Text/Li Le
Editor/Midnight
As the end of the year approaches, the live broadcast e-commerce industry, which has been slightly quiet this year, has experienced two "thunders" in a row, and the smoke has filled the air for a while.
No one expected that the two parties that ignited this wave of war were actually the company CEO and the big anchor in front of the stage - there was a former top Kuaishou anchor Simba's disciple Dandannu who publicly "forced the palace" on the CEO of Xinxuan Group and refused to take office. One year later, CEO Guan Qian was fired, and Simba’s former partner Lan Shan took over as CEO; after
, Dong Yuhui was “backstabbed” by the editor of Oriental Screening in the comment section, and Sun Dongxu, CEO of Oriental Screening, exposed Dong Yuhui’s high annual salary in a live broadcast, and another member of Oriental Screening An anchor Tianquan went "crazy" in the live broadcast room. Finally, Dongfang Selection issued a personnel appointment and dismissal notice. Yu Minhong also served as the CEO of Dongfang Selection, and Sun Dongxu was relieved of his position as CEO. On December 16, Yu Minhong and Dong Yuhui jointly broadcast a live broadcast to apologize, and the related incident was on the hot search list, and it is still being fermented...
Picture source Yu Minhong's official Douyin account
CEO was "persuaded" by a major anchor to quit , this seemingly unreasonable thing is actually happening in the live broadcast e-commerce industry. Some industry insiders joked: Live e-commerce is too expensive for the CEO.
Indeed, whether the company is transforming into a cross-border live broadcast e-commerce, or it is an MCN organization that originally focused on the live broadcast e-commerce industry, how the CEO gets along with the big anchors is still a homework that needs to be studied. Since the development of
live broadcast e-commerce, the brutal growth in the early stage has caused some challenges to the company management in the later stage. Most live streaming e-commerce companies were born in the early dividend period of the industry, with a large number of people rushing in and rolling in the mud to try and make mistakes. Today, many companies have not yet had time to understand the new order of the times because they are running too fast. It is obvious that the operating methods of ordinary companies cannot be directly transferred to live broadcast e-commerce companies.
What is even more special is that the head anchor is the pillar of an organization. An anchor with phenomenal communication capabilities and the ability to break through circles determines the direction of traffic and has great appeal to users. The CEO is the nominal power holder of an organization, and the two are more like a new type of partner. The lifeblood of the company is pinched by "workers" who are extremely capable of attracting money. The relationship between the anchor and the CEO seems a bit delicate. If it is not handled well, both parties will suffer.
Whether it is Simba, who is learning to manage the company in a more standardized way, or Yu Minhong, who founded New Oriental and has many years of management experience, this is a new field that needs to be learned. After stepping into the trap, what can they ultimately give? New solution?
1, Xinxuan and Dongfang Selection, the "management pains" they experienced while running wildly
A fire broke out in the backyard of the live broadcast e-commerce company, the conflict between the CEO and the big anchor was highlighted, and the dangerous moment was quietly approaching.
Xinxuan anchor Dandan was the first to resist the CEO. Recently, the top management of Xinxuan Group, founded by top Kuaishou anchor Simba, has experienced turmoil. Xinxuan Group issued a "Notice on the Appointment and Removal of Xinxuan Group Personnel" and CEO Guan Qian was fired. Shortly after the announcement of
’s appointment and dismissal, Dandan, Simba’s apprentice, was the first to stand up and angrily criticize Guan Qian. In an internal WeChat group of 65 people, Dandan spoke sharply and did not hide his dissatisfaction. He directly asked Guan Qian: "Aside from bragging about "Eliminating harm for the people" and "I hope colleagues will use it with caution."
Dandan is one of Kuaishou’s top anchors, with single-game sales often exceeding 100 million. His importance and voice within the Xinxuan Group are self-evident. It is not uncommon for executives to have different ideas from the company, causing friction. However, mature companies and professional managers often take into account the reputation of both parties and prefer to get together and part ways. This time Dandan launched an attack regardless of face and tore apart the management of the live broadcast e-commerce company. The tip of the iceberg of dilemma.
Xin Youzhi, founder of Xinxuan Group, picture source Xin Youzhi’s official WeChat account
The incident has not yet subsided, and Oriental Selection has made waves again.
The "murderous crime" triggered by a 700-word essay not only killed the CEO of a listed company, but also wiped out the market value of HK$8 billion.As of the close of trading on December 15, Oriental Selection’s stock price fell by more than 22% in the first five trading days, its market value evaporated by more than HK$8 billion, and its Douyin account has lost more than 3 million followers.
The timeline of the "little composition" controversy can be traced back to the beginning of the month. On December 5, Oriental Selection released a number of videos to warm up the "Jilin trip". Among them, Dong Yuhui's "Short Composition" video received a lot of praise. However, the official account suddenly stopped, commenting: "Every time the short composition is the anchor In front of the camera, behind the scenes are the friends from the copywriting team, the filming team, and the editing team..."
's statement caused dissatisfaction among some fans. Many people believed that this meant that Dong Yuhui was packaged. Dissatisfied fans took over the comment section and pointed the finger at Dongfang Selection. Fans who denounced Dong Yuhui's "grievances" believed that Dongfang Selection had treated Dong Yuhui badly.
In the live broadcast on December 12, Oriental Screening CEO Sun Dongxu took 10 minutes to respond to the matter. He criticized the editor for working with emotions, explained the reason for Dong Yuhui’s absence on the 10th, and said that Dong Yuhui’s annual salary was more than what was reported online. Ten million.
just didn’t expect that the act of revealing annual salary would accelerate the spread of the “war”. At the same time, according to Whip Bullsman’s report on the 14th, the internal chat records of Oriental Selection stated that Yu Minhong needed to “choose one” between Sun Dongxu and Dong Yuhui. . The
incident has fermented to this point, and Yu Minhong had to end it personally. On the morning of December 16, the board of directors of Oriental Selection announced the resignation of CEO Sun Dongxu in a document. Immediately after 7 o'clock in the evening, Yu Minhong said in the live broadcast room: "Sun Dongxu has made major mistakes in management. Dong Yuhui will definitely have a say in the future development decisions of Oriental Selection."
On December 17, at the 4th China Professional Selection At the Education Development Forum, Yu Minhong responded to the recent public opinion. He believed that the reason for the Dongfang Selection incident was that the management team had not changed its thinking. It used traditional thinking to manage outstanding employees and relied on friendship for a period of time, which ultimately resulted in the traditional The management model is not suitable.
The current number of fans of Oriental Selection’s Douyin account, picture source: Oriental Selection’s official Douyin account
“Dong Yuhui had hundreds of thousands of people online at the same time. In the Internet celebrity model, when you rely on a hugely capable employee to build a business model and When you are developing, you are working for your employees." Yu Minhong said that many people are still acting as bosses and managing from a high position. If it is a traditional company, there is no problem, but if it is a modern company, there must be problems. With the development of modern society, bosses must be willing to work for employees. If they work in the same direction, it becomes a partnership.
In this farce, Oriental Selection experienced a "full-scale collapse". While its reputation was affected, its value was also being revalued by the capital market. Behind the two turmoils of
, they both exposed the imbalance of interest distribution and incentive mechanism within the live broadcast company. At least in terms of the management of major anchors, Xinxuan and Dongfang Selection, which are at the top of the industry, are still in the exploratory stage.
Judging from Yu Minhong's statement, he has clearly understood that using traditional company management methods to manage anchors is no longer a suitable way. This also means that he needs to personally take the helm and find a more suitable management structure for Oriental Selection , At present, Yu Minhong has started to take action.
Yu Minhong’s first fire after taking office was salary adjustment. During the live broadcast on the evening of the 16th, Yu Minhong said that a round of major adjustments would be launched soon, not only for Dong Yuhui, but for all anchors in the company. He hoped that through this adjustment, a good development direction and foundation would be laid for the company. Dong Yuhui was introduced as "Senior Partner of Oriental Selection". Yu Minhong needs to make drastic changes to Oriental Selection, because this is not just a management issue for one or two anchors, but a question of whether the entire company can develop in the long term.
2, Yu Minhong and Simba have to make up the lesson
How CEOs of live broadcast e-commerce companies should manage big anchors, this will be something Yu Minhong and Simba have to explore for a long time.
Take Xinxuan and Dongfang Selection as examples. The two have different problems.In the past few years, the Xinxuan family has grown from a single-person operation to a group operation. Its influence and sales have been passed down from generation to generation. However, as the company enters the modern business system, Xin Xuan's management must become more standardized, but Xin Xuan has never been able to let go of the "family" network.
There is a strong interest-binding relationship between members of the Simba family, and even among some families. The family is full of gangsterism and operates independently. They all have an "emotional" style. Big anchors who can make money want to Hold the power of speech firmly in your hands.
As a CEO who is a professional manager, when he is helping the company to comply with regulations, capitalize, and remove the weeds that have grown wildly in the company, the contradiction between the two is naturally brought to the forefront.
For a company like Xinxuan, the management style of a big factory may not be suitable for such a company. The focus of the CEO may be how to convince different anchor families to abide by the current business rules, rather than letting them internally Scattered infighting among themselves.
Dongfang Selection itself is "out of touch" with the listed company New Oriental. In the New Oriental era, the company's core competitiveness is high-quality and differentiated teaching services, and the company does have a clear management system of famous teacher teams.
Picture source Oriental Selection official Douyin account
After entering the era of live broadcast e-commerce, Oriental Selection has no products. The core is to make profits by selling products to consumers. In this process, Dong Yuhui has become the company's largest core asset. When Oriental Selection became a marketing channel, the previous rules for managing famous teachers became ineffective.
Big anchor IPs are different from ordinary employees. Big anchors are more like celebrity IPs. When a company cannot meet the demand for phenomenal IP, consumers will attack them in groups, thus affecting corporate profits. The CEO may need to refer to the operations of celebrity brokerage companies for Dong Yuhui's management.
On the other hand, Oriental Selection’s treatment of major anchors has always been questioned by fans. As early as February this year, when Oriental Selection disclosed share awards, the outside world began to speculate on Dong Yuhui's treatment. At that time, his personal influence and trends had clearly affected Oriental Selection's valuation and stock price.
At that time, many people from MCN institutions predicted that Dong Yuhui would not only receive equity incentives, but the amount of equity he would probably receive would be at the same level as senior executives. On the evening of February 16, 2023, Dong Yuhui said in a live broadcast, "My son-in-law is rich, and New Oriental has given me executive treatment. This salary has completely exceeded expectations."
Many people close to Oriental Selection once told Wired Insight: New Oriental's incentive value for Dong Yuhui is about 100 million yuan, but it should involve strict exercise conditions and may not be available.
Dong Yuhui, picture source Oriental Selection official Douyin account
"According to the objective facts and rules that live broadcast e-commerce is highly concentrated, it is relatively fair for Dong Yuhui to take at least half of the revenue from Oriental Selection." Luo Yonghao said on his social media The account stated that there was no fair and equitable reward for Dong Yuhui’s contribution, and his interests were not guaranteed at all.
A live broadcast e-commerce insider said that for big anchors like Dong Yuhui, it is necessary to design an incentive mechanism that matches their influence and contribution. Interest sharing, equity incentives, personal brand development support, etc. can be considered. In addition to remuneration issues, major anchors should be included in the company's important decision-making process and use their fan appeal and market perception to bring greater value to the company.
"The essence of business is value. The trade-offs based on weighing the pros and cons will not change the final script. Because consumers do not involve their own interests, they will naturally stand on a high moral ground. Through this matter, CEOs can carefully think about Management issues of 'big anchors'." An insider from a live broadcast e-commerce company told Wired Insight that if the internal management issues cannot be solved this time, Oriental Selection's strings may still be tight for some time.
3. It is not just a matter of managing anchors, but also a matter of organizational change.
Both the anchors in front of the stage and the CEO behind the scenes have contributed, but their values are different. At this time, management wisdom becomes particularly important. From the beginning of
to the present, MCN organizations have been exploring better models in terms of managing major anchors.
Looking back, most of the first batch of Taobao anchors who entered the industry and grew up in Taobao were transformed from Taobao girls, Taobao stores and offline wholesale industries. The husband-and-wife partnership of online stores and offline wholesale stalls has turned into a husband-and-wife partnership of live broadcasting in the era of live broadcasting. The girl is the master and the man is responsible for operations and supply chain. Therefore, compared with other industries, the proportion of husband-wife teams in the field of live broadcast and short video is very high.
Husband and wife business has been a common business organization structure since ancient times. The stability of the contracted anchors that MCN Company is most worried about has become a relatively solid business structure due to the superimposition of a layer of husband and wife relationship chain. Anchors such as Qianxun’s Wei Ya and Dong Haifeng, Junmeng’s Lie Erbaby and Lu Wenjie, Ruiqu Culture’s Chen Jie Kiki and her husband “Brother Feng”, Xia Shiwen and “Boss Qiao” are all typical examples of husband and wife teams. represent.
started as a small-scale business, with one doing the live broadcast and the other doing the management, which is more flexible and complementary in terms of division of labor.
In addition to husband-and-wife teams, another common type of MCN organization is non-family enterprises, which rely on personal IP to rise and form binding relationships with big anchors, such as Make a Friend, Oriental Selection, and Yuanwang Network.
With the large-scale rise of Internet celebrity employees, the internal management and interest structures of many MCN organizations have undergone earth-shaking changes, such as Mei ONE and Li Jiaqi. With the growth of personal IP, Li Jiaqi has been strongly bound to Mei ONE, and Li Jiaqi His Weibo profile reads "Mei ONE Partner", and the share of the live broadcast he received is also considerable; judging from Luo Yonghao's repayment of hundreds of millions of debts in three years, the bargaining chips given by making friends to retain people are not bad. This type of big anchor is closer to the company's partners and major shareholders, has a closer relationship with the company, and has a higher say.
At different scales and stages of MCN organizations, organizational management will face different challenges. It is a good thing to have big anchors, but companies are also worried that if the big anchors leave, it will cause a fatal blow to the company. Therefore, in recent years, non-family companies have been de-IPing. However, in the process of de-IPing, companies will also conduct a new round of organizational sorting around Internet celebrity employees to correct and balance new internal relationships. At this time, as partners A great anchor who plays a human role is also willing to train successors and push the company into a more positive development stage.
When there is an imbalance in organizational management and resource allocation, and MCN ignores or even suppresses the interest demands of big anchors, the anchors will inevitably have conflicts with the organization.
Looking at the entire live broadcast e-commerce track, for companies with relatively stable management, CEOs rarely come out to give guidance in the live broadcast room. They usually pave the way for anchors behind the scenes, and Internet celebrity employees are active in front of the stage to gather traffic. center of gravity.
returns to Oriental Selection. The problem faced by enterprises may be the issue of thinking mode and organizational change. They must recognize the value of star IP and equip it with a complete collaboration network to cooperate with the entire organization to create greater benefits.
"Dongfang Selection neither buys traffic nor gives anchors shares, pushing costs to the extreme." CFO Yin Qiang once said proudly. Now it seems that the tuition fees due for Dongfang Selection will have to be made up sooner or later.
(The header image of this article comes from Yu Minhong’s official Douyin account and Xin Youzhi’s official WeChat account.)
