This Double 11, we went to Li Jiaqi's live studio

Since the eyebrow pencil incident, Li Jiaqi has been less active in the circle, but with Double Eleven approaching, everyone is scrambling for traffic and no one will let it go. This article takes us behind Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room and reveals the operating model of this live broadcast empire.

Did you do any shopping on Double Eleven this year?

Before every big sale, many netizens will spontaneously share shopping guides on social platforms about discounts, group buying, and the best prices for various products. Some even directly calculate the price per milliliter of the product.

What’s interesting is that no matter what kind of guide it is, in addition to listing the prices on platforms such as Tmall, Douyin, and Sam’s Club, the prices in Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room will be listed as a reference standard without exception.

Since he became popular 6 years ago, Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room has become the real "man who knows how to shop" and "a live broadcast room worth trusting" in the eyes of netizens...

The three words "Li Jiaqi" alone may gain him some fame for a while, but the fact that he has come this far and still maintained his level despite all the hardships must be inseparable from the professional team behind him.

There is little public information on the Internet about the composition, division of labor and working methods of this team. But what is known is that Meiwan, the live broadcast agency where Li Jiaqi works, currently has more than 1,000 employees.

We can't help but wonder, does a live broadcast room really need so many people behind it? How do they live broadcast almost every day? How is the live broadcast ecosystem changing silently?

This issue of Microscope Stories takes a closer look at beautiful wrists, hoping to get answers to the above questions.

Here are their true stories:

01 Atypical Director and the “Universal” Prompter

Qiantan Sifangcheng in Pudong, Shanghai, has the scenery of the Huangpu River on one side and the newly popular check-in spot "Qiantan Park Lane" on the other side - the "Endless Spin" art installation that is very popular on Xiaohongshu is located there. Meiwan Company, where Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room is located, is in this place with beautiful scenery and popularity.

Walking into the Meiwan building, you will be greeted by the atmosphere of fashion, trend and art. A huge "Naiwa" doll represents that the "NEVER MIND Cafe" under Meiwan welcomes all girls.

At 2 p.m., more and more young people came into the building. Most of them would order a cup of coffee first, and then leisurely enter the elevator - this is the peak time for Meiwan to clock in, and most employees' workday officially begins from this moment.

In this pet-friendly company, a few "star puppies" appear from time to time, and everyone has to take a few more detours before going to their workstations just to say hello to these animal colleagues.

"They are all very young and don't look like office workers at all" is the most consistent evaluation of the employees here by people nearby.

Even taxi drivers who often pick up passengers here have observed this. Huang, who was born in the 1970s and is the person in charge of the on-site operations of Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, was teased by a taxi driver when he was getting off work, "You are still doing live broadcasts here at your age?" He was so amused that he didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Huang said, "It's true that there are more young people here, and most of them have heavy workloads and new roles, so it's hard to find a match in the industry."

As the core position for coordinating the scene, the director of the live broadcast room can be said to be the soul of the scene. The director's responsibility is to ensure that the live broadcast team is organized in an orderly manner and cooperates in division of labor. Xue Zi, the leader of the director team of Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, is a girl born in 1998. From the outside, Xue Zi is far from the image of a director in the minds of the public.

Photo | On-site director and team leader "Xuezi"

"In everyone's mind, are directors mostly like Zhang Yimou, or at least in their forties and wearing a small vest?" Xue Zi, with long bleached white hair and the most popular gradient manicure on her fingertips, spoke in a powerful voice, "We are atypical, we are on-site directors, and we have to be very executive."

"Live broadcast director" is a new position that emerged with the rise of live broadcasting. There is no experience to follow in the industry, and the backgrounds of team members are also varied. There are variety show directors, advertising people, and "generalists" like Xue Zi who have worked in "big companies". Their different professional skills are also put to use after entering the live broadcast room. "Use your own experience and judgment to solve all problems that occur on the scene, such as how to arrange the live broadcast scene to feel like home, such as how to temporarily adjust the movement lines of everyone in the product. Most of the time, we cross the river by feeling the stones."

Figure | Another important position in the live broadcast room: the goods group

Each live broadcast involves hundreds of samples, which are placed on different shelves in the live broadcast room. To ensure that the samples can be delivered on time and accurately, the staff of the goods group need to shuttle between the shelves to find products of corresponding brands and specifications. After a live broadcast, their WeChat steps can reach tens of thousands, and they have been the "walking king" in the live broadcast room for many years.

The role of "prompter" has a new definition after the rise of the live broadcast industry. It mainly assists the anchor to remind the selling points and keywords, and even has to know the product as well as the anchor.

As the first "prompter" in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, Jingya has been working here for 6 years - this is also her first job after graduating from university.

Picture | Jingya is checking the information

When the team first started, everyone had multiple responsibilities, and no one could explain to her the value and role of the position. She could only figure things out as she went along.

After following the live broadcast for a while, Jingya found that many businesses actually did not understand live streaming. "The information provided is complicated and contains many terms, which increases reading difficulties." Therefore, Jingya would organize it again according to Li Jiaqi's language habits, and mark the key points to help him and the audience get the information more clearly.

Jingya has kept this habit until now, so much so that when she sees a product now, the first thing that comes to her mind is "This product, Jiaqi should introduce it like this..."

According to many netizens, Wangwang, the broadcast assistant who often partners with Li Jiaqi, is the one who understands him the most, while Jingya is like Wangwang behind the scenes, and is known internally as "the woman who understands Li Jiaqi the most." Long-term cooperation has given her and Li Jiaqi a perfect understanding, and they can often understand each other's message with just a glance or an expression.

Although the company now has a complete product selection and submission mechanism, Jingya will still quickly preview the questions that consumers may have before the product is broadcast, and calculate the discounted price per milliliter of some products in the live broadcast room in advance so that the anchor can refer to it at any time. Jingya said, "If it can improve the quality of live broadcasts and improve the efficiency of anchors, then I will do it."

"You are the universal prompter." A colleague in the live broadcast room commented on Jingya.

02 When technical guys start to study lipstick color testing

Most people who step into Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room for the first time will probably exclaim “Wow”.

Far from the public's impression of a simple scene of "live broadcasting by just holding up a mobile phone", this live broadcast room is more like a scaled-down version of a professional studio.

Picture | The live broadcast room is brightly lit

The 300-square-meter space is cleverly divided into display areas with different themes. Large and small lenses, slide rails, and prompt screens are placed in front of each live broadcast scene. There are more than 30 ceiling lights for fill light alone, which can simulate the warm feeling of sunlight shining through the window onto the wall when necessary.

Not far away, the main and backup equipment of the cooling device were installed and kept running simultaneously to prevent overload and interruption of the live broadcast.

Among the on-site staff, the number of technical personnel is extremely high. Cameramen, directors and other image transmitters keep their eyes on the screen all the time and dare not relax at all during the whole process.

Photo | The cameraman stares at the screen intently. To ensure smooth switching of images and make the live broadcast of products more intuitive, the live broadcast room is currently equipped with a variety of camera positions and jib shooting.

"The quality of technology is directly related to everyone's shopping experience. Since the beginning of the lipstick color test broadcast, we have always emphasized technology," said Xiao Gu. He has been with Meiwan for nearly 5 years. From the simplest mobile phone and DV to the current configuration comparable to that of a TV studio, he can be said to have learned along the road of technology upgrades here. In recent years, the team has absorbed many technical personnel from the e-sports industry, bringing many new live broadcast technology ideas.

"In Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, ensuring smoothness is the basic work of live broadcast technology. The continuously improved requirements for color accuracy and multi-camera display can make everyone better understand the product, and the user end can also directly feel the difference."

Take lipstick for example. The color difference caused by different mobile phone screens will greatly affect users' judgment of the product. Lipstick is a product that relies heavily on "color testing". The technical team found all the mainstream mobile phones on the market for comparison, and finally selected the Apple screen with more stable color rendering as the benchmark for debugging. Through professional color matching plates, repeated color correction and comparison of each camera, and finally confirmed with Li Jiaqi, we found the most accurate color value in the eyes of the "lipstick king".

"The girls have experience and they all say our color test is the most standard."

Providing "all girls" with a better shopping experience is the direction of "involution" for these technical straight men.

Photo: Xiao Gu (right) and his colleagues from the technical team are watching the live broadcast

During live broadcasts, the beauty of the picture directly affects the user's perception of the product, especially for "olfactory" products like perfume. Users cannot "smell" the scent, and their perception of the product needs to be conveyed through pictures.

In order to reflect the artistry of perfume and allow users to have an immersive feeling when the host introduces the product, the technical team and the camera team spent time studying how to shoot perfume.

"Perfumes have different colors, and the effects and feelings are different when illuminated by warm or cold light. In addition, the angle at which the bottle is tilted refracts light differently. These are all moments that can be created through technical art."

Are these high-end technologies and equipment a bit overkill for live streaming? As a technician, do I only have to delve into the technology on the small screen? Will there be a gap?

In Xiao Gu's opinion, using better equipment and making more technical designs is not just showing off skills, "but really using technology to make live broadcasts more heartwarming and make girls' shopping experience better."

03 “The content of live broadcast is not just about products”

Live streaming is not a one-man show. To keep the live streaming room attracting audiences for a long time, the effort must be made outside the room.

From the initial Li Jiaqi live broadcast room, to the "All Girls' Wardrobe" and "All Girls" live broadcast rooms created for all girls, to the recording of variety shows and cross-border cooperation with Naiwa Family IP...now this company is no longer just a "sales business", but a content-driven company.

Meiwan has specially formed a team to be responsible for creative content.

The average age of this team is 25 years old. They have been "surfing" on the front line all year round. They were once part of the "all girls" in the live broadcast room and understand the preferences of "all girls" best. For example, on the recent Double 11, the small column "Thank You Boss" after winning the "offer" of a good brand price mechanism was their idea.

The content creative team is also a gathering place for "academic masters": Ren Ren, born in 1997, graduated with a master's degree from the University of Edinburgh, and Qian Qian, also born in 1997, graduated with a bachelor's degree from the Chinese Department of Fudan University, and has interned in fast-moving consumer goods companies and 4A advertising companies.

When many people first hear about their experiences, they are surprised: "With such a good education, why do you want to do live streaming?"

They both gave the answers of "interesting" and "the idea can be implemented" in unison.

"What we have to do is to make things that seem boring interesting," Qianqian and Renren said when introducing their work. For example, when the company moved, Renren used the interesting shooting method of "throwing a ball from one space to another" to show the difference of the new office.

"The live broadcast room supports everyone to try new things," Qianqian said.

Whether it is having the anchor wear a cow costume to thank the boss for the good price and say cheesy love words, or having the bosses of various brands become "emoticons", seemingly incredible things have become a reality here and have become a new round of "hot memes" on the Internet.

"More importantly, most of our creative ideas can be implemented," Ren Ren said. This is a completely different experience from her previous internship. Even if she is not on stage, her creations can be seen. For her who loves creation, this is also a form of recognition.

04 Postscript

There were many “Wow” moments during the interview.

For example, when I first saw the Double 11 live broadcast room, I was surprised by the dozens of shelves inside. When I was wondering how I could quickly find things to hand over to the anchor, I found that there were already mature and efficient traffic lines inside. When I saw that there were many backbones of the company who were over 35 years old, I sighed, "It turns out that the live broadcast industry is inclusive and can accommodate 'middle-aged people'."

And lamenting that the company's turnover rate is far below the industry's.

We also tried to understand why and asked everyone, "There is a lot of turnover in the live broadcast industry, why do you insist on working at Meiwan?"

Almost all of them mentioned the "good atmosphere". Meiwan is not only Jingya's first job, but also the first formal job for campus recruits Qianqian and Renren. They admitted that they did not understand "what the outside world is like", but they felt happy enough to be here. They are all young people, and everyone is sincere enough in treating this job and wants to do a good job from the bottom of their hearts.

Picture | After a day of live broadcast, the on-site director team is meeting to discuss work

Including Xiao Gu, who is often used as a "tool man" and is dragged to try masks and food on camera, and do many things beyond technical duties. "We are all happy to do it," Xiao Gu said, "and it seems that everyone is very happy."

Another reason is to be seen. In addition to the value created by one’s own position being seen by the public through the live broadcast room, the company also sees and recognizes the efforts. Everyone is willing to stick to their posts and face challenges day after day.

There is also the ubiquitous sense of "achievement".

"Whenever my family asks me where I work, I just say 'Li Jiaqi'," these young people said. Their jobs are too advanced and their families don't really understand them, "but they have all heard of Li Jiaqi and will proudly tell people around them."

"You know, it's very touching to watch a company grow so fast," said Mr. Huang. Since joining the company in 2020, he has regarded the live broadcast room as his own child.

When the interview ended, it was 5 o'clock, which happened to be the time when Li Jiaqi went live that day. Jingya, Xiao Gu, Qianqian, Renren, Xuezi, and Jiang Jiang all picked up their phones and opened the live broadcast room.

Live streaming is no longer the simple activity that the public imagines can be done with just a mobile phone, but the efforts of a group of people are materialized at this moment.

It is the joint efforts of these employees that make Meiwan unique in the live streaming industry.

"Well, let's get busy first? The live broadcast room needs us," they said.

(At the request of the interviewees, all the characters in this article are pseudonyms)

Text | Yang Jia Editor | Zhuoran Narrator: Yang Jia