Simba becomes a super anchor again, all thanks to Kuaishou?

While Simba was busy competing with Xiao Yangge, Dandan's number of fans exceeded 100 million, triggering widespread discussion on the operating model of the live e-commerce industry. In this article, the author deeply analyzes how Simba successfully replicated and cultivated new billion-level anchors through the master-apprentice model and Kuaishou's community culture, for your reference.

On September 20, when the three sheep next door were getting anxious because of Simba's initiative, the number of fans of Simba's apprentice Dandan on Kuaishou quietly exceeded 100 million.

The next day, Dandan started a special live broadcast of "Breaking 100 million", and the final sales data exceeded 1.442 billion. This data is roughly equivalent to the total sales of Crazy Xiao Yangge's main account in the first eight months of 2024 (data source: Xindou). Data disclosed by Xinxuan shows that since joining Xinxuan 5 years ago, Dandan's live broadcast room has accumulated sales of 880 million orders, and the user repurchase rate is 66.7%.

The core selling point of super anchors, but the inability to replicate super anchors and the difficulty in truly transforming is a common dilemma for almost all live broadcast e-commerce companies. However, Simba seems to have easily broken this curse and effortlessly created the next billion-level anchor. Dandan is not an isolated case. Behind her, Simba's apprentices such as Shi Da Piaoliang, Zhao Mengche, and Xu Jie all have tens of millions of fans and impressive sales results.

Dandan’s success not only makes her the only female anchor on the entire Internet with hundreds of millions of fans, but also makes her the only super anchor who is still a “working man”.

And this time, no one would doubt that Dandan would "seek independence" like Dong Yuhui or Li Ziqi.

01 Dandan, a super anchor who is a “working man”

In 2023, when Oriental Selection was caught in an internal turmoil due to a small essay incident, Luo Yonghao, who was standing on the dry shore, named several live-streaming e-commerce organizations to pave the way for Dong Yuhui. The final conclusion was that Dong Yuhui should get at least half of the profits from Oriental Selection and become the actual ultimate beneficiary of Oriental Selection.

Luo Yonghao's logic is not difficult to understand. In the conventional business world, institutions that cultivate and incubate Internet celebrities will almost certainly be influenced by "super Internet celebrities/anchors", just like Li Jiaqi to MeiOne and Luo Yonghao to Jiaogepengyou. Otherwise, it will lead to the end of super Internet celebrities such as Li Ziqi and Dong Yuhui going solo.

But Dandan, who has over 100 million fans and sells nearly 20 billion yuan worth of goods a year, still chooses to become a live streamer under Simba. At the same time, the biggest beneficiary of Xinxuan is obviously Simba, not Dandan. It seems that the logic of the normal business world has failed in Kuaishou and the Simba family. As a result, Dandan has become the only super live streamer on the entire network who is a "worker".

What is the difference? Is it possible for Dandan to follow in the footsteps of Dong Yuhui and Li Ziqi and start his own business?

"I am Simba Xin Youzhi's apprentice, and a product he cultivated on the Internet." During the live broadcast of the "Breaking 100 Million Battle" on September 21, Dandan repeated this sentence almost every once in a while. Although Simba was "absent" from this crucial live broadcast of his apprentice, he remained "present" in his apprentice's words.

This "absent presence" to a certain extent represents the relationship between Dandan and Simba - a relationship that is highly recognized by Kuaishou's old irons and is deeply bound by the master-disciple relationship. Under this strong connection, in 2019, when Dandan first joined Kuaishou, he sold more than 26 million yuan of goods in his first broadcast.

The family-style organizations that are widely seen in the Kuaishou anchor system are very different from traditional MCNs and brokerage companies, and are more similar to Guo Degang's Deyun Club and Zhao Benshan's Zhao Family Class. The master-apprentice relationship seems to be similar to the relationship between workers and bosses, but it is based on another traditional ethical concept - the master takes you into the industry and will guide you wholeheartedly, but you cannot negotiate with the master.

For this reason, when Cao Yunjin "defected" from Deyun Club, Internet public opinion has labeled him "disloyal to his master" for several years, ignoring the possible distribution of interests. Here, traditional ethics overshadow the rationality of modern business, and have become a shackle that prevents the "apprentice" from truly competing with the "master".

When the situation is synchronized to live e-commerce, Dong Yuhui can separate from Dongfang Zhenxuan, and Li Ziqi can ignore the "Bo Le", and they can both get the support of public opinion. But if Dandan needs to be independent from Xinxuan, what kind of public opinion storm will she face?

At least, in the community ecological space of Kuaishou, such behavior is tantamount to Cao Yunjin's "dishonesty of teachers and ancestors". And ordinary people who can empathize and support "Cao Yunjin" in public opinion are also likely not consumers of Kuaishou e-commerce.

What's more, as a "working man", Dandan can actually get quite a lot of benefits. We have no way of knowing Dandan's specific benefits, but we can understand Dandan's voice in the company from some events. At the end of 2023, Guan Qian, CEO of Xinxuan Group, resigned. According to the screenshots and Dandan's circle of friends, it was Dandan who was very dissatisfied with Guan Qian and attacked her.

Dandan has greater internal support and voice than ordinary workers, and therefore has a higher loyalty to Xinxuan than ordinary workers. In the end, in places visible to the outside world, she and Xinxuan have formed a more "iron" trust relationship than that between ordinary anchors and MCNs, and this relationship is two-way.

02 Xinxuan, a super anchor maker? ‍

As a super anchor with over 100 million fans and annual sales of nearly 20 billion, Dandan is indeed quite rare. If we lower our sights a little and take annual sales of over 2 billion as the baseline, then there are 5 such super anchors (including Simba) in Xinxuan.

In the Top 10 of Kuaishou’s estimated live streaming sales in 2023 released by Xinbang, the Simba family occupied 6 seats, among which the top 3 were Dandan, Simba and Shi Da Piaoliang (all are Xinxuan anchors).

Image source: Xinbang

It seems that Xinxuan has not only broken the curse that "super anchors must split up", but also seems to have broken the curse that "super anchors cannot be replicated"?

To answer this question, we need to not only understand the particularity of Xinxuan as an organization, but also understand the particularity of the live streaming e-commerce ecosystem in different time periods.

First of all, like the imitators, the top anchors of the Simba family were not all supported and cultivated by the company from 0 to 1. The top anchors of Xinxuan, such as Dandan, Shi Da Piaoliang, and Zhao Mengche, all became "apprentices" halfway through their careers. Dandan had already worked in the e-commerce industry before becoming famous, Shi Da Piaoliang was once a model in the entertainment industry, and Zhao Mengche was Simba's former rival.

Before becoming Simba's apprentices, these top anchors already had the basic skills to make a living on the Internet. Simba, through resource integration and the master-apprentice system, has to some extent given these top anchors the energy of the Simba family. Through his personal charm and great appeal in the Kuaishou community, Simba has directed traffic to his apprentices' live broadcast rooms, similar to how Simba himself became a big internet celebrity by being listed as a top anchor in the early days.

Secondly, these top anchors were growing up at a time when Kuaishou and Douyin were competing fiercely and needed to develop live e-commerce quickly. For the early days of Kuaishou, although the family-style top internet celebrities on Kuaishou had many headaches, they also had strong appeal among fans. Giving traffic to these top anchors and supporting typical people who can sell goods internally will obviously help Kuaishou's overall e-commerce business.

By 2024, the development of Kuaishou's live e-commerce has gradually stabilized, the importance of leading institutions has declined, the brand ecology and Kuaishou stores have slowly developed, and it will be much more difficult for Xinxuan to create another live-streaming anchor with annual sales of over 1 billion yuan.

Finally, it is undeniable that the unique community ecology within Kuaishou makes Kuaishou users more accepting of the traditional relationship of "master and apprentice". In the eyes of the old irons, Simba's support for Dandan and Shi Da Piaoliang does not seem like MCN re-creating Internet celebrities, but rather a master enthusiastically recommending his apprentice to fans. As a family, fans "recognize" the emotions and connections between them and are willing to treat them as Simba's agents.

It is completely understandable that fans flowed from Simba's live broadcast room to the live broadcast rooms of Dandan and Shi Da Piaoliang, who share the same values ​​as Simba and are Simba's apprentices. The emergence of big anchors under Xinxuan is endless. In essence, it is not that super anchors are re-created, but that super anchors have transformed into several avatars according to the different needs of users.

03 Simba, can you retire with peace of mind now?

During the recent attack on Three Sheep, Simba once again expressed his mood of "not wanting to do this anymore". When he claimed to help the fans of "Three Sheep" to pay compensation, the live broadcast function of Simba's account was banned. As of press time, Simba's account is still in a live broadcast banned state.

Soon after, Dandan, who had always been one step away from having over 100 million fans, finally reached the point where his fans exceeded 100 million. With a large amount of welfare broadcasts and a high popularity, Dandan's live broadcast room sold over 1.4 billion worth of goods, which seemed to show the outside world in another way that even if Simba did not show up, Simba's apprentice could still sell well. Simba could retire with peace of mind.

In fact, before the conflict with the three sheep, Simba's appearances in the live broadcast room were already quite rare.

During the live broadcast in which he criticized the three sheep, Simba also posted a screenshot of his backstage sales of 2.7 billion in one day. It seems that Simba has found a balance between his appearance frequency and sales data - by reducing the number of his appearances, he has increased the curiosity of fans and relaxed himself mentally and energetically to a considerable extent, and he was still able to sell more than 10 billion in sales in the last year.

The question is, why can Simba remain so loyal to his fans even though he has not appeared in public for many years? Imagine if other super anchors can also achieve sales of over 10 billion yuan by live streaming only a few times a year like Simba?

In an interview with Dandan by Kuaishou E-commerce Marketing Observation, Dandan said: "Kuaishou's users are different from other platforms. You can feel the human touch here, and the trust between the anchors and fans is very high. Once fans follow you, they will be sticky to you and will always pay attention to your growth." According to data disclosed by Xinxuan, since joining Xinxuan 5 years ago, Dandan's live broadcast room has accumulated sales of 880 million orders and a user repurchase rate of 66.7%.

The answer may ultimately still be attributed to Kuaishou's unique community ecology. On Kuaishou, fans may be closer to "fans", and the relationship between them and big anchors is closer to the relationship between stars and fans, rather than a simple "attention" or "follow".

In other words, the "family members" really believed that the "big anchor" was seeking benefits for them, and they doubted the brand premium and added value. Simba introduced white-label products to them and made fans believe that white-label products have the same quality as big brands.

Over time, Simba, a wealthy and powerful but down-to-earth person, became the ideal spokesperson in the hearts of Kuaishou’s friends. “Trust” was born, and “family” was established. Around this positive cycle of trust, the “trust” e-commerce promoted by Kuaishou e-commerce was created, which formed an essential difference from the “interest e-commerce” based on “interest” of Douyin.

As early as 2020, there were occasional reports of Kuaishou's so-called "decentralization" and farewell to the "six major families", but the number of Kuaishou fans of the main members of the Simba family has increased from 140 million in 2020 to over 400 million this year. Xinxuan's overall annual sales have also increased from 15 billion yuan in 2019 to 50 billion yuan in 2023.

Whether you like Simba or not, it is undeniable that Simba has a thorough understanding of the psychology of 300 million Kuaishou users. Simba is a "family member" that they can trust. On this basis, Simba has established his own business empire. Through the master-apprentice approach, he has passed on "trust" and created the next billion-level anchor.

Now, he can "retire" whenever he wants.

Text｜Chen Shoucheng ‍‍‍‍‍‍ Editor｜Chen Meixi ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍
This article is written by the author [Hedgehog Commune] of Operation Party, WeChat public account: [Hedgehog Commune]. It is originally created/authorized to be published on Operation Party. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.