Produced | People's Esports
The author | Wang Zhewei
Edited | Kevin
The caption image | provided by the respondents
Recently, the internet celebrity digital marketing company "Wufeng Technology" completed tens of millions of yuan A round of financing, including Bilibili, Qianhai Fund and other institutions. In addition to the company's basic business, this round of funds will also be used to deepen the live broadcast industry chain, optimize the digital marketing solutions of Internet celebrities, and expand the e-commerce live broadcast MCN.
Founded in 2019, Wufeng Technology owns the MCN organization "Xuanshi Interactive Entertainment" and the KOL data platform "SEAL Data". The company uses live streaming brokerage as an entry point, and its business covers the fields of e-sports pan-entertainment MCN and e-commerce live broadcast MCN.
In today's pandemic, access to financing is not an easy task. "People's E-sports" also recently conducted an in-depth interview with Wufeng Technology CEO Wu Difei to listen to him talk about this financing, as well as those things in the live broadcast and content industries.
"MCN provides infrastructure services, and creators focus on content."
People's Esports: In the news released, we see that the leading investor in this financing is Bilibili, how did you two come together?
Wu Difei: This is the result of a two-way choice, Bilibili, as a company that started as a "two-dimensional" community, has been committed to "going out of the circle" and building influence in a wider range of fields.
We have a lot of KOLs (opinion leaders) in the field of esports and games. At present, on the basis of these accumulations, we have begun to do more content in life and entertainment.
Overall, we can support Bilibili at the "out of the circle" and "commercial" levels, and Bilibili can provide us with more resources and channels from the platform side, and the two sides are walking together as a mutually beneficial result.
People's Esports: What aspects of the company will this money invest in your planning?
Wu Difei: On the one hand, this fund will be used to continue to consolidate our incubation capabilities for KOLs on major platforms; on the other hand, we may invest in the construction of some derivative capabilities, such as live e-commerce.
People's Esports: Since 2017, you returned to China from the United States to start a business, why did you choose to do the direction of MCN?
Wu Difei: I think that in the past two years in China, especially with the rise of the post-95s and post-00s, their huge demand for the production and consumption of emerging content is an opportunity for entrepreneurs.
In fact, the concept of MCN is an "imported product", Multi-Chanel-Network, a brokerage service agency that connects content creators and publishing platforms. But in the U.S. capital market, MCN is already a "perjury" concept, the largest institution has been acquired by Disney, and there is no mature public company.
However, in China, the number of Internet population is many orders of magnitude higher than that of the United States, and the demand for vertical segmentation of users is also relatively large; compared with the foreign YouTube, there are many domestic high-quality platforms, such as Kuaishou, Douyin, Bilibili, Douyu, Huya, Momo and other brands, each with its own positioning and user groups.
If an individual creator wants to develop through multiple platforms and channels, his own resources and energy are limited, and the transparency of information is not enough. McN, which can solve these problems, will have good prospects for development.
People's Esports: We noticed that one of the partners of the company is the top anchor "Xuxu Baby", how did you come together?
Wu Difei: The two of us actually met around 2010 because we played games, we were all a guild, and we also met and talked offline. At that time, we both made videos, and then I went to school in the United States, and he also switched to the live broadcast field, and slowly became a high-profile person in the player group. When I returned to China in 2017, everyone chatted again, and felt that the live broadcasting industry was still in an upward trend, so they decided to start a business together.
People's Esports: As partners, how do you collaborate in your daily work?
Wu Difei: His own live broadcast work is very busy, so at that time we also discussed it, I was responsible for the daily operation of the company, and he mainly did the anchor work, but he would attend the company's board of directors and large development meetings to discuss the strategy, and when necessary, he would also stand in front of the stage and do some publicity work for the company.
People's Esports: There are many MCN companies in the market, what kind of capabilities do you think you need to have to be at the top of them?
Wu Difei: We have been building the capabilities of the three major sectors. The first is a complete set of KOL incubation capabilities and systems, which is the foundation of an MCN, placed under the brand of "Xuanshi Interactive Entertainment". Last year, we helped about 500 anchors, from scratch to 100,000 fans, this incubation ability I think is more valuable in the industry, and for head and waist anchors, there are also program and content production capabilities, to help them improve their influence in all aspects.
The second more important capability is research and development. We have always felt that we are a technology company with our own complete R&D team, and one of the partners is also responsible for the construction of the technical architecture. We value the pivotal role of data in this industry and have developed a platform specifically for SEAL Data.
Data empowers different agents in many dimensions. For example, for anchors and brokers, you can intuitively see the live broadcast data on the platform, including the number of fans, gender, geographical composition and labels, as well as more detailed data such as the tipping period, in order to make targeted adjustments to their live broadcast content; there are also brand owners, through the platform can see the detailed data of the entire network KOL, more accurate advertising.
The third is commercialization capabilities. We can currently provide brand customers with a customized, KOL-based marketing solution; in addition, we are vigorously promoting e-commerce live streaming to help KOLs monetize at this level.
Overall, we want to provide infrastructure services to content creators, as long as they focus on the content creation level. This year, we also plan to set up our own "Wufeng Fund" to support young and excellent content creators from the capital level and help them obtain greater development opportunities.
"Live streaming is a big increment"
People's Esports: The live streaming industry has been developing for many years, what opportunities are there in the market now?
Wu Difei: I think we should not only talk about live broadcasting, but the content creation industry including the entire short video, long video, live broadcast, etc. I personally think there are still great opportunities. There are two main expansion directions.
The first is the sinking market. China itself has a very big dividend in this area, thanks to the continuous decline in the cost of doing live broadcasts and short videos, everyone can participate.
The second direction is professional content. This is the data we have seen recently: whether it is short videos or long videos, or live content, we have found that professional content such as popular science education has an increasing proportion of users, and even exceeds some entertainment content.
For example, a UP master on Bilibili, in a simple and easy-to-understand way to explain very professional and high-end financial content, attracted millions of fans in just one or two months.
"People's E-sports": In the past two years, everyone has been talking about live broadcasting has passed a period of rapid growth, what stage do you think the industry has reached at present?
Wu Difei: I personally think that from the perspective of the platform, it has indeed entered the second half, everyone has entered a cooling off period, and will no longer sign anchors at any cost as in the past; but from the perspective of content creators, it may be at the stage of 20%-30%, and the platform needs more diversified and more vertically subdivided high-quality content, and also needs to seek a more sustainable profit model with creators, such as e-commerce with goods. These points are still in their infancy, and they are all opportunities for content creators.
"People's E-sports": E-commerce with goods, is a big hot spot last year, you have repeatedly mentioned this model before. What does it mean for live streaming?
Wu Difei: It does make a lot of sense. Before we did live broadcasting, the way out was focused on "tipping", after all, facing C-end users, it is a very direct way to monetize. But after the e-commerce brought up the goods, we felt that this would be a big increment.
At present, many existing user platforms in the market, including video content platforms and e-commerce platforms, have begun to build an ecology around live streaming with goods, so for us and the entire content creation industry, it is an opportunity to devote ourselves to this field.
People's Esports: Is this model suitable for all categories of anchors currently on the market?
Wu Difei: I think that the question of Q&A needs to strip away the attributes of an anchor. Because no matter what type of live broadcast, the essential logic of e-commerce with goods, or the user wants to buy the cheapest and best goods. Then, there's the engaging streamers and live content.
This is also why we often see some very popular e-sports or game anchors, but in terms of the effect of carrying goods, it is not as good as imagined, which is essentially a shortcoming in the supply chain system - it may use the fan effect to sell some goods in the short term, but it is not necessarily guaranteed in terms of sustainability. Because there is no perfect supply chain capability, it is difficult to have an advantage in terms of price.
"People's E-sports": How to make up for the shortcomings in the supply chain?
Wu Difei: Cooperate with more professionals and institutions, and find sustainable win-win points from it.
For us, the first anchor and live content is an advantage, after all, it is the foundation of the establishment. For the e-commerce supply chain, the company has set up a separate e-commerce live broadcast division, many of which are professional e-commerce and supply chain veterans, who will be responsible for negotiating cooperation with upstream suppliers and striving to obtain guarantees in terms of cost and quality of goods.
On the other hand, we also recently announced a "city partner plan" to invite local partners to do e-commerce live broadcasting in more sinking markets across the country.
Last year I visited many places and found that many of the shops were extremely underused and could not make ends meet most of the time. Then for them, the transformation into an e-commerce live broadcast that connects online and offline and has wider sales will have great motivation. We also hope to use our services to help traditional enterprises and shops complete this transformation.
We will set up training centers in similar urban stores, where anyone who wants to do e-commerce live broadcasting can receive relevant training; on the other hand, these stores will also become a regional product screening platform, integrating local characteristics of high-quality products and delivering them to online live broadcasts.
About social responsibility
People's Esports: What impact will the recent new coronavirus pneumonia have on the industry?
Wu Difei: This sudden epidemic has affected all walks of life in this epidemic. For us, we've also been thinking about what we can do in this situation.
We found that many companies are seeking to alleviate stress through online live broadcasting: catering companies live teaching cooking online; training institutions set up online classes; fitness instructors live sales of fitness supplies... At present, due to the impact of the epidemic, the suspension of express delivery has led to a temporary stagnation in e-commerce with goods, but only from the perspective of business model, live broadcasting and short videos can feed back physical brands, rely on online sales, and expand revenue channels.
In addition, the value of new media has been magnified like never before. In response to this epidemic, we have seen a lot of excellent video content output, as well as live broadcasts of Vulcan Mountain and Leishen Mountain, attracting hundreds of millions of "cloud supervisors". The public uses new media to obtain information in real time and pay attention to the progress of the epidemic, and the influence of new media has been seen by more people in this epidemic. The communication form of real-time visualization such as live broadcast and short video is more efficient.
For Xuanshi, we have always hoped to use traffic in more valuable and meaningful places and shoulder more social responsibilities. After the outbreak of the epidemic, we donated 100,000 protective masks and 100 sets of protective clothing to the frontline of epidemic prevention and control in Wuhan for the first time, and also called on the company's anchors and KOLs to donate 200,000 yuan to Wuhan Love, and reminded fans and viewers to pay attention to personal hygiene precautions in the process of live broadcast and video creation.
People's Esports: McN will have many anchors, how to exercise social responsibility through them?
Wu Difei: In fact, from the early days of the company's establishment, we feel that as an MCN organization, the social responsibility behind it is relatively heavy. Because there are now about 11,000 KOLs, each KOL can affect thousands of fans.
Last year, we did two live broadcast public welfare activities, respectively in Taijiang County, Guizhou and Chongqing Zhong County, hoping to stimulate the local economy, drive the cultural tourism industry, and make a difference in youth education through this high-traffic live broadcast.
From the perspective of the scene of live broadcasting this application, it is also very suitable for doing these public welfare, and we also hope to do this for a long time in the future. In the future, it may unite with the European and American Returned Scholars Association to do 4 poverty alleviation public welfare activities with tens of millions of traffic levels.