1 Xiaohongshu has become the Spring Festival Gala notes and live broadcast sharing platform
Xiaohongshu, which has always been low-key, finally started to create buzz.
Recently, Xiaohongshu’s official public account announced that Xiaohongshu has officially become the China Central Radio and Television Station’s “2024 Spring Festival Gala” notes and live broadcast sharing platform. On New Year's Eve this year, the Spring Festival Gala and Xiaohongshu jointly prepared a companion live broadcast "Everyone's Spring Festival Gala" .
"Everyone's Spring Festival Gala" is a highly interactive program. Users who post notes have the opportunity to interact with the director team and "provide suggestions" for the live content of "Everyone's Spring Festival Gala". In addition, the audience can also use the "Spring Festival Gala" account on Xiaohongshu to understand the stories in front and behind the scenes of the Spring Festival Gala immersively, and experience the "taste of the New Year" brought by the Spring Festival Gala in advance.
More importantly, everyone can always find good things on the Spring Festival Gala stage every year. Therefore, this year Xiaohongshu launched the first "Watch and Buy" e-commerce live broadcast, synchronizing the links to the Spring Festival Gala goodies in the "Everyone's Spring Festival Gala" live broadcast room , convenient for the audience to purchase.
Xiaohongshu’s cooperation with CCTV Spring Festival Gala has surprised many people. After all, who will get the cooperation platform for the Spring Festival Gala every year has always been a hot topic, and the partners of the Spring Festival Gala in previous years have always been big platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and video accounts. Why? Will you choose Xiaohongshu to cooperate with you first this year?
On the one hand, Xiaohongshu is not smaller than . As of the end of 2022, Xiaohongshu’s monthly active users have reached 260 million, its monthly active creators are 20 million, and its daily publishing volume of notes exceeds 3 million. Although it is not as fast as Dou Kuai, the size of Xiaohongshu is indeed enough to enter the selection range of CCTV Spring Festival Gala.
On the other hand, CCTV may have chosen Xiaohongshu because of its community atmosphere . The Spring Festival Gala has developed so far that it is not only a cultural program, but also a concrete manifestation of the New Year atmosphere. The community atmosphere that Xiaohongshu is good at can complement the Spring Festival Gala and achieve the lossless transmission of the "Taste of the New Year".
It can be said that the addition of Xiaohongshu has added a long-lost freshness to the 2024 Spring Festival Gala.
02 Spring Festival Gala, a battleground for major Internet companies
Of course, any cooperation is two-way, and the cooperation with the Spring Festival Gala is also of great significance to Xiaohongshu.
Including Xiaohongshu, almost all Internet platforms are facing a problem of "breaking the circle" , that is, how to reach users other than the original target audience? For example, at the beginning, the users of Bilibili were a "two-dimensional" group, but with the subsequent introduction of knowledge content, film and television variety shows, and celebrity second-generation content, Bilibili broke out of the circle and became a gathering place for all kinds of young people.
and Spring Festival Gala is an excellent opportunity to break the circle . As the TV program with the largest audience in the country, the last Spring Festival Gala made people all over the country know themselves. It is covered in almost every age group and city at every level. . For any platform, the Spring Festival Gala means huge growth.
Looking back at the Spring Festival Gala over the years, we can find that the current Internet "big companies" that can be named have all cooperated with the Spring Festival Gala to a certain extent, and even fought for exclusive cooperation opportunities.
In 2015, WeChat worked hard during the Spring Festival and cooperated with CCTV to create a new way of playing red envelopes for the Spring Festival Gala. The strong social nature of WeChat red envelopes and the fun of "shake it" naturally fit the festive atmosphere of New Year's Eve, thus triggering a red envelope carnival. According to official data released by WeChat, the total number of red envelopes sent and received on WeChat on New Year’s Eve in 2015 reached 1.01 billion, and the total number of WeChat shake interactions during the Spring Festival Gala reached 11 billion times. Before the Spring Festival Gala, WeChat had less than 8 million WeChat Pay users.
saw the huge growth that the Spring Festival Gala brought to WeChat Pay. In the 2016 Spring Festival Gala exclusive interactive cooperation bidding, Alipay did not hesitate to spend a lot of money and finally won the naming rights of the Spring Festival Gala red envelope. Ren Xue'an, then director of CCTV's Advertising Management Center, once revealed that in order to win the bid, Alipay's investment was more than five times that of WeChat. This year, Alipay creatively launched the "Collecting Five Blessings" gameplay. Since then, gathering five blessings has become a new custom in the Internet era and continues to this day.
In 2020 and 2021, the two major short video platforms Kuaishou and Douyin have successively become the "contractors" of the Spring Festival Gala red envelopes.In 2020, Kuaishou launched five rounds of red envelope interactions when the CCTV Spring Festival Gala started at 20 o'clock. It adopted the oral red envelope command gameplay and worked with the Spring Festival Gala host station to deliver the largest cash red envelope of 1 billion yuan at that time. In 2021, Douyin will distribute 1.2 billion red envelopes and launch Douyin Pay at the same time, trying to get a share of the mobile payment field.
In addition, Taobao and JD.com also became the exclusive partners of CCTV Spring Festival Gala in 2018 and 2022 respectively. As for Pinduoduo , they failed in the competition with Douyin in 2021 and failed to be the title sponsor of the Spring Festival Gala.
The importance of leading Internet companies reflects the value of the Spring Festival Gala as a traffic entrance. Although major manufacturers are gradually withdrawing from the competition for cooperation opportunities in the Spring Festival Gala as user growth approaches the ceiling, for Xiaohongshu, which still has great growth potential, this is indeed a good move to break the situation.
03 The key to the commercialization of Xiaohongshu
It is true that cooperation with CCTV will inevitably bring unprecedented traffic, but whether this traffic can be monetized is also a big test for Xiaohongshu.
In fact, what Xiaohongshu lacks most is not traffic, but a way to monetize the traffic. Since Xiaohongshu was launched, it has tried a variety of commercialization routes, but the results often did not meet expectations. In 2023, Xiaohongshu integrated its e-commerce business and live broadcast business, established a new first-level department, and fully focused on e-commerce.
Of course, it is not easy for a latecomer to occupy a place in the red sea of e-commerce. At present, Xiaohongshu must solve at least three problems.
The first question is whether Xiaohongshu can withstand the impact of the industry’s “low-price” trend. From Jingdong's tens of billions of subsidies at the beginning of last year to the lowest price on Taobao, the e-commerce industry has become a low-price trend, and the price war has begun again. The "buyer e-commerce" advocated by Xiaohongshu is content-centric, which seems to be incompatible with the low-price mentality.
But we can also see that there is no shortage of low-priced products on Xiaohongshu’s shelf scenes. The model of “selecting products from Douyin and shipping from Pinduoduo” is also quite popular in Xiaohongshu. I wonder if the dual-line business model of shelves and live streaming can bring new possibilities to Xiaohongshu.
The second question is whether Xiaohongshu’s buyer model can work. In 2023, Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui’s single live broadcast on Xiaohongshu set sales records of 30 million and 100 million respectively, allowing the entire industry to see the powerful monetization capabilities of e-commerce shopping. However, it should be noted that Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui are celebrity anchors “introduced” by Xiaohongshu and did not “grow naturally” from Xiaohongshu’s platform ecosystem.
If the logic of Xiaohongshu’s shopping e-commerce business is to be understood, a “native-born” head anchor will be needed to try it out. Considering that Xiaohongshu’s shopping e-commerce is still in its infancy, it will take time to cultivate such anchors.
The third issue is whether the content and business of Xiaohongshu can be balanced. One of the reasons why Xiaohongshu is an e-commerce company is the large number of high-quality UGC content and high-net-worth users. However, if commercialization is carried out too hastily, it may affect content creation, thereby destroying user experience, which is not conducive to commercial development.
Balancing content and business and establishing a benign and sustainable development model is a hurdle that Xiaohongshu must overcome.
Although the road to business is not easy, at least Xiaohongshu is heading towards higher ground. As the saying goes, the Spring Festival Gala is both an opportunity and a challenge for Xiaohongshu. I wonder if Xiaohongshu, who travels lightly, can win this crucial battle.
author | Fengqing
In 2020, Kuaishou launched five rounds of red envelope interactions when the CCTV Spring Festival Gala started at 20 o'clock. It adopted the oral red envelope command gameplay and worked with the Spring Festival Gala host station to deliver the largest cash red envelope of 1 billion yuan at that time. In 2021, Douyin will distribute 1.2 billion red envelopes and launch Douyin Pay at the same time, trying to get a share of the mobile payment field.
In addition, Taobao and JD.com also became the exclusive partners of CCTV Spring Festival Gala in 2018 and 2022 respectively. As for Pinduoduo , they failed in the competition with Douyin in 2021 and failed to be the title sponsor of the Spring Festival Gala.
The importance of leading Internet companies reflects the value of the Spring Festival Gala as a traffic entrance. Although major manufacturers are gradually withdrawing from the competition for cooperation opportunities in the Spring Festival Gala as user growth approaches the ceiling, for Xiaohongshu, which still has great growth potential, this is indeed a good move to break the situation.
03 The key to the commercialization of Xiaohongshu
It is true that cooperation with CCTV will inevitably bring unprecedented traffic, but whether this traffic can be monetized is also a big test for Xiaohongshu.
In fact, what Xiaohongshu lacks most is not traffic, but a way to monetize the traffic. Since Xiaohongshu was launched, it has tried a variety of commercialization routes, but the results often did not meet expectations. In 2023, Xiaohongshu integrated its e-commerce business and live broadcast business, established a new first-level department, and fully focused on e-commerce.
Of course, it is not easy for a latecomer to occupy a place in the red sea of e-commerce. At present, Xiaohongshu must solve at least three problems.
The first question is whether Xiaohongshu can withstand the impact of the industry’s “low-price” trend. From Jingdong's tens of billions of subsidies at the beginning of last year to the lowest price on Taobao, the e-commerce industry has become a low-price trend, and the price war has begun again. The "buyer e-commerce" advocated by Xiaohongshu is content-centric, which seems to be incompatible with the low-price mentality.
But we can also see that there is no shortage of low-priced products on Xiaohongshu’s shelf scenes. The model of “selecting products from Douyin and shipping from Pinduoduo” is also quite popular in Xiaohongshu. I wonder if the dual-line business model of shelves and live streaming can bring new possibilities to Xiaohongshu.
The second question is whether Xiaohongshu’s buyer model can work. In 2023, Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui’s single live broadcast on Xiaohongshu set sales records of 30 million and 100 million respectively, allowing the entire industry to see the powerful monetization capabilities of e-commerce shopping. However, it should be noted that Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui are celebrity anchors “introduced” by Xiaohongshu and did not “grow naturally” from Xiaohongshu’s platform ecosystem.
If the logic of Xiaohongshu’s shopping e-commerce business is to be understood, a “native-born” head anchor will be needed to try it out. Considering that Xiaohongshu’s shopping e-commerce is still in its infancy, it will take time to cultivate such anchors.
The third issue is whether the content and business of Xiaohongshu can be balanced. One of the reasons why Xiaohongshu is an e-commerce company is the large number of high-quality UGC content and high-net-worth users. However, if commercialization is carried out too hastily, it may affect content creation, thereby destroying user experience, which is not conducive to commercial development.
Balancing content and business and establishing a benign and sustainable development model is a hurdle that Xiaohongshu must overcome.
Although the road to business is not easy, at least Xiaohongshu is heading towards higher ground. As the saying goes, the Spring Festival Gala is both an opportunity and a challenge for Xiaohongshu. I wonder if Xiaohongshu, who travels lightly, can win this crucial battle.
author | Fengqing
