The anchors also want to get out of the live broadcast room. On May 8, in response to public opinion directly pointing to the live broadcast agency Three Sheep Electric Music Festival "stealing customers", Brother Xiao Yang clarified in the video, and for a while, the video rushed to the Douyin hot list. Compared with bringing goods, other performances and variety shows seem to be more like "side hustles", which can strengthen IP and make more money. In the first half of this year, Xin Xuan, Three Sheep and Wuwu Media held concerts, and more and more head anchors stepped out of the screen to get closer to fans, not only eager to let offline traffic feed back online, but also to effectively share the risk and pressure of the live broadcast business. Foot traffic is both a foot traffic and a potential monetization asset, and this rule applies to both online and offline. However, compared with the online live broadcast room, the offline crowd is crowded, and the management requirements and audience demand for the organizer are different from those online.
Response: There is no "rip-off" behavior
Brother Yang, who has rarely shown his face in the live broadcast room, has once again been pushed to the forefront. On May 8, the topic of "Brother Xiao Yang's response to the controversy of the electronic syllable" appeared on the hot search of the Douyin social list.
It is understood that the electronic music festival was held by the MCN Three Sheep Group behind Crazy Brother Yang and a media company in Wuhan from May 3rd to 4th in Luogang Park, Hefei, Anhui Province. According to the on-site pictures posted by some netizens, the price of pure water in the electric music festival is 20 yuan/cup, and the prices of pulsation and Red Bull are 30 yuan/bottle and 28 yuan/bottle respectively.
A glass of pure water sells for 20 yuan, is it expensive? In the response video, Brother Xiao Yang said that the prices of food and beverages at the festival are in line with the general prices in special scenarios (electronic music festivals), and all food and drinks at the festival are clearly marked, and there is no "stealing customers" who operate illegally to obtain illegal profits.
"At around 7 p.m. on the 3rd, the water dropped to 10 yuan." Brother Xiao Yang said that after the staff found that there was a problem of overpricing of the stalls on the spot, they had asked the merchants to adjust the prices in time. At the end of the video response, Brother Xiao Yang promised that in the future, the electronic music festival hosted by him will distribute free drinking water to the audience.
On the other side of the high popularity of the concert "side hustle", the number of live broadcasts of Brother Xiao Yang has gradually decreased. At the beginning of this year, Brother Xiao Yang announced in the live broadcast that in 2024, he will reduce the number of live broadcasts, and if there are special activities in the future, he will consider handing over his account with more than 100 million fans directly to other anchors under the Three Sheep Group.
The reality is: if the live broadcast room wants to keep the traffic rising, it still relies on the high-frequency exposure of the head anchor. Douyin data shows that in February this year, Crazy Brother Yang's personal account fell out of the top 20 on the list of goods.
Harvest traffic from multiple services
The star-studded concert is the appearance, and the crowd of people on the scene is the potential monetization asset. According to past media reports, in November last year, Brother Xiao Yang announced that he would spend 30 million yuan to invite stars such as Zhang Xinzhe and Pu Shu to hold a star concert in Hefei. In this concert that claimed that the tickets were free, Brother Xiao Yang still did not forget to attract traffic to the self-operated brand "Xiao Yang Zhenxuan" under Three Sheep.
It is understood that if you want to get concert tickets directly, you need to conduct a lottery in Xiao Yang's live broadcast room. In other words, users need to place an order for any product before they can participate in the event, and the winner can get two tickets for a seat. Another way to get tickets directly is to store value through Xiao Yang Selected Members.
In recent years, Three Sheep has made more and more rapid moves into the content field. In April this year, the official account "Three Sheep Theater" under the Three Sheep Group was launched on Douyin, and in the short drama "Master Fu, Your Substitute Bride is a Big Guy" exposed by the account, the anchor of Three Sheep and also the apprentice of Brother Xiao Yang "Three Sheep Xiaoqi (Seven Bosses)" also appeared in it. In response to a netizen's question about "whether the company has changed the short drama route", Three Sheep Theater said that the short drama is only an extended business segment of the group.
The "side business" is in full swing, and the business territory of the three sheep is gradually diversified, and the two lines of live broadcast e-commerce and content entertainment are advancing simultaneously, and they are complementing each other. Before trying short dramas, concerts, singer talent shows and other "side jobs", Three Sheep has carried out a lot of matrix layout on the main business of live broadcasting, in addition to cultivating new anchors in the apprenticeship mode, since last year, Brother Xiao Yang has successively signed Li Paoer, Chen Yili and other Internet celebrities who already have some fan bases to join the Three Sheep Group for live broadcasting.
In the view of Zhuang Shuai, an expert in the retail e-commerce industry and the founder of Bailian Consulting, this is precisely the first step for Brother Xiao Yang to expand the "Three Sheep Universe", "using the traffic of super head IP to feed back and sign more talents, and establish the traffic matrix of the enterprise, which is the 'cornerstone' of the company's business expansion in the future."
"Internet celebrities carry out side hustles precisely to reduce the risk caused by the bottleneck of the growth of live streaming." Regarding Brother Xiao Yang's "not doing business", Zhuang Shuai bluntly said that starting a side business may be more conducive to sharing business risks among Internet celebrities who started with live broadcasting. In addition, the influence and popularity of Internet celebrities can also accelerate their monetization in other fields, and form a linkage effect, indirectly or directly driving the development of the main business of live streaming.
There is no doubt that whether it is a concert or a short drama, it can support more traffic space for the live broadcast business of Three Sheep.
"Side hustle" tests financial strength
"The live broadcast agency is actually creating a character in the live broadcast room, and the logic is similar to star-making. For example, the style of Dongfang Selection's live broadcast room is like doing a small theater, setting up a prominent memory point for each anchor. An executive of a live broadcast agency operation company summed it up to a reporter from Beijing Business Daily.
Not only Brother Xiao Yang, Simba and Wuwu Media also held large-scale concerts on the grounds of giving back to fans. From May 5th to 9th, Worry-free Media held the "Worry-free Night 2024" at the Hangzhou Olympic Sports Center, covering the Worry-free Games, Worry-free Super Fan Festival, Red Carpet Show and other links, and more than 3,000 signed artists and talent anchors met fans up close. Time goes back, in January this year, Simba held a concert in Hangzhou, which not only invited stars such as Sha Baoliang and Yang Zongwei, but also made Dandan and Shi Damei show their faces in front of fans.
When the traffic pool is getting bigger and bigger, the head anchor also consciously walks out of the live broadcast room and participates in the real offline interaction. For example, Dong Yuhui visited the Hubei Provincial Museum and the Henan Museum from March to April this year, which caused a large number of onlookers, and even generated public opinion from netizens who complained about not being able to make an appointment to enter the museum normally, questioning the destruction of cultural relics by the live broadcast fill light. In order to make content, Meifang also created a series of variety shows for Li Jiaqi to interact with brands, and the newly opened offline Naiva Cafe also allowed Li Jiaqi to attract traffic to the platform.
Naiva Cafe
Separated from the mobile phone screen, the live broadcast organization intends to shorten the distance between the anchor and the public, which can undoubtedly enhance the anchor's sense of reality and intimacy, consolidate the fan relationship while attracting the curiosity of the peripheral audience, and all kinds of entertainment activities are accompanied by the fermentation of public opinion topics, thus forming a stronger traffic whirlwind.
When online traffic becomes more expensive and the growth rate slows down, offline momentum is obviously a faster way to supplement. However, operating a side business also tests the financial strength of the live broadcast agency and the business management ability to connect with the professional institutions at the venue. Judging from the concerts and electronic music festivals of Simba and Xiao Yang in the past, neither of them charges tickets, and tens of thousands of tickets have been sold. According to the "E-commerce Daily", Xiao Yang's electronic music festival cost 50 million yuan, and there are thousands of on-site security personnel alone.
Regarding the authenticity of the figure of 50 million yuan invested, the relevant person in charge of the three sheep did not respond to the reporter of Beijing Business Daily. The person in charge also did not answer questions about how much the cost of the festival was invested and whether Three Sheep would continue to hold large-scale entertainment activities such as the festival in other cities in the future.
"Concerts and other large-scale events require the docking and cooperation of live broadcast institutions and professional venue institutions to ensure security, entry and exit, catering and other processes, which also requires live broadcast institutions to manage the professionalism of suppliers." Jiang Rong, an e-commerce research expert, said.
He Qian, Qiao Xinyi/text
Source: Video screenshots, screenshots of the homepage of the video account of Brother Xiaoyang Theater, Xiaohongshu