Li Jiaqi and others are playing cross-border games, and live streaming sales have entered the second half

With the continuous development of the live streaming industry, top anchors such as Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya are no longer limited to live streaming rooms, and have begun to cross-border try diversified development paths such as variety shows, short dramas, and training. Behind this phenomenon is the reflection of the gradual decline of the live streaming dividend and the changes in the industry structure. The article deeply analyzes how the top anchors face the balance between personal brand and corporate development after the live streaming enters the second half, as well as the prediction of future trends in the industry.

"I woke up so fast. I turned on the TV and saw Li Jiaqi singing and dancing," netizens said jokingly on the social platform.

In August this year, Li Jiaqi stepped out of the small world of the live broadcast room and appeared on the talent show "Brother Who Overcomes Troubles 4", completing his stage debut wearing a pink top.

Not only him, overnight all the top anchors started to "not do their jobs properly". Brother Yang was doing training and opening offline stores, Wei Ya and her husband were filming short dramas, Dong Yuhui was learning how to be a boss, and Luo Yonghao was busy starting a business and "refuting rumors"...

Those who were pushed to the front were the former assistants and apprentices. They took on longer and longer live broadcast time and received more resources from the company. For example, Zhu Wangwang, who was beside Li Jiaqi, aroused the sympathy of many netizens with his performance in the variety show "My Girl".

However, the second generation of broadcasters did not have the same good luck as their predecessors. In the recent 618 shopping festival, GMV decline became a common phenomenon. According to Qingyan Intelligence, on the first day of pre-sale, the GMV of the beauty category in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room fell by 46% year-on-year; Feigua data showed that on June 16, the transaction volume of the top Douyin anchors, the Guangdong couple, was 61.14 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 86.4%.

The online shopping carnival has shown a corner of the afterglow of the sunset, and the once-powerful super-head anchors, contrary to their usual practice, did not turn the tide, and instead opened up a second battlefield.

Behind this is the MCN's risk avoidance, the brand's consideration of ROI, the platform's weighing of interests, and the quiet fading of the dividends of the times.

However, history has proven countless times that real large traffic is never created. The times and the situation have changed quietly. The live broadcast industry can be helped to get started, but it is difficult to become a phenomenon.

1. Where did the super-headline anchor go?

No. 18 - With the first ranking of "Pi Ge 4" announced, Li Jiaqi completed his first attempt on stage with a not bad ranking.

Although he talked in the live broadcast room that he participated in the talent show in order to earn red envelopes for "all girls" and did not give up his daily live broadcast because of the filming, it is obvious to the naked eye that the time Li Jiaqi appeared in the live broadcast room has been quietly shrinking since the "79 yuan eyebrow pencil" incident last year.

In July, Meiwan’s “Naiwa Family” launched its first live broadcast on Douyin, with Li Jiaqi’s five Bichon Frise dogs as the protagonists. As an IP closely related to himself, he himself did not appear in the live broadcast room, but the supporting actors around him took up the main responsibility.

Li Jiaqi is actively breaking down the barriers between internet celebrities and stars, while Dong Yuhui is working hard to complete the transformation from anchor to entrepreneur.

At the end of July, Dong Yuhui and Yu Minhong’s “breakup” became a hot topic, and the former obtained 100% of the equity of Yuhui Tongxing.

Challenges followed. Unlike the growth paths of the first generation of top anchors Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya, Dong Yuhui was more like a simple anchor before, rarely participating in product selection and supply chain management, not to mention the tedious daily operations of the company.

According to public reports, the vast majority of anchors on Yuhuixingxing came from Oriental Selection, and in the early days of their establishment they were more focused on learning Oriental Selection's product selection and operation ideas.

Now, everything starts from scratch. "Xin Entropy" found on a recruitment website that Yuhuixingxing has started hot recruitment for 42 positions, including anchors, category operations, live broadcast control, etc. How long will Dong Yuhui, who has completed his identity transformation, be able to appear in the live broadcast room in the future?

The retirement of another super-popular anchor, Xiao Yangge, was announced long ago. He once asked his apprentice in the live broadcast room, "If I announce my retirement from the Internet, will you support me?", and he personally reduced the number of live broadcasts from seven per week to one per week now.

What to do with the free time? In addition to helping to attract traffic to his apprentice’s live broadcast room, Xiao Yangge’s offline store “Xiao Yang Zhenxuan” supermarket quietly opened, and the training project “Three People’s Live Broadcast Classroom” under Three Sheep announced that it would train 10,000 anchors, and also wanted to get a piece of the pie in the hot short drama track.

In April this year, the official account of Douyin's "Three Sheep Theater" was launched. In early June, the first short drama "Mr. Fu, Your Substitute Bride is a Boss" was launched. Although it was taken off the shelves in less than a month, the investment continues.

Coincidentally, Xinxuan, where Simba works, and Qianxun, owned by Wei Ya and her husband, are both trying out training and short dramas at the same time, developing in multiple fields.

To date, the top anchors have all followed a predetermined script, from becoming extremely popular to being surrounded by controversy, and then to supporting assistants, gradually disappearing, and testing the waters across industries.

A huge wave of traffic once hit them, and they relied on it to complete the original accumulation and create the myth of getting rich quickly. However, the instability of personal IP is destined to make the flower not last forever. The second half of live streaming with goods is a "team battle".

2. The difficult succession of the “second generation of broadcasters”

Zhu Wangwang beside Li Jiaqi, Simba’s apprentice Dandan, the six senior apprentices under Brother Yang... "Passing on knowledge, helping others and guiding others" has become a required action for top and even mid-level anchors. Now in 2024, it is even considered by the industry to be the year when the second generation of anchors will collectively rise to the top.

Judging from the data, the sales data of these assistants and apprentices are not bad, and they can even be called "top".

Take Dandan as an example. In 2019, just one year after joining Xinxuan, he became the fourth anchor in terms of sales on the entire network with 8 billion yuan in sales, second only to Wei Ya, Li Jiaqi and Simba. And Xiao Yangge’s apprentice “Red Light Yellow”, who was banned for vulgar sales, had a monthly sales of 75 million yuan at its peak.

The "All Girls" live broadcast room, hosted by Zhu Wangwang and Li Jiaqi's assistant team, has attracted 1.49 million fans after seven broadcasts.

The “second generation of broadcasters” stand on the shoulders of their predecessors and have a huge infusion of traffic and a replicable supply chain system. Everything seems to be a natural progression, but can they take over smoothly?

In the variety show "My Daughter", Zhu Wangwang's tearful complaint to Li Jiaqi pointed out the reality: "When we had a dinner together once, you said to me, "You have to stand on your own this year", which made me feel insecure."

Compared with other "second-generation broadcasters", Zhu Wangwang has a more complete growth story line, from being ridiculed for her appearance when she initially took over Fu Peng's assistant, to working hard to become more beautiful and making a comeback, and then to being recognized for her professional ability in front of the screen.

In "My Daughter", she went home to select products after get off work in the early morning and went to bed at dawn. From a grassroots to an annual salary of four million, she also suffered from the occupational disease bile reflux... which made countless "social animals" empathize.

To some extent, she is the most likely candidate to become Li Jiaqi's successor in the public's perception, but she is still surrounded by deep uneasiness and anxiety that she may be replaced at any time.

As the industry has reached a consensus, "super-head" anchors are hard to come by, and large traffic itself is metaphysics. The best proof is that two years after Dong Yuhui became popular in 2022, no new super-head anchors known to the whole nation have been born to this day.

Once they lose the protection and guidance of their predecessors, it will be a big question whether they can maintain their sales performance.

More importantly, the live streaming industry has already quietly changed. According to Star Chart data, the total sales of the entire network during the 618 period in 2024 was 742.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year decline of nearly 7%. Industry insiders believe that part of the reason is that the comprehensive e-commerce price war has led to a decline in sales, and part of the reason is that live streaming e-commerce is no longer sexy.

Even Li Jiaqi publicly stated during this year's big sale: Is this year's 618 difficult? I think it is difficult.

On the other hand, data from multiple platforms show that brand self-broadcasting has become the mainstream method chosen by more and more businesses. Behind Li Jiaqi and others’ cross-border efforts, there are considerations of maintaining exposure and finding a second growth curve, as well as concerns about changes in the industry structure and too many people and too little porridge.

3. Retrieve the broadcast from Dafa and advance the broadcast from Dianfa

Personal IP has always been a double-edged sword.

Li Jiaqi's Huaxizi eyebrow pencil incident, Dong Yuhui's involvement in the short essay incident, Simba's involvement in the bird's nest incident... negligence in personal words and deeds, oversight in product selection and even the unexpected "black swan" are like stones thrown into a calm lake, and the aftermath has not yet dissipated.

It is difficult for enterprises to maintain long-term prosperity, and the stock price and brand of MCNs that are strongly tied to personal IP will go through a roller coaster ride with the words and deeds of the anchors. As Yu Minhong said in his "breakup letter" to Dong Yuhui: "As a company based on the Internet, the power of public opinion often affects the company's development."

Therefore, it is the only way for all MCNs to untie the ties with top anchors as much as possible and build a matrix.

Looking at it from a broader perspective, as the client of MCN, brand companies are also more inclined to build their own live broadcast venues.

On the one hand, the high slot fees and commissions of top anchors are no secret. According to a previous report by China Newsweek, during the golden age of live e-commerce in 2021, during the Double Eleven shopping festival, the slot fees for Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya's live broadcast rooms were between 500,000 and 600,000 yuan, and the commissions fluctuated around 20%. At the same time, many brands had to offer a 50% discount on their normal selling prices during the promotion period, leaving very little profit for the brands.

However, a store owner "complained" on a social platform that on Xiaohongshu, where live streaming e-commerce is still in its development stage, the single slot fee for Dong Jie's live broadcast room has reached 40,000 yuan, and the commission is 30%. Many bloggers on Xiaohongshu charge a slot fee of 30%-40%, otherwise there is no deal, "which is really daunting."
On the other hand, with the maturity of live streaming e-commerce, live streaming has become a normalized tool for business operations. In order to enrich product categories and attract more consumers, platforms are also striving to support store live streaming.

According to Taobao's public data, in the first four hours of the 618 pre-sale, 67 brand live broadcast rooms had pre-sales exceeding 10 million yuan, among which Xiaomi's official flagship store became the first live broadcast room to exceed 100 million yuan.

The promotional data released by Xiaohongshu showed that the number of merchants launching live broadcasts this year was 3.8 times that of the same period last year, and the GMV of store live broadcasts increased by 4.2 times year-on-year.

From the overall market perspective, since 2021, the proportion of Taobao store broadcasts has significantly exceeded that of Dabo, reaching 70%; according to a report by Huxiu citing people familiar with the matter, in 2022, the proportion of Douyin store broadcasts was close to 55%.

At the same time, many entrepreneurs also put down their burdens and started to sell goods, and the effect was even better than that of the top anchors. The most notable among them was Lei Jun. After the live broadcast of his annual speech in July 2024, Lei Jun's Douyin fans directly surpassed Dong Yuhui. As of now, it has reached 28.62 million.

In the long run, Dabo and Dianbo, as an integral part of the live broadcast ecosystem, will complement each other and coexist in the long run. It will become a normal practice to select expert anchors during brand promotions and use Dianbo for daily operations.

But it is undeniable that under such a background, live streaming sales by influencers will inevitably enter a new reshuffle period. The era of frequent super-heads has passed, group battles and cross-border activities will continue, and the second half of live streaming sales has already begun.