Xiang Zuo's first broadcast GMV exceeded 10 million, "abstract" became the new code for bringing goods

In the new trend of live streaming sales, "abstraction" has become a new traffic code. Xiang Zuo has achieved remarkable sales results in Douyin live broadcasts through his unique abstract style, demonstrating the strong appeal of abstract culture in content consumption. This article analyzes how Xiang Zuo successfully uses abstract style to promote products, and explores the popularity of abstract culture in the contemporary Internet environment.

Xiang Zuo's desire to harvest abstract traffic can no longer be hidden. On December 3, Xiang Zuo, wearing conspicuous heavy makeup and pink braids on his head, appeared in the Douyin live broadcast room to promote beauty products. Not long ago, he wore a pink gauze skirt, gladly claimed the stage name "Xiang Duohua", and announced his first live broadcast with "Everyone wait for the flowers to bloom."

Image source: Xiang Zuo's Douyin account

Although Xiang Zuo in the live broadcast room did not have the responsibility of giving a talk because of his "hot mouth" Mandarin, he was well aware of the essence of the performance of the assistant host. When explaining Armani lipstick, he took the lipstick and put it in his mouth with a wicked smile. The female anchor next to him reported the subsidized price at the right time. He immediately covered his chest with one hand, with disbelief written all over his face.

His acting skills honed over decades were also on display during the live broadcast: when the female anchor passionately shouted "399 to get on board" for an Estee Lauder essence water, Xiang Zuo expressed dissatisfaction with the price and pretended to leave. The anchor hurriedly persuaded him to stop. Xiang Zuo faced the camera and quoted the price, "199, or I'll really leave?" In the end, this essence was sold at a price of 199 yuan and had a GMV of 2 to 5 million.

According to the data from Chanmama, Xiang Zuo has conducted a total of 5 live broadcasts in the past 30 days, with an average sales of 10 million to 25 million yuan per broadcast. The GMV of two of the live broadcasts was second only to Yuhui Xingxing. This achievement also surpassed @向太陈岚 during the normal broadcast period. You should know that Xiang Tai, who entered the live broadcast early, has more than 10 million fans on Douyin, and the GMV during the normal broadcast period is about 500W~700W. In comparison, Xiang Zuo only has 2.88 million fans. Before his reputation reversed, he was still asking for "a little attention" in Zhang Dada's live broadcast room.

"Believe in the power of abstraction" may be Xiang Zuo's true voice. From playing with his own memes to wearing women's clothing and selling goods on live broadcasts, Xiang Zuo, who has repeatedly stumbled in the film and television industry, has found his comfort zone in abstraction. On the one hand, he lets himself go and makes things happen, on the other hand, he reaps the dividends brought by abstract traffic.

It’s not only Xiang Zuo who has been made famous by Abstract. If we count the influencers who have dominated the screen this year, the word "abstract" is often included in their personal labels. When "abstract" becomes the hot word of the year, we have to think about how to view this abstract year?

1. Xiang Zuo, harvesting abstract traffic

In fact, if you look at Xiang Zuo’s past videos, the audience will probably find that being abstract may really be Xiang Zuo’s comfort zone.

In 2018, Xiang Zuo opened a Tik Tok account and showed his abstract talent from the very beginning, such as dancing the "shaking dance", shaking like a malfunctioning robot while shaking off his shirt, with exaggerated expressions and movements to the point of throwing off all his idol baggage; some people said that he looked like Jam Hsiao, so he posted a video pretending to be Jam Hsiao singing; including the "touching the bridge of the nose" that was ridiculed by everyone in "The Treasure Land in Front of the Door", it was indeed his habitual action after archaeology.

In May 2021, Xiang Zuo and Yaoshui Ge had a fateful encounter: in the "Kung Fu Carnival" hosted by Huya, Yaoshui Ge faced off against Xiang Zuo. This duel had an abstract name - "Medicine Question 4: All the Way to Zuo". At that time, Xiang Zuo's public image was still that of a "rich second generation" and a "tough guy", while Brother Yaoshui was almost on the opposite side of him - a grassroots, the first generation of abstract saint, and Internet fun.

Xiang Zuo VS Yaoshui Ge

Huya officials have done sufficient warm-up for this event. First, Brother Yaoshui wanted to challenge Kung Fu master Jet Li, and Xiang Zuo accepted the challenge as his apprentice. Then Brother Yaoshui shouted on Weibo, "Just watch and see if I can smash him to pieces with one punch." Then he immediately backed off, "Can you let me go this time?" The show effect was perfect.

Interestingly, this duel in the octagonal cage was later called a "battle for possession" by netizens - when Brother Yaoshui gradually got rid of his previous image and became more and more serious, Xiang Zuo followed Brother Yaoshui's path, and it seemed as if the souls of both parties had been exchanged.

"The Treasure Land at the Doorstep" is the key to Xiang Zuo's abstract career. Although this movie, which was said to have cost 100 to 200 million yuan, did not perform as expected at the box office, it did unearth an abstract treasure trove for Xiang Zuo.

After the "touching the bridge of the nose" and "spider-style aerobics" memes became popular, Xiang Zuo's marketing direction suddenly became "a man with a head full of memes", and he frequently appeared in talent entertainment venues.

For example, he filmed a video with the imitation master @李濡濡, took out his ID card to prove his identity in the live broadcast room of @张大大, and kindly guided users to imitate. He also ventured into the food and gaming circles, and played with the "look left, right, and forward" meme in every video. When cultural and tourism bureaus in various places began inserting his ghost-animal materials into tourism promotional videos, Xiang Zuo also reacted to these videos, firmly taking over the first wave of abstract traffic and, by the way, turning around his shaky reputation.

The audience was obviously happy to see the "rich second generation personally trying to please users", and he himself began to sprint on the abstract track of various content platforms. On Bilibili, he and the native abstract player @棋手战鹰 on the site had a live broadcast, praising each other's imitation, "How many times have you watched "The Treasure Land in Front of the Door"?" On Xiaohongshu, he and @药水哥 teamed up to start a cross-dressing live broadcast, publicly wearing women's clothing, black suspenders, shiny Chanel-style and other outfits were unveiled one by one, making the preppy-style Yaojiang next to him look particularly normal.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

Wearing women's clothing may be a necessity for promoting women's products. Shortly after claiming the stage name "Xiang Duohua", on December 3, Xiang Zuo started his first live streaming show on Douyin. Brands that appeared in his live broadcast room included Helena Rubinstein, Armani, Shiseido, etc.

According to Chanmama data, the live broadcast lasted about 3 hours and attracted 7.41 million viewers in total, ultimately achieving 10 million to 25 million GMV. Among them, products such as Helena Black Bandage Cream priced at 3,099 yuan, Lancome Essence Cream priced at 299 yuan, and Estee Lauder Essence priced at 899 yuan all contributed sales of over one million yuan.

To some extent, Xiang Zuo took over the KPI of @向太陈岚's live streaming sales. His sales during the normal broadcast period even surpassed that of Xiang Tai, who entered the live streaming sales market early on. The five live broadcasts on Douyin brought him sales of 50 million to 75 million yuan, and the GMV of two of them was second only to @与辉同行 on the sales list of the day. On December 9, Xiang Zuo stepped into the live broadcast room of @理发师晓华 with great fanfare, and promoted shampoo while cutting hair. Within 3 hours, more than 67 million people flocked to the live broadcast room to watch Xiang Zuo's hair "get away intact".

Image source: TikTok

Taking abstraction as the starting point, the door to Xiang Zuo’s new career suddenly opened. According to statistics from Kas, recently, on Douyin, Xiang Zuo's business cooperation involves brands such as D9 shampoo, games "Heroes of the Storm" and "Naraka: Bladepoint", RNW nose patches, etc. Recently, he also recorded a navigation voice package for AutoNavi Maps. At the beginning of the video, he typed five words: the power of abstraction.

2. Abstract traffic benefits all parties

When "abstract" becomes a content consumption choice, people become more and more fond of appreciating abstract people or events. Xiang Zuo is certainly not the first celebrity to be made famous by abstract traffic. Looking back, there are also @万颜慧德, @小英一家, @听泉赏宝, etc. Among them, @听泉赏宝, which focuses on abstract treasure appraisal, has gained more than 30 million followers in less than a year, and has opened up monetization channels such as live streaming with goods, commercial implantation, and cultural relics APP in addition to live broadcast rewards.

Another person who actively uses abstraction as a gimmick to attract traffic and attention is @路遥女包 (disdainful version). In the noble and stylish live broadcast room, the female boss Lu Yao declared that she had "seen both humans and ghosts" and "was not afraid of causing trouble", and uttered all kinds of sarcastic words, while angrily unpacking and checking the bags quickly. Each bag usually stayed in her hands for no more than 10 seconds. "Who made Lu Yao angry" has become an unsolved mystery between the audience and the host.

What made Lu Yao even more popular was the dense stream of jokes in the live broadcast room. Every bag in her hand seemed to have a noble origin - "lavender dyeing is only available once a year in Provence, France", "dozens of French craftsmen made it in a month", "supplied to shopping malls with an average per capita consumption of 2,000+", but when the prices were changed on the spot, they were all low-priced models of 25 yuan and 10 yuan. The comedic effect brought about by the extreme contrast attracted many non-core consumer groups for Lu Yao. In the highest month, the GMV of Lu Yao women's bags exceeded 150 million.

In 2024, the abstract circle has also subtly spawned an "all-star version". Before the comeback of "Miracle Xiang Zuo", the godfather of Chinese & B, David Tao, had already been vying for the title of "the ancient Greek god in charge of abstraction" with a collection of abstract works such as "Flat Tao Style", "Tao Hu Wants to Cry", and "Selfie with Side-Parted Bangs and Tilted Head in Train Sleeper".

After Xiang Zuo, another person vying for the title is Huang Zitao, who was recently diagnosed with "white phosphorus personality type". After officially announcing his relationship with Xu Yiyang, Huang Zitao returned to live streaming after a lapse of four months and took the opportunity to start the "Anywhere, Big, Small, Burning" live streaming event in the room.

Its ignition points include but are not limited to: cheering oneself up at the beginning of the live broadcast, "Your positive energy little sun is back, and now it is the invincible big sun"; when there are 3.5 million people watching in the live broadcast room, "How can I be so grateful, how can I be so grateful, what have I used to attract such a large amount of traffic, and whose cake have I touched?"

When a fan asked him "What does Xu Yiyang like about you", he flew into a rage and said, "Get out of here, you big black fan!" When someone questioned whether he would abuse Xu Yiyang, Huang Zitao passionately contributed a famous scene that was repeatedly recited and imitated by users: "Call me, I'll beat him to death, whoever abuses you, I'll beat him up, ok? No, no, no, no, no, this is wrong, because this is a society ruled by law, we must use legal means to punish him."

This kind of abstraction that was exaggerated yet had a sense of originality made his return premiere receive over 11.57 million views. When Huang Zitao took advantage of the abstract traffic to appear at the Double Eleven venue and became the "surprise officer", the audience remembered that he also had another identity as a "sales anchor". According to Chanmama data, on October 31, Huang Zitao's single live broadcast had 17.61 million viewers, of which 72% were recommended by feeds, and single-game sales reached 10 million to 25 million.

The same thing happened to Xu Yiyang. During the live broadcast, Huang Zitao was still complaining that Xu Yiyang was squatting on the crystal and ignoring him, and angrily scolded fans "Even if it is only one cent, I will wear it on my hand, because it is a gift from my wife, it is love." Then he turned around and teamed up with Xu Yiyang to sell crystals.

In Xu Yiyang's live broadcast room, the value of crystal bracelets labeled "same style as celebrities" has soared. The most expensive one is a natural half-basin green ghost bracelet with red skin, which costs as much as 3,899 yuan; the one with the highest GMV contribution is a Mozambique ice powder crystal bracelet priced at 188 yuan. This two-hour live broadcast attracted over 14.02 million viewers, but sales were only between 1 million and 2.5 million.

3. The Age of Abstraction and the Abstraction of the Age

From a semantic point of view, the word abstract is quite abstract. Its abstractness lies in the fact that it is difficult to accurately summarize the meaning of abstract culture with an abstract sentence. For ordinary audiences, they may not have enough time to understand the specific meaning or operating principles of the abstract ideas before they are overwhelmed by the overwhelming abstract topics.

On Xiaohongshu, "abstract" has become the platform's annual keyword. There are more than 10 million notes on the site about "abstract", the number of note readings has surged to 7.2 times that of last year, and there are as many as 160 million related comments. After catering to the mental state of young people, "abstract" quickly broke away from the subculture circle and flourished into mainstream culture.

There are reasons why this culture is on the rise in 2024. In the year when deconstructionism prevailed, "abstract" gradually underwent a semantic change, freed itself from the labels of low-level and ugly, lost its original aggressiveness, and gradually became an emotional outlet for young people. Li Gan, the "founder" of this term, later explained that "abstract is something abnormal" and "after living for a long time, it becomes abnormal", which unexpectedly fits the mental state of young people today.

In 2024, every discipline born on the Internet seems to have an abstract shadow: Pan Hong's roaring dog training is called "abstract dog training", and his usual dog training methods are summarized by users as "dragon fruit" and "cardiopulmonary resuscitation"; the abstractness of "Ice Science" lies in the fact that the dog raised by Da Bing starts with 0 frames and "swooshes" away 13 people including writers, hosts, old backpackers, and Golden Left Face; "Ke Science"'s "micro-do" and "aroma goes straight to the palate", the imitation wave even affected the entertainment industry, and "The Mermaid's Summer" made a strong effort at the end of the year and contributed the national-level explosive meme "scare yourself~"

Where there is traffic, there is a market. This year, the "gold content" of abstraction has risen rapidly. Not only are celebrities popularized by abstract marketing, but even brands are deeply involved in abstract marketing: McDonald's redefined "Happy McNuggets", French fries are "800 times a day", Bananain's "Very Pants" feature "Thousand-legged Guanyin", and RIO has played the abstract daily. On the colorful promotional picture, a line of large characters is particularly eye-catching: "It's so delicious that I can't describe it. I can only play abstraction!"

At the same time, the live broadcast room has become the base camp for "creating memes", and Douyin's streaming machine has created more and more hot-selling products - these hot-selling products flow out of the live broadcast room, are quickly processed again, and then distributed to every corner of the Internet; the pursuit of abstraction has also created a "carnival of word creation", and hot-selling memes are created so quickly that the world has changed before ordinary audiences can catch up.

Earlier, the representatives of abstraction were Sun Xiaochuan, Yaoshui Ge, and Li Gan. Now the representatives of abstraction are chess player Zhan Ying, Tingquan Jianbao, Xiang Zuo, and Wanyan Huide. Hidden in the middle is "Lightning Five Whips" Ma Baoguo. Although the structure has changed drastically, a closer look reveals that the "having fun" element hidden within it is somewhat inherited.

The abstract traffic will never stop, and there will always be someone standing at the forefront. It is worth noting that when Xiang Zuo and others flocked to Abstract Live, the first-generation abstract top streamer Yaoshui Ge had already gotten out of the predicament of "playing the clown".

Not long ago, Brother Yaoshui appeared in a fitness competition as a contestant, and his image was completely different from the "crazy and stupid" appearance in the live broadcast room earlier. More than a year ago, Giao Ge, who had also been a "cyber pet", took back his real name "Zhan Yapeng" and generously displayed his philosophy of life in the live broadcast room.

For those who become famous because of their image, the greatest victory is to be able to convert traffic into money at the moment they reach the top. As for the audience, there is no shortage of fun in the Internet age. After banter, deconstruction and carnival, we hope that what is left is not emptiness.