active users, but also help JD shape the image of mainstream e-commerce, and also help JD pave the way for the brand of the two major markets at home and abroad. However, the effect achieved by the brand in the Spring Festival Gala cannot be guaranteed simply by relying on high-intensity exposure, but also needs to match its topics and consumption trends this year with the brand itself. ”
Therefore, whether it is for Xiaohongshu or JD.com, increasing the Spring Festival Gala may temporarily solve the problems related to traffic growth. And how to convert the huge traffic retention of the Spring Festival Gala into its own traffic is a problem that sponsors need to solve more. After all, this "one-time" traffic fee is not cheap.
Resources:
"Liu Qiangdong is generous, he wants to do things at the Spring Festival Gala" Source: E-commerce Daily;
"Farewell to Dachang Red Envelopes at the Spring Festival Gala" source: alphabet list.
*The title image is taken from the Mirror Observatory.
*Disclaimer: Under no circumstances does the information or opinions expressed in this article constitute investment advice to any person.