Troubled times for top anchors

Behind the prosperity of live streaming e-commerce, the top anchors of major platforms are facing a serious crisis of trust and market challenges, and the shadow of controversy and regulation hangs over the industry.

While the anchors are desperately rushing to make money, they have long forgotten the price to pay for a "live broadcast failure".

During this Mid-Autumn Festival, the top anchor Xiao Yangge was frequently on the hot search due to the suspected "false propaganda" and "misleading consumers" of Meicheng mooncakes. Before that, Simba was also fined and banned for selling fake bird's nests; the prune juice promoted by Dongfang Zhenxuan and Xiao Yangge was named by the customs...

According to the "Public Opinion Analysis Report on Consumer Rights Protection in Live Streaming E-commerce (2023)", in the statistics of consumer rights protection in live streaming e-commerce in the past year alone, false advertising, product quality, and uncivilized sales accounted for nearly 40%, 35%, and 15% respectively.

The top anchors' indifferent behaviors of "exaggeration", "false propaganda" and "war of words" are gradually destroying consumer trust, damaging consumer rights and interests, and pushing themselves into the abyss.

On the other hand, competition in the external environment is also intensifying.

More and more new anchors are emerging, and the new live broadcast formats and more competitive prices can easily take away the market share of the top anchors. According to Feigua data, the first broadcast transaction volume of major anchors in this year's 618 has declined. For example, the Guangdong couple only had 61.14 million this year, a year-on-year decrease of nearly 90%, and Pan Yurun only had 6.74 million this year, a year-on-year decrease of 77%.

It is worth noting that brands have gradually realized that anchors cannot create new value for them. Therefore, more and more brands are planning to broadcast themselves or expand distribution channels to reduce the weight of betting on top anchors, which means that brands’ dependence on top anchors is decreasing.

When the growth momentum of fans slows down and the traffic dividend is no longer available, where should the top anchors who have risen to fame go?

01 Simba and Xiao Yangge fight, both lose

As the two top anchors of Kuaishou and Douyin, Simba and Xiao Yangge originally kept to themselves. However, because of a "war of words" over hairy crabs, they were investigated by regulatory authorities, forced to stop broadcasting on live streaming platforms, and had a sharp drop in fans, which are probably situations they never imagined.

At the end of August, Simba promoted "Mrs. Crab" hairy crab cards in the Kuaishou live broadcast room. At almost the same time, Brother Yang was also promoting the same brand of crab cards in the Douyin live broadcast room, but the discount model and strength were different.

However, when Simba sold out all the products and wanted to restock them, he was told by the brand that he could no longer sell them because other anchors had reported his pricing mechanism.

Simba angrily rebuked Xiao Yangge in the live broadcast room. Photo/Simba live broadcast room

Simba immediately locked his suspicion on Brother Xiao Yang, and opened fire on Brother Xiao Yang during the live broadcast, saying that he "did nothing but wanted to get something ready-made", "had no quality inspection, after-sales service, or compensation attitude, and was just hype", etc.

Simba then announced that all the company's channels and anchors are prohibited from selling hairy crabs this year. He also called on Three Sheep to solve the quality problems that occurred in their previous live broadcast sales, otherwise he would pay 100 million yuan out of his own pocket to compensate Three Sheep consumers for some of their products.

Although Simba's "true nature" expression attracted the attention of many netizens, Xiao Yangge and the three sheep behind him have not responded to the product quality issue. Lu Wenqing, co-founder of the Three Sheep Group, said that the company has not been punished by the management department for the products mentioned by Simba.

However, in the subsequent link to the product, Three Sheep added a line of small print: The seller of this product is the operator of the store to which the shopping link belongs, not this live broadcast room.

Careful netizens discovered that the crab cards promoted by the two anchors were not selling Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs, but hairy crabs from farms all over Jiangsu.

At the same time, there is also controversy over the authenticity of the Moutai liquor sold in Xiao Yangge's live broadcast room. According to the appraisal of a third-party testing agency, 17 of the 34 bottles of Moutai liquor purchased by consumers were "top-grade liquor". However, this still does not prevent Xiao Yangge from being confident: "If I sold fake liquor, I would have been in jail long ago."

But consumers are not fools, and we cannot keep telling the story of the boy who cried wolf.

Meicheng Mooncakes’ false advertising finally aroused consumers’ anger. After the public opinion broke out, the Hefei High-tech Zone Market Supervision Administration filed a case against Three Sheep for suspected “misleading consumers” during the live broadcast. The Guangzhou Huadu District Market Supervision Administration also intervened in the investigation of Meicheng Mooncakes.

Although the investigation results showed that the quality of the mooncakes sent for inspection and random inspection by Meicheng Food were all qualified, Xiao Yangge was still questioned about the "Hong Kong high-end mooncakes" he advertised, but he had no offline stores in Hong Kong. Therefore, the so-called high-end quality was questioned and it was also false advertising.

More and more fans are leaving Brother Yang.

According to FeiGua data statistics, in the past half month, its Douyin account has lost more than 2 million followers; not only that, on the Mid-Autumn Festival, the live broadcast account under Three Sheep was temporarily suspended. Even after obtaining authorization to resume live broadcast, it had to close the comment area amid criticism.

Simba's situation is not much better. After he called on Three Sheep to pay 100 million yuan at his own expense to compensate his consumers for their losses, the live broadcast function of Simba's Kuaishou account was banned. The official Kuaishou account stated that the live broadcast permission of the account was permanently banned.

In this war of words that hurt the enemy 1,000 and hurt themselves 800, both Simba and Xiao Yangge lost.

02 Top anchors, moving forward amid controversy

In the battlefield of live streaming, no one can stay out of trouble. While Simba and Xiao Yangge were deeply involved in a war of words, Luo Yonghao was apologizing for selling IQ tax products in the "Make Friends Live Room" and decided to refund three times the amount for consumers who bought "FENDI CASA mooncake souvenirs".

At the same time, he turned the tables on Yu Minhong. He said on Weibo that apart from "Make Friends" and "Xinxuan", many well-known live broadcast rooms almost never actively refund three times the amount of all orders after selling fakes and malicious products.

Photo/Luo Yonghao's Weibo

They also directly pointed out that Oriental Selection had sold a series of problematic foods, including 3.15 trough meat, TiQ Tianqi prune juice, and fake wild Ecuadorian white shrimp, and told Yu Minhong that "sooner or later you will have to pay for what you did," and suggested that before the "Day of Judgment" comes, all the problematic products in the history of Oriental Selection should be refunded three times the amount."

This is not the first time that Luo Yonghao has publicly responded to Yu Minhong. As early as the end of December 2023, Luo Yonghao intervened in the incident between Dong Yuhui and Dongfang Zhenxuan, expressing his willingness to support Dong Yuhui's entrepreneurship;

Afterwards, he teased Yu Minhong many times in the live broadcast room, calling him a "stingy person" who only gave him verbal praise but no actual rewards. After Dong Yuhui resigned from Oriental Selection at the end of July this year, Luo Yonghao still spoke up for him in the live broadcast room, saying that he was pitiful and a young man who was controlled by capital.

Frequent attacks on Yu Minhong and targeting Dong Yuhui and Oriental Selection have allowed Luo Yonghao to gain wave after wave of traffic, but have also put him and the "Make Friends Live Room" in the spotlight and subject them to scrutiny from netizens.

According to media reports, "Make Friends E-commerce Academy" sells high-priced training courses under the halo of Luo Yonghao and Make Friends, but the actual results do not match the publicity.

On the one hand, he claims to serve young people, but on the other hand, he is cutting leeks. Lao Luo's inconsistent words and deeds eventually aroused the dissatisfaction of netizens and industry insiders, who "attacked" him one after another. In this new war, Luo Yonghao is gradually losing his voice.

Since the "Small Composition" incident, Yu Minhong has been caught in a whirlpool of public opinion. He once said that he has suffered more abuse, insults and accusations online than ever before.

Coupled with the parting of Oriental Selection and Yuhui Xingxing, rumors spread on the Internet. Yu Minhong had to devote most of his energy to clarifying and responding, calling on netizens not to believe in rumors or spread them.

Dong Yuhui's situation is not optimistic either, especially after he became independent from Hui Tongxing. Any small problem would be infinitely magnified by the Internet. Mispronouncing a word, ignoring the feelings of the interviewees, and speaking in a "daddy" way have all caused Dong Yuhui to be deeply questioned by the outside world. Dong Yuhui has mentioned more than once that he is very resistant to selling things and hopes to find more ways to present them.

However, netizens and consumers are good at "creating gods" and also good at destroying them. In the Internet's public opinion field, traffic is always a double-edged sword. Even entrepreneurs like Luo Yonghao and Yu Minhong find it difficult not to be swept forward.

03 Is the era of top anchors coming to an end?

Whether it is the war of words between Simba and Xiao Yangge, or the entanglement between Luo Yonghao and Dong Yuhui and Yu Minhong, in order to attract traffic and more attention, the top anchors spared no effort to establish their own personalities. While waving the banner of professionalism of "serving netizens", they frequently fail.

On the other hand, e-commerce live streaming has already passed its heyday. According to Star Chart monitoring data, during the 618 shopping festival this year, the cumulative sales of integrated e-commerce platforms and live streaming platforms reached 742.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of nearly 7%.

Even a top anchor like Simba only contributed 14.27 yuan in sales on June 18th. Many top anchors saw a cliff-like drop in transaction volume by nearly 80%.

Brother Yang is live-streaming chewing on slippers. Photo/Brother Yang's live-streaming room

This has also led to more and more top anchors starting to reduce the frequency of live broadcasts. Zhang Kaiyi, who has 15 million followers on Douyin, conducted 23 live broadcasts in 2021, but only one this year; Simba also said that he would gradually let Xinxuan, fans and the industry get used to live broadcasts "without Simba".

In addition, from an industry perspective, the entire live broadcast industry is also undergoing structural changes. As the deduction rate and slot fees of top anchors continue to rise, major platforms are involved in low-price competition, the price advantage of live broadcast rooms is being reduced, and the profits of brands are being squeezed, often falling into a situation where they only make noise but not make money.

In order to get rid of their dependence on top anchors, brands have begun to establish their own broadcasting platforms. Without middlemen to make a profit from the price difference, brands can truly make a profit.

According to the "2023 China Live Streaming E-commerce Industry Research Report", in 2023, the proportion of brand merchants' store live broadcasts exceeded that of expert live broadcasts for the first time, reaching 51.8%; according to public data, during this year's 618, 50 stores on Tmall had transaction volumes exceeding 100 million yuan in live streaming rooms, and Xiaohongshu's store live broadcast order volume was 9.4 times that of the same period last year.

Secondly, after several years of development, the gameplay of live broadcast rooms has become homogeneous, which makes it difficult to arouse user interest and puts higher requirements on the live broadcast methods and content of anchors. After all, in the live broadcast room, the product is the last part to be carried out, and whether the previous content is interesting is the key to retaining users.

In addition, the rise of the new generation of anchors, whose education, quality and professionalism are better than those of the previous anchors, has caused a certain impact on the existing top anchors. According to the "China Internet Audiovisual Development Research Report (2024)", by the end of 2023, 15.08 million people in China will make live streaming their main job.

It is undeniable that as the live broadcast industry enters a stage of refined development, it becomes more difficult to "make quick money", and the active or passive withdrawal of the top anchors who have already gained both fame and fortune is a predictable outcome. After all, when the top anchors enter the "professional burnout period", it is difficult for them to return to their peak era.

Author | Tang Yumeng Editor | Yian This article is written by the author of Operation School [Yi Ke Business], WeChat public account: [Yi Ke Business], original/authorized to be published in Operation School, and any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

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