If it is not made into a live broadcast, can JD make it into a short video?

With the rise of short video and live broadcast e-commerce, shelf e-commerce has become more and more difficult in recent years. Taobao at least has a high-profile brother like Li Jiaqi, and Pinduoduo has surpassed Ali by relying on low prices and even market value. Only JD.com, when it is about to fall behind, invests in "double billion": with 1 billion yuan in cash and 1 billion traffic to invite creators to settle in JD.com, and fight short videos again. Even Brother Dong personally went into battle to bring the goods live, but this time, can Jingdong succeed?

After eight years, Liu Qiangdong returned to Jingdong's live broadcast room to bring goods, but he appeared in the image of an AI digital human.

2016 Double 11 was Liu Qiangdong's live broadcast debut, when he showed off his cooking skills in the live broadcast room, personally cooking large plates of chicken and Boston lobster. Eight years have passed, Liu Qiangdong, who appeared in the live broadcast room as a digital person, is more focused on explaining goods.

The digital human has been able to vividly restore Liu Qiangdong's voice, spoken language, and even the habitual action of rubbing his fingers, but the uninterrupted, unblinking, and seamless explanation rhythm is slightly hasty, and it is ridiculed by consumers as "lacking the atmosphere of bringing goods", and naturally it is not as vivid as Li Jiaqi's "OMG! buy it".

In short, the live broadcast debut of the digital human "Purchasing and Selling Dongge" turned out to be good. The live broadcast rooms of Jingdong Home Appliances and Jingdong Supermarket where he appeared exceeded 5 million viewers in the first 20 minutes, and after the broadcast of "Procurement and Sales Dongge", the number of viewers in the two live broadcast rooms exceeded 11 million.

Before Liu Qiangdong's broadcast this time, the outside world predicted that this was a warm-up for the short video incentive plan just announced by JD.com.

On April 10, JD.com officially announced that it would increase its content ecological layout and invest in "Double Billion": inviting creators to settle in JD.com with 1 billion yuan in cash and 1 billion in traffic, covering more than 20 categories such as digital, home appliances, mother and child, and pets.

Fight short videos again, can JD succeed?

First, the genetic gap that cannot be ignored

JD.com has to admit that the "consumption" needs met by traditional e-commerce and the "entertainment" needs met by live broadcasts and short videos are very different.

On e-commerce platforms, users often have certain purchase needs, such as buying a shirt or a water cup, they will also browse various product pages and stay to inquire about product details, but as long as they choose their favorite product and place an order, they will rarely stay on the e-commerce platform when the purchase is over.

Because, the e-commerce platform does not have content that attracts them.

However, on the short video platform, users have a rigid demand for entertainment, and the platform's recommendation algorithm will amplify the "weakness of human nature" and constantly grab users' attention, which can be described as "five minutes of Douyin, one hour in the world".

Relevant e-commerce operators also pointed out that consumers have determined the category or brand they need when they open Taobao and JD.com, and in this case, they will not read the content on the site, because they feel that the content is not professional enough.

From the perspective of enterprise genes, traditional e-commerce has stronger supply chain and commodity operation capabilities to solve shopping needs, while short video platforms are more experienced in algorithm recommendation and traffic allocation mechanisms, so they frequently publish popular content to fully cater to entertainment.

Of course, JD.com can't be "beaten to death" by purely based on corporate genes, and "entertainment" and "shopping" themselves have overlapping parts, just like Disneyland not only has a variety of amusement projects, but also has authentic specialty stores and specialty restaurants full of tourists.

At the same time, in the current market environment of oversupply, in order to continue to meet consumer needs, platforms must break the limitations of existing models and continue to innovate.

The success of Taobao Live is the best example, relying on Taobao's rich pallet and store resources, and the huge traffic of over-the-top anchors, Taobao Live focuses on transactions and amplifies the immediate needs of consumers. According to the data, the total turnover of Taobao Live in 2023 will exceed 400 billion yuan.

Short video platforms are also changing. Relying on the large and active user traffic, Douyin has been accelerating traffic monetization, not only making money from the B-side (advertising), but also strengthening the conversion transactions of the C-end (e-commerce, local life, etc.).

In contrast, JD.com is in a more awkward position.

According to an analysis from an MCN agency, Douyin has huge public domain traffic and mature streaming tools, and Taobao Live has private domain traffic from stores that can be imported. However, JD.com "does not occupy both ends" - the public domain traffic is limited, and the private domain traffic of stores and anchors has not yet been built.

Data is the cruelest example of this. According to the report released by Guosheng Securities, among the MCN institutions in the statistics, only 6% of the institutions chose the JD platform to live broadcast in 2020, and this data will drop to 4% in 2021, far less than the 96% of Douyin and the 35% of Taobao Live.

In fact, JD.com started doing live broadcasts earlier than Taobao. In the 2016 Double 11 mentioned at the beginning of this article, not only Liu Qiangdong personally went into battle, but also Huo Siyan, Qin Lan, Wang Zijian and many other stars helped to conduct a 12-hour simulcast, and the number of viewers exceeded 21 million four hours after the broadcast.

Time has passed, why hasn't JD.com been able to do a good job in live broadcasts and short videos?

Second, strategic vacillation is not advisable

2020 is the most beautiful year for JD Live. In that year, Dong Mingzhu, Wang Feng and other celebrities appeared in the Jingdong live broadcast room, and that year's Double 11, in the 22-day promotion event, Jingdong invited a total of more than 300 celebrities and corporate executives to carry out live broadcasts.

However, JD.com has not been able to continue the growth momentum of live streaming, until it is already 2023 Double 11 when it attaches importance to the live broadcast business again, and JD.com's live broadcast room suddenly became a "blockbuster".

The short video business is similar. In 2017, JD.com began to try short videos, following the example of "Taobao Second Floor" to launch similar content marketing planning, and in 2018, it launched the "Grass TV" column, and also successively registered brand trademarks such as "Garlic Moss Video" and "Magma Video".

With the rise of Xiaohongshu, "content planting grass and bringing goods" has proven to be a feasible business path, but JD.com's short video e-commerce has really made achievements in 2022, when JD.com mainly promoted the "personal test" short video of "talent personal trial + evaluation", which drove a year-on-year increase of 300% in indicators such as on-site orders, user scale, and duration.

On the eve of 618 in the same year, Jingdong carried out a comprehensive revision of the APP, and the homepage "Recommended", "Shopping", "Golden Process" and other fields in the station were fully videoized.

JD.com's live broadcast and short video businesses always get up early in the morning to catch up late in the evening, and the missed development opportunities during this period also come from internal strategic repetitions.

After the Mingzhou incident in 2018, JD.com experienced repeated internal turmoil, Xu Lei temporarily took charge of JD.com under Liu Qiangdong's "certification", and first stabilized the market in the early stage, stopped losses in time, and continued its CMO positioning in the middle and later stages, and grasped the traffic strategy.

After Xu Lei took office, JD.com began to continue to acquire customers through various marketing actions, such as forming an alliance with Kuaishou, renewing a cooperation agreement with WeChat, and he himself even starred in talk shows to attract young users.

Compared with investing more resources to make short videos by itself, JD.com in the Xu Lei era adopts more external cooperation, leveraging mature short video platforms to introduce traffic and convert transactions, and first stabilize the growth of users and transaction volume without falling.

Xu Lei, as the number one person in Jingdong at that time, was more concerned about "transitioning first and not making mistakes".

At the same time, based on the strategic direction of "longer longboard", JD is more willing to invest funds and manpower to develop supply chain and logistics and other links.

But the tuyere has changed quickly, and when there is no breakthrough in the existing logistics and supply chain foundation, live streaming can convert a large number of orders and turnover for the platform, and short videos firmly occupy the attention of consumers.

After that, Xu Lei got out of class, Liu Qiangdong came out again, and "content ecology" was included in the three must-win battles of JD Retail in 2024, and the short video business has been raised to the height of the group's core strategy.

With a hole, what are the odds of JD.com?

Third, it is reasonable to lower expectations

In fact, making a short video business is both complex and simple, and the key lies in what JD's strategic positioning for short video is and what JD wants.

Taking Taobao as an example, QuestMobile data shows that as of December 2021, the proportion of time spent on Alibaba-based apps was the same as the same period last year, at 6.7%, while the proportion of time spent on bytes increased by 5.2% year-on-year to 15.8%.

The traffic dividend continues to be lost, the stock and incremental market share are constantly eroded, and Taobao has to change.

Last year, Dao Fang, the person in charge of Taobao content, said that in the past, Taobao Live's goal was very simple, that is, GMV, and from 2023, Taobao Live will do media attributes and content.

In fact, last year, Taobao Live introduced a large number of non-delivery entertainment anchors and entertainment content, and Taobao Shopping also began to invite various local new media to settle in, and did live broadcasts and short videos based on content. By the end of last year, Taotian Group merged the shopping team with Taobao Live to officially establish the Taobao Content E-commerce Division.

As short video platforms, with their precise algorithms and entertainment attributes, are grabbing a large amount of user time and user attention, Taobao has to make strategic adjustments in response to the market environment and complete the transformation from capturing transactions to capturing content.

Unlike Taobao, JD currently needs to convert transactions by adding high-quality short video content, and in the announced short video incentive plan, JD will provide traffic incentives for original video content such as evaluation and wear, and the creation fields of key subsidies are also highly linked to product categories.

At this stage, JD.com hopes to continue the achievements of the past "pro-test" content and "shopping" channels, and continue to increase the volume of similar content, in order to win a place in the field of content e-commerce.

In addition, Pinduoduo's strategy for developing short video business also has references.

According to 36Kr, at the beginning of 2023, the number of daily active users of Pinduoduo's short video business "Duoduo Video" exceeded 150 million, stabilizing at 1-120 million. Duoduo Video's main customer acquisition method is cash rewards, including sending red envelopes to WeChat accounts in stages according to the user's browsing time and number of videos, and merchants will withdraw rewards according to the total stay time of mature users on the platform, the number of videos, the number of comments and the number of likes.

According to reports, Pinduoduo will give nearly 1 billion yuan in subsidies to users of Duoduo Video in 2022.

Pinduoduo continues the strategic thinking of "simplicity and common sense" in the past, and uses a simple strategy that most platforms cannot look at to quickly achieve results in a new business, which is a typical Pinduoduo model.

Of course, in the face of drastic changes in the market environment, Pinduoduo's strategy is by no means undesirable, such as Pinduoduo's controversial "refund-only" function, which Taobao and JD.com also chose to follow suit at the end of last year.

Pinduoduo's consumer-facing "video discovery fund", which is also a subsidy of one billion yuan, may also become a phased strategy for JD.com to develop its short video business, which can increase the daily activity of users in the simplest and most direct way.

Doing short video business is not a long-term and high-precision complex project for R&D chips, but whether it can be done is another question, and making Douyin and TikTok are completely different dimensions.

Columnist

IT Friends, WeChat public account: IT Friends, everyone is a product manager columnist. Guarding professionalism, long-term focus on community e-commerce and new consumption fields

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