text | Bohu Finance, author | Mengde
01 It is difficult to bring goods through live broadcast, and it is the same for super anchors.
I say that it is getting more and more difficult to bring goods through live broadcast. No one can refute it. In the world of
, Luo Yonghao’s legendary story of repaying a debt of 600 million through live broadcast has inspired more and more troubled companies. Previously, Tianya Forum launched a seven-day and seven-night “Restart Tianya” live broadcast, and Gaohe Automobile was sold in the live broadcast room. Starting from steak, Lin Sheng, the founder of Zhong Xuegao, sold sweet potatoes to repay the wages of more than 700 employees. However, at present, the performance of selling goods is average, and there is no possibility of continuing Luo Yonghao's legend.
Let’s take a look at Yuanwang Technology, the “first live streaming e-commerce stock”. According to the 2023 annual report, Yuanwang Technology achieved revenue of 4.777 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22.48%; the net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was -1.050 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 299.33%. This is the third consecutive year that Yuanwang Technology has suffered substantial losses, and the loss has reached a new high in the past three years.
Even the former super anchors seem to be unable to carry this banner.
Although it was expected that the sales of major anchors would not be as good as before, they did not expect that the decline would be so obvious.
This year's 618, according to "Green Eyes Intelligence" data, on the first day of Li Jiaqi's 618 pre-sale, the GMV (gross merchandise volume) of the beauty category in the live broadcast room exceeded 2.675 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 46%.
Feigua data shows that the first live broadcast sales of Guangdong Couple, Qi'er, Pan Yurun, Xiao Biscuit and Luo Wangyu during the promotion period decreased by more than 70% year-on-year. During the first wave of 618 promotions (5.20-5.31), the conversion rate of top beauty celebrities represented by Luo Wangyu and Pan Yurun on Douyin plummeted, with sales falling by 75% and 90% respectively.
On the one hand, after experiencing the stage of barbaric growth, both platforms and live broadcast organizations are gradually de-heading, and anchor resources have become more dispersed. On the other hand, all major e-commerce platforms have joined the price war, seriously weakening the low-price advantage that the top anchors relied on in the past.
Regarding the current situation, major super anchors are also "acting badly" or in other words, recognizing the reality.
Dong Yuhui said on the show some time ago that he was very resistant to selling things and had never really enjoyed it; Li Jiaqi also bluntly said in September last year that he could not find his previous working status and was exhausted; at the beginning of the year, Brother Yang said that he would reduce the frequency of live broadcasts to bring goods. This year, 618 did not continue to broadcast as in previous years; Simba said in the live broadcast room that he would reduce the number of live broadcasts and think about the entrepreneurial transformation of the AI track.
It can be seen with the naked eye that top anchors all choose to fade out of the live broadcast room. At the same time, the companies they represent are also preparing for "de-heading".
Mei Wan's preferred Tmall flagship store was officially launched on June 15, and Li Jiaqi and his company Mei One finally joined it with self-operated products. Qianxun and Brother Yang started a short drama business. However, can self-operated and short dramas raise the banner of "super anchor"?
02 "Self-operated", can we get rid of the addiction to head anchors?
"Beautiful Wrist Selection" was launched on June 15, with a total of 7 products launched online. As of press time, the sales of 9.9 yuan garbage bags have reached 20,000+, the sales of face towels have reached 6,000+, and the sales of laundry beads have exceeded 3,000.
During June 18 this year, Li Jiaqi took time to visit Amway's newly opened "Beautiful Wrist Selection" Tmall flagship store during the peak sales period. According to Li Jiaqi’s introduction during the live broadcast, “China now has very strong supply chain capabilities. Many big international brands that everyone is familiar with come from Chinese factories. After so many years of live broadcast, we have also come into contact with many factories with strong R&D, production and manufacturing capabilities. , hoping to collect all the high-quality products behind them into the store. "
But why do you want to be self-operated? Just look at Yuanwang Technology and Oriental Selection.
During this year’s 618 promotion, Jia Nailiang overtook Dong Yuhui and Xiao Yang and became Douyin’s new top salesman. With 710 million yuan, he ranked first on Douyin’s May sales list. At the same time, Yaowang Technology, the organization behind Jia Nailiang, has seen its revenue increase year by year, but has suffered losses for three consecutive years, namely 700 million yuan, 260 million yuan, and 1.05 billion yuan.
As a comparison, Dongfang Selection, which sells goods through live broadcast, is in the opposite situation. Oriental Selection’s net profit for fiscal year 2023 is 970 million yuan. The annual report for the first half of fiscal year 2024 shows that Oriental Selection’s revenue was 2.8 billion yuan and net profit was 250 million yuan.
Unlike most mcn organizations, Oriental Selection has always called itself a "product company." Yin Qiang, CFO of Oriental Screening, once explained the high profit margin of Oriental Screening: First, Oriental Screening does not buy traffic. Compared with other live broadcast companies, it saves a lot of market expenses (Yuanwang Technology purchased the traffic of Douyin in one year accounts for half of revenue). The Second Oriental Selection also did not give the anchors a share. It is worth mentioning that Oriental Selection has a high proportion of self-operated products and its profits are relatively controllable.
According to Oriental Selection’s disclosure, in the second half of the fiscal year 2024 (December 2023 to May 2024), the GMV of Oriental Selection’s self-operated products exceeded 3.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 108% and a month-on-month increase of 74%.
As of now, the total number of self-operated products of Oriental Selection exceeds 400, and the cumulative orders on Douyin have exceeded 100 million, ranking first in the food industry in terms of GMV. The Oriental Selection app has become the core channel for its self-operated products. 90% of new self-operated products are launched on the app. The app’s GMV has accounted for more than 40% of the entire network’s GMV. It can be said that Oriental Selection’s self-operated business has had a good start.
But even though Oriental Selection claims to be a product company, its reliance on top anchors is not much different from other MCNs. Dong Yuhui's influence on Oriental Selection is still difficult to ignore.
In June this year, Dong Yuhui said on an outdoor radio program, "I am very resistant to selling things and seek truth from facts. I still don't enjoy this job today." "Maybe it's essentially due to my previous personality and my past career. reason". As soon as the remarks came out, the stock price of Oriental Selection fell by more than 10%.
The outside world pays close attention to the anchor, so Yu Minhong has to personally make a request, calling not to attack Oriental Selection and any anchor who works with Hui, and to be more tolerant and kind.
On the other hand, it is not that easy to develop self-operated products. Taking the Dongfang Selection corn incident as a lesson, it poses great challenges to quality control and supply chain capabilities. At the same time, it is also necessary to continuously increase the traffic of its own channels and get rid of dependence on a single platform.
This is also a problem that all mcns have to face when doing self-operation.
03 The unpredictable short drama market
Another obvious trend is that Qianxun, Xiao Yang, and Yuanwang Technology behind Viya are all eyeing short dramas.
html On June 6, Xiao Yang's company "Three Sheep Network" launched the first vertical screen paid short drama "Master Fu, Your Substitute Bride is the Boss", the full episode is 42 yuan; Qianxun Culture established Qianmeng Culture, Recently, posters for Qianmeng Culture's three short dramas "Substitute Boyfriend", "My Babysitter Came" and "Don't Fall in Love with My Brother" were unveiled. Yuanwang Technology will launch the short drama platform as a WeChat mini program in the fourth quarter of 2023.It is not new for players in the live streaming industry to develop short dramas. From the perspective of the entire market, the short drama market continues to heat up and is a gold mine to be tapped. One case is that since this year, Douyin, Pinduoduo, JD.com, Taobao and other platforms have further increased their emphasis on short dramas, which has made mcn companies closely related to e-commerce notice the shortage of brand customized dramas. From the brand and user side, the advantages are emerging.
More importantly, traffic and users poured in, and brands also invested their marketing budgets in short plays. Previously, according to media statistics, the mainstream methods for brands to release short plays can be roughly divided into three types: implanting short plays, customizing short plays, and cooperating with talents. Among them, customized short plays will account for more than 70% of all brand short plays in 2023.
’s live streaming boom over the past few years has enabled mcn organizations to accumulate rich user, anchor and brand resources. Take Qianxun as an example. So far, Qianxun has served more than 39,000 live broadcasts, and has guided more than 900 million orders in total. More than 80,000 domestic and foreign high-quality brands have established cooperative relationships with Qianxun.
mcn is involved in short plays. It has rich live broadcast experience and fan base. It can not only attract the budget of brands and increase its own revenue, but also grasp the judgment of the market through short plays, strengthen the link with fans, and improve itself. Influence.
But it’s not that easy to make a good short play.
Take the first short drama produced by Brother Yang as an example. After the drama was launched, it received a bad reputation and performed poorly in the market.To make matters worse, on June 28, this short drama disappeared from Douyin’s Three Sheep Theater account and iQiyi.
Whether it is active or passive, it is no longer unfamiliar to everyone that short dramas are removed from the shelves. In November last year, Mimeng's mini-series "The Black Lotus Master's Manual" became a hit. It was rumored that it earned 20 million in just 24 hours after its launch, which can be said to be an excellent result. However, the show was soon removed from the shelves by many platforms because it exaggerated the bad values of extreme revenge and using violence to counter violence, confusing the concept of right and wrong, and destroying the good ecology of the platform.
Therefore, it seems that making money from short plays is far from easy.
04 Written at the end
In recent years, live streaming companies have been constantly looking for new ways to resist risks, such as building matrix accounts, going deep into the upstream and downstream of the supply chain, using AI digital human live broadcasts, and entering the entertainment market, but they can truly get rid of the dependence on top anchors. disease?
According to Cui Dongsheng, vice president of Make a Friend, the current internal revenue share of Make a Friend Luo Yonghao’s two main accounts has dropped to less than 3%, and the company’s revenue is mainly contributed by vertical matrix accounts.
However, even though the number of Luo Yonghao’s appearances in the live broadcast room continues to decrease, Luo Yonghao’s presence is still there. For example, on 618 this year, Luo Yonghao appeared in the Taobao/Douyin live broadcast room on May 20 and May 24.
At the same time, on April 23 this year, Make a Friend launched its first live broadcast on the WeChat platform video account. Luo Yonghao did not show up. The live broadcast attracted a total of 93,300 people in the past 6 hours. According to data from the third-party platform Xinshi, Make a Friend Video The estimated sales volume of this premiere is 1.2467 million yuan.
In sharp contrast, on Double 11 in 2022, Luo Yonghao made his first live broadcast on Taobao together with Make a Friend. The live broadcast room had a cumulative number of 26 million viewers and a gmv of approximately 210 million yuan. On June 18, 2023, Luo Yonghao joined hands to make a friend and made his debut on JD.com. The total sales exceeded 150 million yuan, and the cumulative number of visits exceeded 17 million. What will happen to
in the future is still unknown, but at present, "making friends" still cannot be separated from Luo Yonghao, and mcn still cannot be separated from big anchors.
Reference source:
1, Times Weekly: Luo Yonghao is no longer needed to make friends?
2, alphabet list: Did Yu Minhong make the right bet?
3, Wired Insight: Wei Ya no longer needs to "re-broadcast"
