Maybe you're not familiar with who Crazy Brother Yang is, but you should have heard of this name more or less.
On November 1, 2022, Crazy Brother Yang became the first amateur blogger on Douyin with more than 100 million fans. At present, the number of followers on his homepage is stuck at 99.99 million+ - this is the result of his discussion with Douyin.
According to Feigua data, the number of fans of Crazy Brother Yang has reached 120 million. Douyin has 742 million monthly active users, and almost one out of every 6 Douyin users follows Brother Xiaoyang.
On May Day this year, the electronic music festival held by Brother Xiao Yang once again earned enough eyeballs, but it also attracted a lot of criticism because of the sale of high-priced water. May 6, #三只羊参与举办电音节被指宰客#的话题登上热搜第一.
In this regard, Brother Xiao Yang denied stealing customers, and angrily and helplessly shouted to the media, "Do you want to rub traffic, or do you want to deliberately smear us."
This is not the first time that Crazy Brother Yang has encountered a crisis of public opinion. From being targeted by Wang Hai, a professional anti-counterfeiter, to being named and criticized by the China Consumers Association for being vulgar and bringing goods, danger has pressed this super Internet celebrity again and again.
In this era, the fate of Internet celebrities seems to be either collapsed or quickly outdated.
Brother Xiao Yang wants to take the Three Sheep Company he founded to go further, and he is planning how to escape the fate of the fast-falling Internet celebrity.
At the 2023 Douyin E-commerce Author Summit, Brother Xiao Yang took the stage in a black suit and delivered a speech entitled "Don't Forget the Original Heart". At the beginning of his speech, he described himself as "an ordinary Douyin e-commerce creator, an ordinary person".
This is indeed the story of an ordinary person who has gone crazy and got rich.
In 1995, twin brothers Zhang Kaiyang and brother Zhang Qingyang were born in a working family in rural Lu'an, Anhui Province. According to Brother Xiao Yang, due to his poor family background, he did not check the B ultrasound at that time, and when he gave birth, he thought it was just a child.
After giving birth to Brother Yang, my mother found out that there was another one in her belly. When Brother Xiao Yang came out, his face was blue, and the doctor slapped his buttocks, and then he cried out and was born safely.
Because his parents are working outside, Xiao Yang is taken by his grandparents in his hometown. The brothers' "crazy" genes have been evident since childhood, and whoever is destroying their home thinks they did it. In the end, because they were too naughty, the brothers were sent to their parents again.
Brother Yang took a group photo with his parents
In 2000, Brother Xiaoyang's family of four was crammed into a small house of more than ten square meters in Jiashan, Zhejiang, and his parents earned more than 4,000 yuan a month.
His father worked as a barefoot doctor in Shanghai, and his mother was responsible for the manual work of carrying boards in the factory. witnessed the difficulty of his parents earning money, and the determination to make money took root in the hearts of the brothers since childhood.
In a speech, Brother Xiao Yang revealed that after entering elementary school, they have begun to think about various ways to make money; By the time they reached high school, they started wholesale small goods every weekend and sold them to make money.
Xiao Yang recalled in an interview that after entering high school, his mother took the initiative to choose a more tiring job in order to provide for them to go to college, "I just want to make money quickly, I don't want my mother to work in that factory anymore."
In his freshman year, his girlfriend told Brother Xiao Yang that his friend posted his own star paintings on the short video platform, and he could make money by asking for manuscripts to sell paintings, and suggested that he also look for opportunities on short videos.
With the idea of earning hundreds of yuan a month for living expenses and reducing the burden on his family, Brother Xiao Yang began to break into the Internet.
At present, the first video of Crazy Brother Yang displayed on the Kuaishou platform is a mechanical dance video released in January 2016, called "Dislocation". He stood alone in the living room dancing jerkily, and the background was a little dazzling due to the overexposure of the backlight.
Crazy Brother Yang's early Kuaishou works
After that, he released a number of videos related to self-taught dance, and the data response was mediocre.
During the winter vacation of his freshman year, Brother Xiao Yang pulled his brother Zhang Kaiyang to think about the content together, and they couldn't grasp the traffic preference and began to imitate it.
Once, they swiped a man holding a cannon and said, "Double-click to like and follow, tomorrow I will put it for the brothers, see how big this cannon is".
The brothers did the same and made a bigger cannon. This short video suddenly exploded, with tens of thousands of followers. But the next day, the cannon was fired, and the fans ran away.
What really changed his fate was a video of a dormitory bombing ink. In the video, Brother Xiao Yang put the lit cannon in the ink and tried to escape, but the door was locked by his roommate. This work of fame brought him more than 300,000 fans.
Brother Yang's fried ink video
Many years later, Brother Xiao Yang analyzed the reason for the popularity of this video in an interview: the dramatic effect of the ink being locked up was conceived by himself a long time ago, and the secret of success lies in "reversal", "resonance", "seeing your video, you can see yourself".
However, at that time, the ruthless Kuaishou, Xiao Yang's earthy and funny taste can only be regarded as a side dish before the meal. Compared with the almost masochistic eating and broadcasting challenges such as eating snakes raw, firecrackers blowing up the crotch of pants and shouting microphone social shaking, it seems too fresh and refined.
During the Kuaishou period, Brother Xiao Yang could only be regarded as a beginner player who understood how to play on the Internet, and he was far from being a big Internet celebrity.
In his sophomore year, Brother Yang, who earned tens of thousands of yuan from advertising, was already able to pay for his own tuition, rented a house, and took his parents over to live together.
However, his determination is much more than that.
In 2017, Brother Yang, who already has 3 million fans, came to Guangdong to look for opportunities to no avail, and stayed for two days before going back
2018 was a watershed year in the development of China's two major short video platforms.
On March 31, 2018, CCTV reported that there were a large number of early pregnancy Internet celebrity videos on Kuaishou. On April 4, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the Cyberspace Administration of China successively interviewed Kuaishou and demanded rectification.
Subsequently, a group of underage mother accounts represented by Yang Qingning and a group of social shake accounts represented by Pai Pai Qi were banned, and many anchors left due to the tightened platform censorship policy.
This rectification is not a small blow to Kuaishou. Two months later, Kuaishou, a pioneer in the field of short videos, surpassed Douyin in terms of daily active users for the first time. During the Spring Festival half a year ago, Douyin's daily activity was less than one-third of Kuaishou's.
Under the changes in the competition situation of the short video platform, Brother Xiao Yang made the choice to transfer his position - to settle in Douyin.
With the experience of starting an account in Kuaishou, Brother Xiaoyang's road to Douyin is much smoother. grasped the two traffic passwords of reversal and resonance, and after a year of settling in Douyin, Brother Xiao Yang created a short video that took his Internet celebrity road to the next level.
On September 6, 2019, Brother Yang released the first video of the "Weekend of Despair" series. In this series of videos, Brother Yang's family has a distinct personality: Brother Yang, an "Internet addicted boy", is often tricked and tricked by his brother Brother Yang, Dad Yang is a honest and honest wife, and Mama Yang is the real head of the family.
Brother Xiao Yang's "Desperate Weekend" series of videos basically has more than 2 million likes for each one
Relying on filming such funny trivia of ordinary families, in 2019, Brother Xiao Yang's Douyin fans exceeded 10 million. A year later, when the number of followers reached 40 million, the brothers felt that their dream could be even bigger.
In 2021, the two and Du Gang, a teacher who has taught at the university for 15 years, founded Hefei Three Sheep Network Technology Co., Ltd. together, and in September of the same year, they officially started the e-commerce live broadcast business.
In fact, before this, Brother Xiao Yang also tried live broadcasting, but the effect at that time was mediocre, with more than 40 million fans, the sales of multiple single products in a live broadcast were only more than 1,000 orders.
Internet celebrity Anne is considered to be the guide for Brother Xiao Yang on the road of live broadcasting.
In a microphone PK, Anne asked Brother Xiao Yang: "Are you still selling goods?" Brother Xiao Yang dodged and said, "Don't sell it, don't sell it." ”
Anne gave her own advice: "When the performance is not good, try to bring goods in reverse, which is better than bringing goods in the forward direction." ”
Brother Xiao Yang seemed to just faintly reply, "Well, okay", and now looking back, he did keep the advice given by Anne in his heart. After the establishment of the company, Crazy Brother Yang moved forward madly on the reverse delivery track, moving forward.
To sell garbage bags, throw 10 litres of water into the bag and shake it from side to side until the garbage bag breaks; In order to test the quality of the slippers, the two of them directly tore and bit on their teeth, until they bit off a piece of the slippers.
Brother Xiao Yang brought the cream and tried to use the foam ball to prove that the cream was not oily, but the car overturned
In fact, all kinds of strange overturning scenes have not only accumulated popularity for the live broadcast room, but also won the trust of the audience, and the exaggerated product testing method has also verified the quality of the product from the side.
The crazy style of bringing goods laid down by the brothers has also made nonsensical jokes a major feature of their live broadcast room. Questions such as "Is Shaqima a stallion or a mare?" "Is black toothpaste only available to black people?" and other wonderful netizen comments matched with Brother Yang's helpless response, and achieved excellent results.
For a while, the funny slices of Crazy Brother Yang's live broadcast room were all over the Internet, and some people edited out their live broadcast clips, and then hung their own product links to sell goods.
For this kind of copyright infringement and traffic traffic, Brother Xiao Yang not only did not report, but saw new business opportunities from it.
In 2022, Three Sheep will open the authorization of Xiao Yang's live broadcast content, and creators can edit and bring goods by themselves and share commissions with Three Sheep.
At present, there is a huge number of "Brother Yang Universe" on Douyin, and they are all slicing accounts authorized by Three Sheep. There are about 10,000 slice editors behind these accounts, and the large number of video clips they have posted on Douyin have become an important factor in boosting Xiao Yang's fans to exceed 100 million.
Crazy Brother Yang and his slice clone
In April, Three Sheep launched the "Zhong Xiaoer" APP, which focuses on the live broadcast slice authorization business, and in addition to Brother Xiao Yang, it also integrated the slice authorization of accounts such as Make a Friend, Hao Shaowen, and Zhu Zixiao.
The opening of the live broadcast slice authorization not only allows Brother Xiao Yang's fleeting live broadcast to become a fragment of repeated transmission, increasing its exposure, but also helps the three sheep to make money lying down.
According to Ebang Power, in 2022, Brother Xiao Yang will earn 170 million just by relying on the commission share of live slices.
In Douyin, Brother Xiao Yang has become a super Internet celebrity whose traffic and appeal are far better than those of celebrities. Whenever Cecilia Cheung, Sun Yi and other celebrities are guests in the live broadcast room, Brother Xiao Yang will give an order, let the brothers pay attention to it, and show the appeal of tens of thousands of fans for celebrities in dozens of seconds.
NBA star Harden was a guest in the live broadcast room to bring his own brand of red wine, and sold 10,000 bottles in 5 seconds.
Some people say that Brother Xiao Yang became popular on Douyin because he was "down-to-earth, truthful, and humorous", but in the eyes of another wave of people, what they saw was "inferior, vulgar, and boring".
Perhaps to this day, there are still people who don't understand why so many people love to watch Brother Xiao Yang. With the help of algorithms, Brother Xiao Yang has his own market. The market was large and hungry at the time, and Brother Yang became the first to feed the market.
In 2018, due to the removal and shutdown of "Kuaishou" and "Connotation Duanzi", Douyin took on a large number of users in the sinking market, and its daily activity jumped to become the leader of short videos.
But at that time, in Douyin's content ecology, the part facing the sinking market was relatively blank. Previously, Douyin was positioned as a "new generation of music short video community", mainly for young people in first- and second-tier cities.
On Douyin, you can brush all kinds of trendy and fashionable special effects and cool card point camera movements, but it is difficult to see the rough and original content of Kuaishou Lao Tie.
In March 2018, Douyin changed its slogan from "Let worship start here" to "Record a better life" in order to meet the transformation needs of the platform's expansion period, emphasizing content that is closer to the lives of ordinary people.
During this period, Brother Xiao Yang brought his rough but life-like funny content to Douyin, which not only met the huge audience in the sinking market, but also met the platform's demand for life-oriented content at that time.
According to media reports, Xiao Yang's fans are mainly young people in small towns in third- to fifth-tier cities.
Based on such fan portraits, after the official start of live streaming in 2021, Brother Xiao Yang focuses on cost performance, and the products in the live broadcast room are concentrated in daily consumer goods, mostly small and medium-sized brands, and unbranded products produced by small and medium-sized manufacturers.
And this line coincided with the development strategy of Douyin e-commerce at that time.
In 2022, Douyin E-commerce established a merchant development department, which mainly serves small and medium-sized businesses, and launched a series of support policies. In this context, Brother Xiaoyang's live broadcast room has also indirectly received more traffic tilt.
In the eyes of some people, Brother Xiaoyang's "low" and "vulgar" just stepped on the development of the platform and created his success on Douyin. Even the live slicing business can only be played by Brother Xiao Yang, who is crazy enough.
Because Brother Xiao Yang's live broadcast style is exaggerated and eye-catching enough, it can be cut out and spread separately, which can gain good traffic. In comparison, Dong Yuhui, Luo Yonghao and other styles that require people to slow down and listen to lectures are difficult to stand out in the short video information flow.
A short video of Brother Xiao Yang's slices can also receive more than 100,000 likes
Moreover, for Dongfang Selection, which takes the high-end route, it is difficult for its audience to accept this model of bringing goods.
Last year, 2,000 "Dong Yuhui" accounts suddenly appeared on Douyin, all of which were selling goods with sliced short videos selected by Dongfang, causing controversy.
In the end, Dongfang Selection's attempt ended with Yu Minhong apologizing on his personal Douyin account, saying that there were problems in the process of promoting the slicing business.
Yu Minhong apologized for Dongfang Selection's slicing business
However, as the business grew bigger and bigger, Xiao Yang was not willing to sell only small brands and daily consumer goods with low unit prices, and he began to set his sights on those products with higher profit margins.
It is not easy to get a big-name brand to accept his "madness", which is not only the dislocation of the audience, but also the so-called dividing line between "elegance and vulgarity".
On Double 11 in 2022, L'Oreal appeared in Xiao Yang's live broadcast room for the first time. Facing the camera, Brother Xiao Yang sighed and said easily: "We talked for more than half a year, from April to November, and the brand finally let me sell it." ”
In 2023, Three Sheep and OPCOM will establish a joint venture company to incubate the contact lenses brand, and Xiao Yang will sell the goods online. On the next trading day after the announcement of the cooperation, OPCOM's stock price plummeted, evaporating 3.7 billion in market value in one day.
The most circle-breaking conflict was the Yellow Vulgar YSL (Yves Saint Laurent) incident of the apprentice's traffic light during last year's Double 11.
As the first sister of the three sheep, Huang of the traffic light relies on the whole work to be funny, has more than 9 million fans on Douyin, and is often banned because of his amazing words and bold actions in the live broadcast, and has won the title of "Title Douluo".
The yellow belt YSL air cushion of the traffic light is accused of being vulgar
After the live broadcast clips that the brothers like to see on weekdays were spread to Weibo and Xiaohongshu, it triggered a completely opposite public opinion effect:
"Any serious brand goes to this kind of live broadcast room, and I will feel that the price has fallen to the ground."
"I'll buy a stall, I'll buy Saint Laurent, but I won't buy Saint Laurent from a stall."
The controversy caused by this vulgar goods incident, on the surface, is because Brother Xiao Yang chose a brand that does not match his own tonality, thus reaching the misplaced audience, but in fact, it is also warning Brother Xiao Yang that after becoming a super Internet celebrity, he will eventually accept the scrutiny of "brothers".
On May 6, Xiaoxiang Morning News reported that a bottle of pure water at the Hefei Electric Music Festival held by Crazy Brother Yang was sold for 20 yuan a cup, and he was accused of stealing customers.
The price of drinks at the festival site
A day later, Brother Xiao Yang responded in a video saying that in a specific environment, it is normal for the price to be higher, and all the food and drink at the scene of the electronic music festival are clearly marked, and there is no fraud. Moreover, after discovering that the price of a stall was high, he quickly reduced the price to 10 yuan, which was the lowest price in the previous electronic music festivals.
In the video, Brother Xiao Yang angrily and helplessly called on the media to pay more attention to the content of positive energy, and asked the media "Do you want to rub traffic, or do you want to deliberately smear us", and said proudly at the end of the video: "Brothers, in the future, our electronic music will be free of water, and I will see what some media are still hacking." ”
Although Brother Xiao Yang chose to be tough and tough, his words all revealed his fear of the tree's big wind.
After the number of fans exceeded 100 million, he found a platform to remove more than 700,000 banned and no longer used fan accounts. However, within two days, the fans came back.
In the end, he took the initiative to discuss with Douyin, so that the maximum number of fans displayed on the front end only stayed at 99.99 million+, and then relaxed.
Brother Xiao Yang's seemingly stressful nervousness is like a prophecy, since he became the only Douyin amateur blogger with more than 100 million fans on the whole network in 2022, troubles have come to the door one by one.
was first targeted by Wang Hai, a professional anti-counterfeiter. Only more than ten days after the number of fans exceeded 100 million, Wang Hai broke the news on Weibo that the wall breaker and meat grinder sold by Crazy Brother Yang had a false standard power, and if one was refunded and three were compensated, then the total amount of compensation paid by Brother Xiao Yang and the merchant would be as high as 100 million.
The merchant and Brother Xiao Yang successively issued statements and quality inspection reports, but they failed to calm the turmoil.
Wang Hai, a professional anti-counterfeiter, has repeatedly reported that the goods sold in Xiao Yang's live broadcast room are suspected of false propaganda and unqualified quality
After that, Wang Hai at least faked more than a dozen products that appeared in Brother Xiaoyang's live broadcast room. So far, his top Weibo is still a report on Xiao Yang's sale of toxic children's shoes.
Caught in the turmoil of fakes, although Brother Xiao Yang removed the relevant goods from the shelves and returned and refunded some of the goods, he still said in a live broadcast that Wang Hai "has consumers on his lips and actually wants money for a building." ”
At this year's 315 party, CCTV directly named the "Yuhuiyuan Plum Vegetable Button Meat" that was live broadcast by accounts such as Three Sheep for suspected illegal use of trough meat raw materials. For a while, the comment area of the three sheep-related accounts was swiped by "plum vegetable button meat".
After many rounds of fighting with public opinion and professional anti-counterfeiters, Brother Xiao Yang looked a little tired.
In a live broadcast in October last year, Crazy Brother Yang asked his apprentice Xiao Huang: "If I announce my withdrawal from the network, will you support me?" ”
After that, he confided in his exhaustion and unhappiness as an Internet celebrity many times in the live broadcast:
"Don't make a fortune, what are you doing with such a fortune, I tell you that making a small fortune is the fastest life. If I go to buy a ship now, there will be public opinion, can I buy it? I can't do anything, I used to like to go to the bar and jump, can I go now? As soon as I went, I was told by others. ”
As the core asset of the Three Sheep Company, he began to be cautious in his words and deeds, and did not dare to cross the line more.
"If I say a word, it will be over-interpreted, if you don't pay attention to me or understand me, he will believe in the interpretation, so I have something I can't say in the live broadcast room now, brothers, no way, I'm too tired."
Brother Xiao Yang did not stop at complaining, he has already taken action to try to remove the Internet celebrity label on his body and create a safer environment for his Three Sheep Company.
The first is to reduce exposure to the public.
Starting in the second half of 2023, his live broadcast frequency will be reduced from 7 a week to 3 a week. The brothers channeled their traffic to the apprentices and the three sheep live broadcast room through the series from time to time.
Feigua data shows that in the past month, Crazy Brother Yang has only brought 8 live broadcasts
This approach is clearly learning the lessons of the predecessors in the industry.
In 2021, Wei Ya's husband, Dong Haifeng, chairman of Qianxun, once said in an interview: "Qianxun wants to do hydropower and coal in the live broadcast industry. Even if one day Wei Ya can't broadcast live for various reasons, Qianxun is still a sustainable company. ”
In a word, it is a prophecy.
After losing Wei Ya's super IP, Qianxun accelerated the incubation of three live broadcast accounts: "Bee Joy Club", "Bee Joy Club" and "Bee Wish Club".
Wei Ya's last public appearance was as a guest at a time-honored brand carnival in Hangzhou in April last year to share her experience in e-commerce live broadcasting
Coincidentally, the beauty ONE behind Li Jiaqi once fired hundreds of anchors and poured all its resources into Li Jiaqi, but after the suspension of the broadcast turmoil and the "which Li is expensive" incident, it also began to realize the huge risks hidden in over-reliance on super anchors, greatly reducing Li Jiaqi's live broadcast time and enriching its anchor matrix.
The most decisive one is Luo Yonghao.
In June 2022, Luo Yonghao announced his retirement from the management of Make a Friend, and in the next three years, he will only participate in dozens of live broadcasts of Make a Friend as a "guest anchor".
In November 2022, after Li Jiaqi's suspension of broadcasting, Mei ONE launched the "All Girls Live Room"
With the cases of his predecessors as a reference, Brother Xiaoyang, who has been on the cusp many times, obviously realizes that it is urgent to make changes.
Removing the Internet celebrity label is not only to avoid risks, but also to conform to the life cycle law of Douyin Internet celebrities and the development trend of Douyin e-commerce.
On the one hand, under Douyin's decentralized traffic mechanism, it is difficult for anyone to become popular. The former classmates Zhang, Yu Wenliang, and Wen Huijun are now much less concerned than before.
Wenshen, who once swept up the circle of friends, now has only tens of thousands of likes on short videos
On the other hand, the traffic of the live broadcast e-commerce industry is skewed, and the top influencers are no longer favored.
According to "LatePost", the proportion of live broadcasts has decreased from nearly 70% in 2018 to equal to store self-broadcasts. At present, live broadcast platforms want to promote self-broadcasting in stores, reduce the phenomenon of selling fake and shoddy goods, and make quick money.
For Brother Yang, who has more than 100 million fans, as the live broadcast e-commerce enters the second half, traffic growth has peaked, and it is better to open up more diversified businesses.
In April, Three Sheep opened the "Three Sheep Theater" account, and released the first short play titled "Fu Ye, Your Substitute Bride is a Big Guy", the starring roles in the short play include Three Sheep Xiaoqi, Three Sheep Zhou Qifeng, Three Sheep He Rui, etc., all of whom are employees of Three Sheep Network.
The scene of the first short drama of Three Sheep
Some netizens asked why Brother Xiao Yang did not participate, and the anchor of Three Sheep responded that he was busy with the company's work.
Brother Xiao Yang is gradually transitioning his identity from an Internet celebrity to an entrepreneur hidden in the public eye.
If you continue to show up, you may still be able to make money every day, but at the same time, you will have to endure the scrutiny of hundreds of millions of eyes. In the live broadcast, it is not only the personal image that collapses, but also the core assets of the company.
For Brother Yang, who can already spend 100 million yuan to buy a house and pay 200 million yuan in taxes a year, will he continue to make quick money with trepidation, or will he retreat bravely and run the company smoothly? The choice doesn't seem difficult to make.
How can you escape the fate of a fast-falling Internet celebrity? Brother Xiao Yang's answer is that he will no longer be an Internet celebrity.