Tsinghua Xueba Zhu Feng: I am mass manufacturing "Li Jiaqi" in Kuaishou

"So, can you please not reveal your age?" Because I am not currently married, I am ready to find a partner later. Zhu Feng said with a smile, beautiful and playful, and the atmosphere of the interview became relaxed.

It is hard to believe that the young and beautiful girl in front of her, who is joking casually, is the "Tsinghua beauty scholar, post-90s entrepreneur, who was selected into the list of '2017 Forbes Asia 30 Outstanding Talents Under 30', the youngest alumni tutor in Tsinghua University's Siyuan Program and new media courses."

However, once he enters the working state, Zhu Feng will instantly switch to the "strivers" mode: he can not only appear in front of the camera to talk and talk, but also often charge clothes + jeans, and run industry belts everywhere to do research. Once went to Hebei Baigou to meet customers, the other party is located in the factory conditions are simple, even no women's toilet, customers feel particularly embarrassed, but Zhu Feng does not care at all, ask colleagues to help guard the door, on the first men's toilet in his life.

In her, she seems to be born with a warrior temperament, optimistic, skinny, and brave in the direction of her dreams.

"A new era is coming, I bet on the short video track"

In 2009, Zhu Feng was still studying at Tsinghua University, in order to complete the journalism and writing coursework, he spent more than three months teaching himself Urdu, studying Pakistani relations and the Silk Road, and broke through many difficulties to find the opportunity to interview the then Pakistani president Zardari, and finally won the highest score in the course.

Before that, in order to interview British Prime Minister Tony Blair, she had even studied the name of the other party's dog...

In popular parlance, Zhu Feng can be called the "king of the scroll king", but she said that the beginning of all efforts is actually only due to the explosive desire to explore.

Driven by a strong curiosity about new things, in addition to Urdu and Blair, Zhu Feng has also studied many "strange and meaningless" things, such as "future communication models".

In those years, WeChat public account entrepreneurship is at the cusp, and countless self-media pour into the track every day, but she has been keenly aware that graphic communication may not be an ultimate form.

When the time advanced to 2014, "Little Apple" and "Ice Bucket Challenge" broke the whole network in the form of short videos, and she immediately realized, "A new era is coming, I bet on short video tracks." Zhu Feng said. So she boldly made a move that many people could not understand: quit her well-paid investment banking job and start a short video business.

In 2014, when the World Cup coincided, Zhu Feng decided to cut from football to create a KOL in the vertical field. The partner is her college classmate, as well as the sister who spent more than a year "flickering" to come, the three rented an apartment as an office, Zhu Feng personally went to the front to do the host, the three people took turns to shift, cutting videos and doing operations day and night.

Two months later, this football talk show called "Big Ball And Little Pearl" sprung up, ranking first in Youku sports football videos, cooperating with "tall" institutions such as the Chinese Football Association, Adidas, and C Luo's team, and becoming a well-known football self-media. But Zhu Feng did not get lost in flowers and applause, but soberly realized: "Just being a KOL is not enough, the future product form must be pan-centralized, what we want to do is MCN." ”

In March 2015, "Star Station TV" was established. In the past few years, Xingzhan has gradually developed from mass manufacturing of Internet celebrities through content and operation to a precise traffic company that produces videos in batches driven by technology and data. The reason why it was named "Star Station" is because Zhu Feng feels that all video accounts are like stars, shining and shining.

"From PGC to UGC, video is not just a work, but a social particle"

In the first two years of entrepreneurship, Star Station has been doing PGC business, in Youku, iQiyi and other video sites with content incubation of Internet celebrities, through the form of advertising monetization, the peak of the time, there are dozens of KOLs, more than 20 categories of video programs. But Zhu Feng and his companions gradually realized that on the centralized content distribution platform, PGC not only has a small starting volume, but also is difficult to monetize, unable to achieve interaction and migration, let alone scale.

How to achieve a breakthrough? The team was stuck in a bottleneck. At this time, the short video platform that is developing at a high speed has entered Zhu Feng's field of vision.

One night in 2016, Zhu Feng brushed her mobile phone at home and saw a farmer doing edible insect farming taking pictures of her daily farming, which suddenly attracted her attention. Zhu Feng, who felt very funny, forwarded the video to his colleagues, and then everyone had a collective attack of occupational diseases, began to study the data and interaction of Kuaishou, and found that "this platform is particularly magical." In their view, compared with the PGC platform, the core value of short video platforms such as Kuaishou is to turn video into a "social tool".

"The video content that people post is not a work, but a social particle." Zhu Feng said, "In this sense, the short video platform actually provides a very good tool for users who are not very familiar with text operations, which reflects a huge market." ”

At the end of 2016, Zhu Feng and his companions decided to transform as a whole and "re-warehouse" Kuaishou.

"At that time, everyone thought that Kuaishou was just a casual thing to play with."

But when Zhu Feng announced the decision to the team, almost overnight, 2/3 of the people left, and finally only "four or five kittens" were left.

"No way, at that time, the people who made videos all had a movie dream, and everyone agreed to try it, but in fact, they were very reluctant in their hearts, and the team was basically in a state of disbandment." Zhu Feng said with a bitter smile, "And you can't convince others at all, you said that Kuaishou's data performance is good and the fan viscosity is high, but so what?" In the eyes of many people, this thing has no artistic value. ”

Although today, the short video platform that easily breaks through hundreds of millions of daily active has long become the main source of online and offline traffic, and some people even say that the next ten years will be "ten years of content". But at least in 2016, when people talked about vibrato and kuaishou, everyone thought it was just a casual play.

Zhu Feng once made a "running better" education account in Kuaishou with the "Tsinghua Xuejie", and the fans accumulated to 1 million+, but there are still many people who say to her in the comment area: "You are a little girl in Shanghai, the living conditions are also good, or Tsinghua, how to go to Kuaishou?" How many days can I play? ”

"When I heard that, I wanted to drop something, what is 'how to go fast'?" What's wrong with the fast hand! Zhu Feng said.

This misunderstanding comes from all over life and lasts for a long time, such as a Tsinghua student who heard that she was doing short video social networking and was particularly surprised to ask her "Why are you doing such a low thing" when she was particularly surprised.

"In fact, like most people, I can work elegantly in investment banks and financial institutions and live a refined and glamorous life." However, when I started a business through short videos, saw so many cute and sincere Kuaishou users, and through them really realized the huge opportunities and potential contained in the short video market, I was deeply attracted by this platform and what I was doing. Zhu Feng said.

"I saw a map of China on Kuaishou"

After experiencing the collective resignation of employees and the imminent dissolution of the company, Zhu Feng and his partners spent 3 or 4 months to reorganize the team. The most difficult part is that people cannot be recruited, because no one believes that this matter can create value, and Zhu Feng cannot explain to them that the real value does not come from those things that look fancy, but should take root in the people and solve the real needs of the people.

The word "rooted in the folk" does not sound like "post-90s" at all, but it is Zhu Feng's life credo. This delicate girl who grew up in Shanghai and was raised in the warm and humid subtropical monsoon climate of Jiangnan is strong and tenacious at heart.

When she was in high school, she once wanted to be a war correspondent with "iron shoulders morality and a brilliant pen", go to the most dangerous corners such as Afghanistan and Palestine, face the cruelty of war, observe social conflicts, and choose to enter Tsinghua To study journalism.

But then she found that it wasn't enough to write articles with a pen, and that if she wanted to be the "pivot point that pried the earth," she needed to create value, and it was a continuous creation of value. So she volunteered, participated in the volunteer group and went through countless rural inspections and research, and concluded that the fundamentals of China's economy are based on the improvement of the lives of the vast number of township people.

After the star station began to spread out in a large area of Kuaishou, it once encountered a very strange thing: when many old irons bought things in the live broadcast room, they almost did not communicate with the anchor, but directly placed orders, "you let him talk and he does not say."

At first, Zhu Feng and his partners thought they were zombie fans, but later through a return visit, they found that the reason why these old irons did not speak was actually that they were not very good at typing, and when they encountered the goods they wanted to buy, they would only click the operation button to place an order. Zhu Feng met a user in person, a big lady living in the countryside, she is not very good at using mobile phone input methods, but she will buy things, "she can also understand the information you pass, know your sincerity, know your joys and sorrows."

"Therefore, entrepreneurship must be close to the countryside, close to the people, close to the people, in order to really find the direction, I saw a variety of Chinese maps on Kuaishou, especially like the fireworks here," Zhu Feng said, "It can let every ordinary person, enjoy the convenience brought by science and technology." ”

"Help more enterprises have traffic and improve the ecological efficiency of short video"

In less than a year of transformation, Star Station has accumulated more than 500 accounts and 160 million fans on Kuaishou, and in 2017, it has expanded its territory to do ToB business, specializing in establishing a private domain traffic pool for enterprises, and has become the head service provider of the platform.

Compared with simple traffic monetization, B-side business is not easy to do. Each company has differentiated needs, which has higher requirements for the team's operational capabilities, but it also makes Zhu Feng see the more powerful energy of the whole company, "I can not only build my own traffic pool, but also through our method to let more enterprises have the traffic they want." ”

In order to better serve enterprises in all walks of life, Zhu Feng did two things.

The first is to summarize the general methods and laws. Through a large number of accounts, different elements of the arrangement and combination, through the AB test horse racing to determine the necessary conditions for the explosive content, such as: the release time of the work, the release interval, the length of the video, the speed of speech, the cover text, etc., and even study the word count, font, tilt and so on of the cover text. After that, the system uses commercial tools such as magnetic Taurus to multiply the method landing efficiency by "acceleration".

The second is to develop differentiated strategies for different types and magnitudes of customers. "For example, people who sell wine, people who sell houses, people who sell cars, people who sell agricultural products... They are too different." Zhu Feng's team once helped a car brand plan the way to play the account matrix - first, let the brand's main account drive the brand effect; second, do the net red trumpet for different fan circles; at the same time, link the following dealers to do short video accounts together. After such a layout, when the car brand does campaign, the main account drives the rhythm, the trumpet creates an atmosphere, and the dealer account does online + offline linkage, "the effect is immediately different."

In addition to these blood-surging success cases, Zhu Feng mentioned that a customer who impressed her, a shoe and apparel dealer, with the remote help of the Star Station team, directly increased their daily GMV from one or two thousand to two thousand to two hundred thousand, "everyone is very happy", and later, she and the team took time to visit the customer's warehouse.

"We arrived at a very remote place, and as soon as the warehouse door opened, a middle-aged uncle with white hair came and hugged us directly, and his eyes were full of tears. We were terrified, but he immediately grabbed my hand, the temperature of his hand, the rough texture of his palm prints, and I can still remember it now, and he said, 'I thank you very much, you are my children's tuition, I have never sold so much in my life'. When Zhu Feng recalled the details, his eyes were a little moist.

In 2021, the 6th year of the establishment of Star Station, this enterprise, which once had only 3 people, has grown into the first in the Kuaishou brand operation industry, and has also helped many companies to achieve hundreds of millions of flows.

It is precisely because of the emergence of enterprises like Star Station that the overall efficiency of the platform has been improved with science, data and methods, ensuring the strong productivity of content output, making consumer content and commercial transactions prosperous, making the platform more dynamic, more pyrotechnics, and making business more powerful.

"In the past few years of starting a business on Kuaishou, I have felt a real way to improve this society, starting from every ordinary person, maybe not like the world's definition of tall, but to be able to create the value of the times with Lao Tie, this is my value," she said.

(Huashang Daily reporter Zhang Haizhou, editor Xiang Xue)