This Double 11, it is still difficult for platforms to get rid of "top anchors"

Although some top anchors have encountered setbacks for various reasons this year, this article will reveal why it is still difficult for platforms to get rid of their dependence on these top anchors and their irreplaceable role during Double 11.

As many top anchors have failed this year, the outside world generally predicts that the "de-anchoring" of Double Eleven will become a general trend, and live streaming e-commerce will give way to shelf e-commerce promoted by the platforms.

However, as the Double Eleven event kicked off, we found that not only did many anchors who had failed in the past return to the live broadcast room, but also that all platforms were unable to get rid of their "top anchor dependence syndrome" - Taobao still strongly supported the former "number one" Li Jiaqi; Douyin's new top streamers were good at their own fields and worked together to fill the gap left by Xiao Yangge; Simba made a high-profile comeback after a month and a half, proving that he was irreplaceable on Kuaishou with record-breaking results...

During this year's Double 11, the platforms still used top anchors as the vanguard and main force, even though they knew they faced unpredictable public opinion risks. However, it is not easy to "de-anchorize" them. When major platforms collectively abandoned the "lowest price on the entire network" strategy, when the shelves of Douyin and Kuaishou were catching up with Tmall and JD.com, and the goods on the platforms were becoming more and more homogenous, the top anchors became the "trump card" of differentiation that the platforms had to hold tightly.

01 Why can’t the platform get rid of its dependence on top anchors?

Compared with the lively scenes of previous years with celebrities supporting, constant hot searches, and overwhelming publicity of "pre-sale performance" and "sales records", this year's top anchors have chosen to keep a low profile outside the live broadcast room. But staying away from the public eye does not mean that their status on the platform has declined.

Whether it is Simba's family members, Dong Yuhui's mother-in-law, or the girls who squatted in Li Jiaqi's live studio, the "car crash" in the public's eyes is unlikely to affect the stickiness and purchasing power of fans in the circle. In certain consumer groups, they still have the appeal of a hundred responses.

Especially during the key node of the year - the Double Eleven promotion period, the role of top anchors is irreplaceable by brand store broadcasts and platform activities. They not only charge forward on behalf of the platform, attracting traffic from the entire network on their own, but also firmly lock in the attention of users. Take Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room as an example. There are dozens of products in a single live broadcast, 30 rounds a day, and one order can use 5 deposit red envelopes, which "nail" consumers to the live broadcast room for the whole day. Such a clustering effect cannot be achieved by a single brand live broadcast room.

Although content platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou have been focusing on shelf e-commerce in recent years and claim that the GMV growth rate of shelf scenes far exceeds that of live broadcast rooms, the long-term development of shelf scenes cannot be separated from the first explosion of live broadcast rooms. Moreover, since the shelf scene itself lacks the ability to generate revenue, only the trust endorsement and recommendation empowerment of anchors can help the platform get out of the dilemma of competing for low prices.

According to Latepost, during the 618 promotion this year, Douyin's shelf sales accounted for nearly 40%, but the pursuit of low prices is slowing down the growth of Douyin's overall e-commerce sales, which fell below 20% in September. When all e-commerce platforms are engaged in the "content + shelf" business, the loyalty of users and merchants to the platform is also shaken as the platform competition intensifies. If you want to get rid of the "low price vortex" step by step, you must not give up cultivating a prosperous anchor ecosystem and rely on their circle stickiness to win over a more diverse consumer group.

02 Li Jiaqi returns to the center position in Taobao live broadcast. Why is his position still unshakable?

On October 14, amid the barrage of comments that "Li Jiaqi should go to work", Li Jiaqi, dressed in white, entered the live broadcast room, officially starting the pre-sale battle for this year's "Double 11". Starting from the first day of pre-sale, the live broadcast room released 500 million red envelopes for two consecutive days, and "Li Jiaqi will send 500 million red envelopes" quickly became a hot search on Weibo. Li Jiaqi's return to the C position on Double 11 has become a hot topic on the Internet recently, and behind it is the budget support and brand resource blessing of Taobao Live.

Although the reputation of Taobao Live has fallen to the bottom due to the Huaxizi incident, Li Jiaqi is still the only "trump card" that Taobao Live can pull out. Doesn't Taobao Live want to get rid of "Li Jiaqi dependence"? Starting in 2022, it has been poaching people from major platforms with great fanfare. Luo Yonghao, Li Dan, Dongfang Zhenxuan, Zhang Xiaohui and others have joined Taobao, but most of them have quietly chosen to stop broadcasting. So far, no one has been able to shake Li Jiaqi's position as the "number one brother". As one of the few "Taobao" anchors who have persisted to this day, the transaction volume on the first day of the Double Eleven pre-sale of "Make Friends" exceeded 230 million, but there is still a considerable gap compared to Li Jiaqi.

Why has Taobao Live failed to produce another Li Jiaqi? In September 2018, Li Jiaqi successfully challenged the Guinness World Record for "the most people applying lipstick in 30 seconds" and has since been hailed as the "No. 1 lipstick seller". During the 2018 "Double Eleven" event, Li Jiaqi competed with Jack Ma in selling lipsticks and eventually defeated him, creating a sales miracle of 137 million, leading the trend of the entire live streaming industry.

When Li Jiaqi became popular, short video platforms had just emerged. Taobao Live caught the public's attention by "entertaining sales" before the short video era came, grabbing the first ticket to live e-commerce. With the explosion of short video platforms, live sales alone can no longer attract users to stay. Taobao Live lacks the soil for the growth of influencers, and the window of opportunity is gone forever. It is impossible to bring out the next Li Jiaqi.

The inherent deficiencies of the content ecology cannot be solved by "picking the best" from other platforms, because the content tone and fan base of these "foreign aid" are rooted in the native platform and cannot be migrated with the anchor. It is worth noting that although Taobao still bets heavily on Li Jiaqi this year, with the blessing of 500 million red envelopes, Li Jiaqi still has not returned to the highlight moment of 2022. Moreover, the reason why large red envelopes are needed to attract users may indicate that Li Jiaqi can no longer get the "lowest price on the entire network" from many brands.

03 New top streamers are rising rapidly, and no one is vying to be the “top seller” on Douyin

The Double Eleven business carnival has begun, but Brother Yang has become an outsider.

Although Brother Xiao Yang has only stopped broadcasting for a month, the world of celebrities on Douyin seems to have changed dramatically. Mr. K, Tingquan Jianbao, Da Bing and others have risen rapidly... When a generation of top stars fades away, the platform will ruthlessly find a new successor quickly.

However, whether in terms of online voice, fan stickiness, or monetization capabilities, these up-and-coming stars are still far behind Xiao Yangge. Moreover, because they are afraid of being the first to be shot, they all choose to be low-key. Even Dong Yuhui, who was highly expected, took the initiative to avoid the title of "the top anchor in the sales process" and only occasionally appeared in the live broadcast room recently. The absence of benchmark anchors also made Douyin look a little lonely in the Double Eleven competition this year.

Although the sales ability of this group of new top streamers has yet to be verified, they can bring a lot of voice to Douyin during the Double Eleven shopping festival. On the evening of October 18, "Tingquan Jianbao" started his first live broadcast of selling goods on the third day of his resumption of broadcasting. Although the sales of 7.5 million are not outstanding, as he said in the live broadcast, "It's Double Eleven, and we have to support e-commerce activities." His core value may not lie in how much GMV he contributes to the platform, but in providing topicality and attention to the platform's big promotion nodes, so that Douyin will not "lose its voice" when the e-commerce war is in full swing.

This year's Double 11 is also a key test of whether the Douyin anchor matrix can support the e-commerce market in the absence of benchmark anchors. Taking the beauty category as an example, Chanmama data shows that in the week starting from Double 11, more than 70% of Douyin sales of top beauty brands were completed by anchor live broadcasts. In the field of beauty, Douyin has formed a new super anchor pattern represented by the Guangdong couple, Jia Nailiang, Duoyu and Maomaojie.

Moreover, just like Taobao said goodbye to "Taobao brands" in the past, Douyin e-commerce is gradually saying goodbye to "white-label beauty products" and embracing international and domestic brands. In the list of brand merchants in the beauty and daily chemical industry who had a good start during the official Double 11 period, L'Oreal ranked first, Shiseido and Proya ranked second and third respectively.

The silence of Brother Yang, the face of the platform, may just alleviate the strong "earthy" atmosphere of Douyin e-commerce and guide users to shift from pursuing low prices to pursuing quality. This may also be an opportunity for Douyin e-commerce to correct its low-price strategy.

04 The ban was lifted on the eve of Double Eleven, why can’t Kuaishou do without Simba?

On the eve of Double Eleven, a new chapter of the "love-hate relationship" between Simba and Kuaishou was staged. On October 19, one and a half months after the live broadcast function was banned, Simba returned to the arena. Within one minute, the number of viewers in the live broadcast room exceeded 1 million, and a GMV of more than 6.4 billion yuan was created in 14 hours.

This year alone, Simba was banned twice. Coincidentally, the bans were lifted on the eve of "6.18" and "Double 11". This can only be said to be an unspoken understanding between the platform and the anchor. After each unblocking, the enthusiasm of Simba's family members in the live broadcast room will be pushed to a new climax. After Xiao Yangge was defeated, Simba, who was in full swing as soon as he returned, became the "live broadcast leader" who could not steal his limelight this year. Kuaishou's repeated bans are more like a risk control, which prevents Simba from causing an "accident" that he cannot recover from because of his outspokenness.

During the period when Simba was banned, his apprentice Dandan became the first female anchor on the Internet to have over 100 million fans. Although Kuaishou has been trying to "cut down the vassal states", the influence of the Simba family has become increasingly greater in the process. In the top 10 Kuaishou live streaming sales estimates for 2023 released by Xinbang, the Simba family occupies 6 seats.

Obviously, the old friends in the Kuaishou community highly recognize the human ties and the atmosphere of the underworld represented by "family" and "master and apprentice". As long as Kuaishou still regards private domain traffic as a platform feature, the "recent breeding" of top anchors seems inevitable.

During the live broadcast on October 19, Simba gained more than 800,000 new fans, a considerable number of whom probably came from Douyin. During the live broadcast, Simba also blasted the Guangdong couple for false propaganda, putting the top Douyin anchors at the center of public opinion. In the competition between Kuaishou and Douyin, Simba still plays a subtle and key role.

By 2023, the proportion of Simba family anchors in Kuaishou's e-commerce GMV has dropped to less than 5%, but he is still a banner of the platform, representing the consumption mentality of the community's old friends. How to handle the relationship with Simba while doing a good job of risk control in the process of e-commerce business evolution will become a long-term test for Kuaishou.

Written by Xingye Edited by Meiqi