Who is the Douyin celebrity "Brother Sam" involved in the Xuanjing controversy?

Interface News

2024-05-11 16:04Posted on the official account of Anhui Jiemian News

Interface News Reporter | She Xiaochen

Interface News Editor | Wen Shuqi

The public opinion turmoil of Xuan Jing, the former vice president of Baidu, has come to an end, but the self-media "Brother Sam" has become a character involved.

A few days after the incident fermented, it was rumored that Xuan Jing took a self-media trading course of "Brother Sam" a few months ago. Chat records circulating on the Internet show that Xuan Jing asked all employees in the department to learn the "golden sentence of the ginseng". But Sam Ge later denied it, saying that "it is completely a rumor, whoever believes it is mentally retarded".

However, the two did exchange their experience of doing self-media in person a few months ago, and Brother Sam himself confirmed the authenticity of the group photo. In response to a video release on May 10, Sango said that Xuan Jing "did come to me and didn't join the community, but had a good chat." According to upstream news reports, Brother Sam confirmed that about three months ago, Xuan Jing went to Yantai to pay 5,980 yuan and took Brother Sam's "Douyin Trader Class" for three days.

Regardless of whether the video released by Xuan Jing originated from this "seeking advice", her hard work on self-media has been confirmed. Tianyancha information shows that on April 24, 2024, Shenzhen Waka Wow Ka Culture Co., Ltd. was registered, with Xuan Jing as the legal representative. According to the registration information, Waka Waka is a company mainly engaged in the Internet and related services.

As for the origin of Brother Sam, this post-80s Internet celebrity, whose real name is Shen Wenjun, graduated from the fitter major, sold sea cucumbers on the e-commerce platform in the early days, entered the short video in 2018, and incubated many Internet celebrity IP accounts. After entering Douyin in 2020, Samgo became popular by filming a series of emotional intelligence and financial quotient "teaching" courses, and the "Samgo Cognitive Circle" accelerated its realization, which led to the so-called "Douyin Trading Course".

He labeled himself as "traffic empowerment for excellent enterprises", and the video he produced was also a typical entrepreneur interview, emphasizing the quick delivery of conclusions to viewers. For example, Brother Sam once interviewed Jiang Quanyuan, the founder of Jiang Xiaodian Power Bank, in 2023, and the theme of the video was "How did he do it from not being favored to having an annual performance of 5000W".

According to Xindou data, as of May 11, 2024, Samgo Cognitive Circle has more than 2.94 million fans on Douyin.

Today, the "Samgo Cognitive Circle" is a large, systematic commercial company.

One of the daily accounts of Sango, "Sango (daily number. Record growth)" The bound MCN is Yisheng culture. Tianyancha shows that Hangzhou Yisheng Culture Communication Co., Ltd. was established in March 2022 with a registered capital of 500,000 yuan. The legal representatives of this company, Jiang Defang and Shen Wenjun, are both the controlling shareholders of a number of media companies.

In addition, according to Tianyancha's industrial and commercial registration information, Shen Wenjun currently serves as the legal representative of 9 companies and a shareholder of 30 companies, covering sea cucumber sales and cultural communication. However, from 2022 onwards, it has withdrawn from the list of shareholders one after another, and only one of the aforementioned nine companies remains in existence.

Image source: Tianyancha

In terms of business model, the monetization model of the Samgo Cognitive Circle is no different from that of a number of Douyin Internet celebrity IP accounts - online through traffic and authorized slice monetization, offline organization of training, private board meetings and communities, and derivative income. And this kind of self-media will also help or guide people who "learn from experience" to incubate very personal short videos, which is quite a proxy operation.

That's why Xuanjing's videos are similar to many controversial IP videos, with obvious stencil marks: the personal title and cover are eye-catching, and the narrative style is resolute and strong. In terms of video content, this kind of video often takes the form of a live half-length appearance and a quick oral broadcast.

And Brother San, who was pushed to the front of the stage because of the Xuan Jing incident, is just a microcosm of the many class sellers on Douyin. One of the contributing factors is that in the early years, knowledge payment was all the rage, and after the craze subsided, some KOLs turned to IP incubation under the influence of short videos. An MCN person from an educational institution told Jiemian News that in 2021, they began to change their business direction, from incubating famous teachers at the beginning to incubating incubation services that include entrepreneurs' IP.

One of the criticisms is that such incubation courses are expensive, but the results are difficult to quantify. Some consumers who have participated in the offline training course said that the entire course lasted for 10 days and cost 50,000 yuan. In addition, the price of a single "financial quotient private domain improvement course" and "emotional intelligence course" is about 10,000 yuan.

Another knowledge paid celebrity on Douyin, "Qunxiang Liu Siyi", recently revealed on its official account that it has spent 2 million to 2.5 million yuan on Douyin operation from 2020 to the present. At the same time, he is also monetizing through the traffic community.

However, this kind of "blurred boundary" drainage and monetization model has frequent problems, and the platform has been alert.

At the beginning of the year, Li Yizhou's WeChat mini-program "Yizhou Yixue", which sells AI courses, was suspended due to violations of the "Interim Provisions on the Development and Management of Public Information Services on Instant Messaging Tools". In March this year, when users searched for knowledge paid accounts such as "Sange", "Li Yizhou" and "dada" on Douyin, the platform no longer displayed the main account. At present, when Interface News searches for the keyword "Brother Sam" on Douyin, it cannot directly search for "Brother Sam's Cognitive Circle", but relevant videos and matrix accounts can be displayed.

On March 25 this year, Douyin officially issued the "Announcement on Carrying out the Special Governance of "Thick Black Studies" and "Pseudo Success Studies". Douyin said that some self-media take advantage of the psychology of ordinary people who want to succeed quickly, plan content and open matrix numbers in a targeted manner, simplify, routine, and even "thicken black" the way to achieve success, and monetize it by opening private board meetings, training courses, etc. It exaggerates social anxiety and sells "antidotes", and directs users to third parties through a large number of matrix numbers to sell courses, join groups, etc. After the regulations are issued, the payment of some knowledge payment accounts is frozen, and the course links cannot be listed on the platform.

As far as the Xuan Jing incident is concerned, Sam Ge stated in the latest video that he has nothing to do with him, and he does not think that what Xuan Jing said is "problematic". However, judging from the strength of platform governance and user feedback, this kind of account that "teaches people to grow" has bid farewell to the era of peace of mind.

View original image 522K

• 

•