#精品长文创作季#
It was difficult to balance the contradiction between price and quality, and Brother Xiao Yang had to retire. How far is the "Three Sheep" business empire from collapse?
Author: Yin Yadan Editor: He Xiang
出品：零售商业财经 ID：Retail-Finance
The trough meat exposed on March 15 undoubtedly accelerated the pace of Xiao Yang's "retirement". Recently, a fan sued Crazy Brother Yang and his company for buying the "Yuhuiyuan" plum vegetable button meat sold in the live broadcast room of the Three Sheep Company, and the case has been successfully filed.
Source: Internet
According to the previous "Public Opinion Analysis Report on Live Streaming Consumption Rights Protection (2023)", Crazy Brother Yang's public opinion on rights protection accounted for 31.30%, ranking second, among which the problems of false publicity, uncivilized delivery, and return and exchange were more prominent.
In the second half of live e-commerce, super anchors either retired or showed fatigue.
At the beginning of March, the news that the crazy Brother Xiao Yang, known as the "Douyin First Brother", faded out of the live broadcast room rushed to the hot search on Weibo, and then the news of Brother Xiao Yang's withdrawal from the joint venture with the United States broke out.
In fact, before Brother Xiao Yang's series of "fading" actions, from Dong Yuhui to Li Jiaqi, they all showed their fatigue with live broadcasting. Simba said that live broadcast e-commerce can't make much money, and he will stop live broadcast for two years to devote himself to researching AI. As for Luo Yonghao, he got out of the live broadcast room one step earlier, and only stood up at key nodes and hot search moments to point out the country.
In the eyes of industry insiders, there is a contradiction between price, quality, and trust in the logic of e-commerce, and the anchor with goods cannot endorse the quality of the product, coupled with the great influence of the head anchor, the repeated rollover phenomenon has been infinitely amplified by the Internet, and it has also leveraged the reshuffle of the live broadcast industry.
01 Shrewd character, "family-style" comedy unlocks traffic passwords
Sand sculpture brothers, an enviable happy family, this is most people's first impression of "Crazy Brother Yang".
In 2014, swept by the wave of the Internet, "there are radish pits all over the ground", and Brother Yang of "fried inkwell" also began to set foot in the short video platform.
Source: "Crazy Brother Yang" Douyin account
In those years, the explosive growth of short video traffic made the traffic logic seem weak and disorderly, and short video users who were free from the constraints of reality searched for excitement in the cyberspace that formed a huge contrast with current life.
Brother Xiao Yang, who relied on imitating others to set off guns and engage in gimmicks, also completed the accumulation of the first batch of fans at this stage.
Since then, short videos have become fragrant and sweet in his hands.
In this era of acceleration and acceleration, more and more people are overwhelmed by houses, cars, and tickets.
As a result, "funny" content quickly became a popular category of short videos.
Behind the funny, meaning has become an obscure topic, and people are looking for opportunities to "laugh". Realism, which is based on actual self-interest, has begun to rise strongly, entertainment first, entertainment to death, and nonsensical and high-contrast earthy funny videos have become high-traffic tracks.
Brother Xiao Yang seized the opportunity.
In 2019, Brother Xiao Yang began to create a family sitcom with the theme of "Desperate Weekend", and the nonsensical and funny image of the sand sculpture became an important character of the "Brother Xiaoyang" IP.
Looking at the short video content released by Brother Xiao Yang, its creative formula can be summarized as follows:
First of all, with exaggerated actions and plots, exaggerated and nonsensical pictures are shown at the beginning, and exaggerated action sounds and contrasting things are used to seize the "tap water" traffic brought by short video platforms such as Douyin in a few seconds, and the exaggerated beginning is the first step.
This is not over, if you want users to stay, there will be "shake the burden" style of cool points and laughs in the video from time to time, and multiple reversals have become the most direct and exciting way of expression, in the atmosphere of tricky and funny and family harmony, Brother Xiao Yang has set up a persona, the audience has gained laughter, and the platform has also gained traffic.
Behind the fast-paced cycle and the funny to death, in a burst of laughter, the desertification of the national spiritual culture is growing savagely.
Source: Internet
The traffic is there, and the people are set up, but netizens have become smarter.
So how do you retain traffic?
The shrewd little brother Yang started a horizontal character battle.
The tuyere of short videos has naturally attracted a number of gray industries, and the video content of the lower three channels can accumulate considerable traffic in a short period of time. However, from the very beginning, Brother Xiao Yang went against the content of the next three roads, and embarked on the broad space of family short drama creation, from the perspective of a long time scale, this is the red line of Internet traffic operation, behind the huge traffic, it is not only the audience who is red-eyed, but also countless pairs of peers.
Personal IP is almost impossible to escape "seeing the light and dying", and the gap between ideals and reality often makes the audience's trust in personal IP plummet.
From the beginning of the purpose of choosing good quality and low price for the audience, to the angry "where is it expensive" in the live broadcast room, Li Jiaqi, who was born as a salesman, let the audience see the side that should not belong to others, or saw it under the magnifying glass of the self-media, and then there was overwhelming criticism and fan loss incidents.
Brother Xiao Yang's shrewdness lies in the fact that online and offline are the same, and the "reverse delivery" of "strong interaction, strong reversal, and trickery" has become the signboard of the live broadcast room, and there is naturally nothing more valuable than trust in the personal brand.
As a result, under the multi-party combination of "value positioning + real character design + entertainment to death", the audience was "corroded" to be obedient, the "earthy" traffic password was played vigorously, and the Internet had another fragmented entertainment distribution center.
02 Transformation of goods, "cost-effective" standard to seize the windfall
After the personal IP core supported by the "funny family" was recognized by the value of the traffic, the fan stickiness of "Crazy Brother Yang" increased sharply. Traffic has begun to be converted into real capital, and traffic realization is moving from the back to the front.
Monetization channels for Internet traffic include ad placement, platform subsidies, live streaming tips, and live streaming. The huge star map shows that the highest price of a video of Crazy Brother Yang has exceeded 500,000 yuan, assuming that advertising cooperation is carried out 6 times a month, if calculated according to the highest price, the advertising and platform income is 3 million. According to Brother Xiao Yang's revelation in the live broadcast room, only the live broadcast room of the account "Crazy Brother Yang" carried out a live broadcast with goods, and it could easily exceed 3 million after tax.
Source: Giant Star Map, New Shake
On the one hand, there are many video advertising placements with less profits, and on the other hand, there is a new way of live streaming with fewer games and more profits, and the balance of choice has been unbalanced.
is different from a head anchor like Li Jiaqi, Brother Xiao Yang, who started with tricky and earthy jokes, has a surprisingly low "style" of bringing goods, and white label and low-price products have become frequent visitors in the live broadcast room and Douyin window.
Brother Xiao Yang, who has always been known for his funny characters, arrived in the live broadcast room, it was still a noisy scene, the live broadcast room was like a vegetable market, with at least 100,000 online views per live broadcast, and even when Brother Xiao Yang's apprentice "Yellow of Traffic Light" was broadcast live not long ago, the number of viewers once rushed to 20.09 million, and the Internet people who came and went were looking for fun in the live broadcast room.
Different audiences of live streaming have completely different potential for bringing goods.
Funny is a weapon used to attract the people who eat melons, and cheap is the source of power to attract the people who eat melons to click and buy.
There are many onlookers, high frequency of daily use, low unit price, and hard demand goods that are bought and taken away have become the main body of goods, and the purchase volume of disposable garbage bags in the Douyin window of the account has even reached several million orders, compared with the rumored 80% commission of Li Jiaqi's endorsement of Huaxizi, the commission and pit fee brought by this kind of white label and low customer unit price are difficult to compare.
Taking the Douyin platform as an example, archaeology plus official data shows that in November last year, Crazy Brother Yang ranked third, and the Guangdong couple ranked first. In terms of the number of fans, Crazy Brother Yang has 105 million fans, and the GMV is not as good as that of the Guangdong couple with only 50 million fans, and the gap in the potential of bringing goods is obvious.
Source: Archaeology Plus
The live broadcast room of the Guangdong couple focuses on the preferential promotions of international brands, and the unit price of the top ten products in sales exceeds 1,000 yuan, and the top three products in sales are all beauty products.
Brother Yang, who has a great sense of net, is also like a man on his back.
According to the data of Qingyan Intelligence, in 2023, the GMV of international makeup brands on platforms such as Tao and JD.com will decline by 6.1% and 22.1% year-on-year, and the traditional marketing channels of online shopping platforms have begun to enter a bottleneck. And this is the opportunity for Brother Xiao Yang to turn over.
During the Double 11 in 2023, Brother Xiao Yang took the lead in playing the signboard of "Double 11 Beauty Festival" in the live broadcast room, gradually introducing big names such as Givenchy, Dior, L'Oreal, YSL, etc., and Brother Xiao Yang even revealed during the live broadcast that just talking about L'Oreal was a big name, and he talked directly from April to November.
However, the step is too big, and it is inevitable to fall behind.
The forcible improvement of the "style" of the live broadcast belt has brought about various pains and unadaptability in the transition period.
The consumption potential of the beauty category directly depends on the fan structure of the live broadcast room, and about 40% of the women in the live broadcast room and the fan age group aged 31-40 directly sentenced the death penalty in advance for the potential of beauty products. Chan's mother data shows that during the Double 11 in 2023, Crazy Brother Yang will have 6 live broadcasts, with a total sales of 350 million to 450 million, and the category with the most products in the live broadcast room is beauty and skin care, but the best sales are daily necessities.
Source: Mother Cicada
Brother Yang's team, which had stepped into the predicament with half a foot, began to be unadaptable.
On October 25, 2023, Xiao Yang's chief apprentice, Huang of the traffic light, wore a green flower shirt and sat in front of the camera, reading the brand name of YSL in broken English with a crooked mouth. Even the China Consumers Association included the live broadcast of goods as a case of low-speed delivery, and the official fate finally set the tone.
Bringing goods, gradually moving towards the ultimate route of ugliness and alienation.
小杨哥,着急了。
03 Dancing with wolves, there are many "traps" in the e-commerce ecology in the traffic carnival
According to the "2022 China Live E-commerce Market Data Report", the scale of live broadcast transactions on Douyin in 2022 will be 1.5 trillion yuan, with a growth rate of up to 40%. According to Douyin data, Douyin waist anchors contribute 65% of GMV.
In the era of traffic, any bit of preference of the platform can make the waist anchor grow into the head anchor. In terms of live broadcast e-commerce, Kuaishou, Taobao, Xiaohongshu and other platforms form direct competition with Douyin, Douyin is facing the possibility of head and waist anchors leaving, super head anchors like Xiao Yang, Douyin must have a certain bias, and even at the expense of squeezing the living space of the anchors in the middle waist and below, it must be left.
At the same time, the continuous strength of the waist anchor made Douyin see the possibility of holding the head anchor. For the platform, it is too dangerous to put eggs in one basket, and at the moment when the big anchor has the heaviest right to speak, the platform and the merchant are kidnapped, and the profits will be tilted towards the anchor, and it becomes urgent to restrict the head anchor.
Under the dilemma, it is the prelude to the gradual calming and orderly delivery of live streaming.
It is estimated that the scale of the live broadcast e-commerce market will approach 5 trillion in 2023, but the decreasing growth rate year by year also shows that the scale of the live broadcast e-commerce market is becoming more and more difficult to expand.
Data source: iResearch Consulting, iiMedia Consulting
Under the general trend of false prosperity, the real crisis is beginning to emerge.
Brother Xiao Yang guessed this "limelight". If the economy is weak, then build a supply chain, and if the live broadcast does not last long, then accelerate the cash-out traffic. Brother Xiao Yang began the construction of the "three sheep" maze of the two-pronged vertical business empire.
On the one hand, after sitting firmly on the throne of the head anchor of Douyin, one person is too slow to attract money, so he set out to incubate and create more "Brother Yang", and through his own IP, develop the matrix of "Yang family" with goods, and form his own "family-style goods" alliance.
The data shows that Brother Xiao Yang has incubated at least ten talent matrix live broadcast rooms on Douyin, Three Sheep Network, Three Sheep Network Singing Wine Songs, Three Sheep Network Beautiful Life, Three Sheep Network Fruit Fresh, Traffic Light Huang, Brother Zui, Seven Bosses, Qiao Mei, Chen Yili. According to Brother Xiao Yang, the company paid more than 50 million wages in just one month.
Family-style expansion of the cargo team is not a blind expansion.
It seems unintentional but intentional. When signing the Douyin talent Seven Boss, Brother Xiao Yang shouted slogans in the live broadcast room, calling on the brothers to follow the Seven Bosses to buy beauty products, and the Seven Bosses even increased their fans by millions.
Source: Zhihu
Since you can't change the attributes of your fans, you can use the talent matrix to automatically screen fans, and gradually differentiate the goods from a general platform for low-profit daily necessities and low-priced goods into a dedicated platform for high-value-added big-name goods, and gradually improve the "total-score" business territory.
On the other hand, under the direct threat of platform de-platforming, Brother Xiao Yang's-for-tat confrontation of de-platforming is more precautionary.
On May 31, 2023, Brother Xiaoyang's "Three Sheep Network" announced that the total sales of its own brand "Xiaoyang Selection" exceeded 10 million orders, less than half a year before the official sales time. Brother Xiao Yang, who had the intention of retiring, began to gradually withdraw from the live broadcast room with goods in the live broadcast room, and began to look for the continuation of the vitality of the content, and built his IP into a brand, which became the straw for the vitality of the content.
Obviously, brand marketing is more difficult than product marketing in the live broadcast room, but it is undoubtedly the right way to convert the traffic of the live broadcast into stable traffic and deal with the risks of the head anchor and the uncertainty of the market.
Brother Xiao Yang said that "Xiao Yang Selection" is not a "OEM" in the full sense, but its own industrial chain, forming a perfect closed loop of "production and sales", bypassing the platform commission, and finally avoiding the risks of the platform, from online marketing to the combination of physical and online retail.
The end of the traffic is to bring goods, and the end of the goods is to bring private labels?
Live streaming has become a huge market, and everyone wants a piece of the pie.
Compared with Li Jiaqi's "beating worker syndrome" after making money wildly, Brother Xiao Yang, who came out of the short video, knows better the operation behind the Internet traffic, and it is not difficult to fish in the troubled waters of the Internet with an unclear foundation, and it does require a moat to make money for a long time. Once the mess of the traffic carnival passes, if you can't capsize in the gutter, it depends on the traffic "trap" behind the stable e-commerce ecology.
The sea is comfortable, but the rip current is also eyeing the shore. And in the end, everyone in the wave will be overturned by the tide sooner or later.