i Dark Horse: These two years are a turning point and a period of transformation for Shang Wenjie. A former superwoman champion, after re-finding her own positioning, turned from operating herself to operating products, signing artists, cross-border e-commerce masters... When she repeatedly stressed to i Dark Horse, "I am now a product investor", what do you have to ask?
Text/Cassie
After coming out of Huayi, Shang Wenjie has two more idols, one is the famous designer masha ma in the fashion circle. It is said that the argument of "anti-artist fan economy" is derived from Lei Jun. Previously, she was a person who did not have a clear stylistic positioning in music and was completely insulated from the fashion and technology circles. (Few people know that she is actually a technology product controller and digital master in private.) )
The current "Shang boss" prefers this expression: "I am now a product investor, and I hope to make the company a small and beautiful entertainment brand company, creating a series of cross-border entertainment products based on the Internet." E-commerce is just the beginning of the experiment. ”
Supergirl Champion Double Day
Shang Wenjie didrmant for several years after winning the "Supergirl" championship in 2006, just in time for the traditional record market to begin to shrink, a large number of artists with unclear positioning, insufficient musical style, and mediocre response accelerated to drown in the market. Shang Wenjie, who just won the "Supergirl" championship, did not take advantage of the hot iron to find gold, but entered the "low tide period" of her career under the situation of high investment and low return. So much so that after 6 years, she is still trying to prove the identity of "I am a singer" in the show.
Li Yuchun, the same superwoman champion and 2005 champion, ranked sixth in the Forbes China Celebrity List in 2006 with an income of 10 million. In contrast, Shang Wenjie, who debuted a year later, is far behind. It is rumored that Shang Wenjie has had a long period of poverty, advertising, signing two nowhere, in addition to the monthly salary of Tianyu, Shang Wenjie's income is almost zero!
In July 2007, Huayi "rescued" Shang Wenjie from the contract dispute, although the contract dispute ended in a private settlement between the two parties, but because Huayi deducted the liquidated damages payable by Shang Wenjie to Tianyu in the form of a contract, Huayi increased its share ratio in the contract. Huayi, who was not optimistic about Shang Wenjie's stardom before, won all its advertising record contracts and commercial contracts, and built them in the direction of attracting petty bourgeois people.
After Shang Wenjie entered Huayi, her career did not usher in a beautiful "spring", the company released two albums for her a year according to the contract, each investment is not less than 100-150 million, but it is basically a copy of the way to create a female singer, in Nie Xinyuan's previous description, Shang Wenjie's talent and potential have not been tapped.
In the early days of Huayi to create Shang Wenjie, trying to use "literary youth" to position her, it seems that it is not very appropriate, in Nie Xinyuan's eyes, Shang Wenjie is usually not very talkative, nor good at expressing, but she is very convinced and persistent about what she wants to do, and there is a little "angry" temper.
Pictured: Nie Xinyuan
Nie Xinyuan, who has been "edified" by Internet thinking for several years, believes that the play of "literary and artistic youth" is not suitable for Shang Wenjie at the beginning. Creating an artist is like the process of creating a product, which needs to go through market research, marketing strategy, product planning, and then put into the market under the condition that the market positioning, audience group, and promotion strategy of the product are clear, otherwise the artist is like a "product" on the assembly line, with no characteristics, and it cannot be thrown out.
Nie Xinyuan, who has been interested in marketing since childhood, has learned about international trade, and before going to Huayi, he had some experience in entertainment marketing, and he had two years of experience in the IT industry at Shanda. In Huayi for seven years, he went from assistant to planner of the Ministry of Commerce, contacting the most core business and resources, and then began to take over the planning, production, publicity and public relations department of Huayi Music, responsible for signing, terminating contracts, creating and promoting artists and music products.
Whether it is from the degree of tacit understanding or professional skills, they have formed a good complement on the basis of mutual understanding and recognition. At the end of 2012, Nie Xinyuan and Shang Wenjie co-founded a studio. "Room Director" Nie Xinyuan is mainly responsible for controlling the overall operation of the market, while "Women's Room Director" Shang Wenjie is responsible for product creation, design and promotion. "Her business is different from that of a traditional record singer, it needs to be operated by a relatively independent team, every step needs to be refined, and we have confidence in each other." Nie Xinyuan said to i dark horse.
Artist studios no longer rely on large media groups or agencies, and the advantage is that they are relatively flexible in operation, more professional and focused on creating artists and products. Of course, the ensuing test is to establish a structure suitable for the positioning of the company in the early stage: from a studio model to a formal company operation, from a broker-artist cooperation model to a partner model. "We groped and debugged for almost a year, and at the end of 12 years, the studio was still in a relatively initialized state. In the past 13 years, he has mainly done some work for Wenjie's acting career, while focusing on team building and training. In 2014, the company officially established BG Fashion Black Gold Fashion, looking for some professional Internet, e-commerce and other talents to participate. After this year's run-in, debugging, and correction, I hope that 15 years will be on the right track. ”
Cross-border integration
Nie Xinyuan has always used "product manager" to position himself. From the time when she took over Shang Wenjie's affairs in 2009, it was decided to make the three words "Shang Wenjie" into a "brand" or a "platform". He believes that in addition to acting work, an artist is more about "passing on" the "spirit" that she leads and respects.
"Shang Wenjie" wants to transform through branding, which means that it must take the road of commercialization, the first thing is to abandon all previous positioning and open a niche market. They finally clarified a direction: Shang Wenjie can influence a part of the population who have a certain level of education, like to pursue new fashion things, have dreams and are willing to pay for their dreams, and have requirements for the quality of life. But Shang Wenjie likes relatively niche electronic music, and it is expected that it will take a long time to commercialize it.
Nie Xinyuan formulated a five-year plan for him, the overall idea of breaking through the market is to start from fashion, match the "personality" label with Shang Wenjie on an equal footing, and then replace the cutting-edge concept of "electronic music" into the "new image" of fashion, thus creating a new "Shang Wenjie" brand image.
Photo: Shang Wenjie
In Nie Xinyuan's view, the reshaping process of the "product" of "Shang Wenjie" has gone through the following stages: from "Supergirl", "Literary And Artistic Woman", "Trend Queen", "Personality Queen", to "Electronic Singer-Songwriter" after that, to today's "Entertainment Fashion Investor", which is a transformation process from "grassroots" to "literature and art" to "fashion" + "personality". "This has allowed more people to focus on her fashion and personality into appreciation of her talents and abilities." We had our own five-year plan at that time, and we made arrangements for this positioning, in what period, in what way, through what channels, and which people got it, and only needed to be implemented step by step. ”
"In terms of promotion and marketing, the brand of Shang Wenjie is different from others in that the five words of electronic singer-songwriter establish her uniqueness and symbol, and then, we use a series of actions to adhere to the quality of this product, so as to gradually establish the image of this focus brand."
Before 2012, Shang Wenjie won music awards in the general "so-and-so female singer", and after 2012, the award title began to bear the prefix of "electronic musician, singer-songwriter, producer" and so on. Slowly everyone feels that Shang Wenjie has some changes, when the performance market has declined sharply, Shang Wenjie has experienced a trend of rising against the market after several years of dormancy.
Fashionable
Nie Xinyuan's attempt to let Shang Wenjie break into the fashion circle has encountered many bumps in the process, and she has also tried to miss in various exaggerated and strange styling experiments, for which she has been called "Thunder Mother" for a long time. Shang Wenjie admitted that at the beginning, it was really bumpy and bumpy. A few years ago, he was turned away from the fashion industry. In a moment of confusion, the first to support her was Su Hong, then vice president of the fashion group.
Su Hong recalled to i Dark Horse that the first meeting with Shang Wenjie was due to a "copyright dispute", in the "negotiation", Su Hong was impressed by the efforts and persistence of Shang Wenjie and the team, and promised to personally produce and direct a set of fashion blockbusters with the theme of "Body and Clothes Dialogue", which was published in the current issue of "Fashion". This move surprised everyone very much, and others were not optimistic about the talent singer who did not stand out and did not have the slightest fashion foundation, but the result of the film was shocking, and everyone saw her plasticity in fashion.
Since then, Su Hong has brought Shang Wenjie to many fashion occasions, and personally brought Shang Wenjie to Paris Fashion Week, strongly recommended Shang Wenjie to the circle, and helped her shoot theme blockbusters in several well-known fashion magazines in China, including the shooting of cover characters.
Take advantage of "I Am a Singer" to turn over
At the beginning of 2013, Shang Wenjie appeared on the stage of "I Am a Singer", which was an important turning point in her popularity.
They did not take "I Am a Singer" as a simple announcement, but with the influence of this show, the electronic music represented by "Shang Wenjie" and the fashion attitude with outstanding personality were thrown to the market, and the attentive audience could find that Shang Wenjie made careful planning in each song selection and stage design, she deliberately integrated the arrangement and singing style of electronic music into the song, and in terms of styling, it was even more expensive to customize, in order to let everyone know the "fashion" attitude represented by Shang Wenjie.
Nie Xinyuan told I Dark Horse: "We participated in "I Am a Singer", and more than 10 people in the whole studio, together with the cooperative music and visual partners, planned and executed the project of "Singer". "This time the effect of taking advantage of the situation is remarkable."
Since then, commercial performances and endorsement contracts have continued, and on February 12, 2013, Shang Wenjie took over the first TV commercial in 2013, and the fifteenth day after the program was broadcast, it lasted another year and a half with the French brand that was last year. Her commercial transformation effect is good, and her overall income has increased from the state of "not making ends meet" by nearly 50 times. Nie Xinyuan believes that although it is better to lean against a big tree, the studio's company operation method can focus more on creating artists, and it is more suitable for a combination like him and Wen Jie.
Shang Wenjie told i Dark Horse that she wants to emphasize originality, pioneering and experimentality in music; From the artist's point of view, it hopes to continue to improve around three key words: breakthrough, cross-border, and integration. "I love electronic music, whether it's mainstream or not, I have to do it, if I'm asked to do something I don't like, I'd rather go back to my traditional industry and live a white-collar life." 」
The show "I Am a Singer" not only raised everyone's attention to Shang Wenjie. It has also gradually noticed from the media and the outside world that she has embarked on the cross-border route of original electronic music and fashion from "Supergirl".
"I'm a product investor"
At the beginning of 2014, Shang Wenjie Studio upgraded to establish BG Fasion Black Gold Fashion. The team of 30 people is mainly composed of a relatively complete entertainment marketing team and an entertainment e-commerce team in the early stage of development. The main business is divided into two major blocks: the section of artist agency is Shang Wenjie and the new fresh geek youth group, and the second business sector is entertainment e-commerce, and new business will be planned in the future.
After deciding to do e-commerce, Shang Wenjie threw out three product ideas that are different from the nature of "playing tickets": single product breakthrough, anti-artist fan economy, cross-border and intelligence.
Shang Wenjie and e-commerce platforms Jingdong, YOHO have goods! In-depth cooperation, two fashion items were launched - the fashion suitcase ma puce6 and the pure copper fashion headphones ma puce4. And YOHO! has goods to sell ma puce6 is a convertible inner tank transparent suitcase, its brand slogan is show my world (Xuan I), which is a detail design and brand tonality are in line with the thinking of young users after 90, in the later promotion they will also combine the popular social products to do product marketing.
For intelligence, Shang Wenjie's team and JD.com cooperated to launch a pure copper headset for electronic music fans, and it is said that the sales performance of the first batch of orders is also very gratifying.
According to Shang Wenjie's vision, the e-commerce business is expected to account for about 40% of the company's overall revenue one year after the official listing.
Artists cross-border e-commerce has a precedent, Chen Guanxi, Pan Weibai, Xie Na, Jay Chou and other stars are involved, most of them start from the clothing category, and the reason why Shang Wenjie chose the category of "trend luggage" as the entry point, there are two reasons: First, Shang Wenjie herself is a crazy online shopper, and it is "box control", she believes that this piece of coverage of the crowd is very wide, there are business opportunities. Second, Nie Xinyuan followed the idea of doing brands and products when building artists before, and he has always wanted to make a fashion product with a new concept of fashion. Through market research, he found that "trend luggage" is still a blue ocean in China.
A major difficulty for celebrities to do e-commerce is that it is easy to detonate in the early stage based on the "star effect", but it is difficult to sustain, often giving people a feeling of "playing tickets". In this regard, Shang Wenjie said: "When we do this, it is not an artist who is doing it, Shang Wenjie is the identity of an investor, and the products we make are not star peripheral products. At the beginning, we did not want to make this business into an artist product, and in this matter, we can ignore Shang Wenjie's artist identity. We have a professional team, we have top partners, we have to do professional things in this field. ”
For e-commerce platforms, the most important thing is traffic and supply chain. The former ensures enough user population, the latter solves the user experience problem in the consumption link, customer service and logistics need to be guaranteed, and all of this, in Shang Wenjie's view, professional things to the professional team to do must be more effective with half the effort.
In the past, celebrities combined with tide brands to do e-commerce mostly in the form of a combination of online stores and offline entities, and Shang Wenjie chose a light operation, which was completely based on online e-commerce. "Basically, we're going to just lock in online, and online is the biggest market, the closest to consumers. Our company mainly does product and brand incubation, entertainment marketing. "Their cooperation model is that Shang Wenjie Studio undertakes the early stage of creativity, design, promotion and other work, and YOHO! based on their original resources from production, supply chain to logistics for product brand incubation, each other to do the part of the good, the division of labor is clear.
"Product Fan Economy" VS "Artist Fan Economy"
Nie Xinyuan and Shang Wenjie agreed that the company's goal in the future is to create Internet-based products and brands suitable for the young people's market.
In 2014, Shang Wenjie also personally created the fresh geek youth group and began to try to create a new entertainment brokerage model. She believes that the most important thing about a good product is precise positioning. The "product fan economy" is needed, but the "artist fan economy" will not work. "I hardly use my artist status, and I think if that were the case, I would make this project an artist fan economy." Including the boy band that brought me from the beginning, I have always hoped to blur my artist identity, I am a product investor, at present I do not intend to quickly add new artists, I want to make a new entertainment economic model through this boy band. ”
She believes that a product with sustainable development capabilities is very risky if it is made entirely based on "stars". It is difficult to maintain a permanent positive image of an "artist", but it is achievable based on the "product" itself. "We will target a fixed group of people based on product type and target market. Then do a good job of market surveys and plan according to big data. At present, the main target group is mainly trend enthusiasts. ”
In terms of product creativity and promotion, Shang Wenjie has a great sense of "user experience". "The products we are currently on the market are beta versions, and by collecting feedback from consumers and improving the products, we attach great importance to the feelings of buyers. The official version will be available early next year. As for the iteration of luggage items, we hope to solve it through cross-border and intelligent methods. Shang Wenjie said to i dark horse.
Regarding the characteristics of Internet products, "brand IP" is widely mentioned, everyone wants to make a brand culture, and the brand concept that Nie Xinyuan emphasizes is easy, elegant, and effective. In addition, he also believes that it is necessary to create an Internet blockbuster, but the premise needs to have several elements: First of all, the product idea is fresh, interesting and simple; Second, there must be a target group of people to stimulate the consumption impulse to play, buy and share; Again, the price is reasonable. Finally, choose the right marketing method.
In terms of company operation, Shang Wenjie does not ask much, in order to cooperate with Nie Xinyuan and better run a company, she usually pays attention to the interviews of entrepreneurs, industry consulting, facts, international trends and so on. Shang Wenjie told i Dark Horse: "I have always asked myself and my team to be simple, efficient, elegant and practical. Be low-key and do things grounded. ”
For the company's future planning, Shang Wenjie said: "I hope to run the company into a small and beautiful type. In fact, there is not much difference between creating an artist and creating a product, it is important to concentrate on doing a good job of each product, not necessarily too many categories, but must be focused. ”