Video number: Warm water boil 618

This article analyzes the e-commerce performance and challenges of Video Accounts during the 618 period, and explores its positioning in the consumer population structure and anchor ecology. It is recommended for e-commerce industry practitioners and social media analysts to read.

During the 618 shopping festival this year, Video Account remained silent. There were no slogans to promote it, and naturally, there was no fierce battle like other platforms. The topic about it was the analysis of the structure of the consumer population behind it and the question of whether there was still no anchor to take the lead. In fact, whether it was anchors or MCNs, everyone rushed to occupy the rich land of Video Account, but they were exhausted from running around and did not completely choose to give it a try on Video Account.

Even Jiaogepengyou, which entered the video account on April 23, did not welcome Luo Yonghao during the 618 period. During last year's 618, Jiaogepengyou entered JD.com's live broadcast room, and Luo Yonghao created a record of 150 million yuan in sales. In sharp contrast, Jiaogepengyou's first broadcast on the video account in April had an estimated sales of 1.24 million yuan and 93,300 viewers. Despite the unfavorable start, Jiaogepengyou still emphasized that it did not neglect the video account. Cui Dongsheng, vice president of Jiaogepengyou, said in a media interview during the 618 period that "the video account relies on WeChat, a national-level communication tool, and the potential and imagination space are very large." At the same time, Cui Dongsheng also admitted that Jiaogepengyou faced a lot of challenges on the video account, "It needs to have an attitude of exploring with the platform, planning in advance, and continuing to learn."

In terms of transaction data, Cui Dongsheng said that the energy invested is more important than the data, and at this stage, the video account will not have a large share in "Make Friends". Although "Make Friends" is just a cut, it undoubtedly shows the question of "where are the big anchors" faced by the video account. Even the top live broadcast room IPs introduced with great efforts have not been able to adapt to the local environment. At the same time, while the original top bloggers are emerging, there is still a big gap compared to the top brothers and sisters of Taobao, Douyin and Kuaishou. It has been 3 years since the 618 event. How much of the power of the video account has been exerted? In the hot e-commerce war, has the video account finally chosen the right armor and weapons after running until now?

1. Middle-aged women with money and free time support the video account 618

"Slow success leads to great things" is the product philosophy of Zhang Xiaolong, the father of WeChat. Zhang Xiaolong hopes that valuable products can develop slowly and open up slowly, because this is a slow process. From WeChat to mini programs to video accounts, almost all of them follow this theory. This year's 618, when Taobao, Douyin, and Kuaishou platforms fired the first shot around May 21, the video account was still "slow to achieve", choosing to start the "618 Good Things Festival" on May 31. On the video account live broadcast page, a separate 618 zone was opened, divided into nearly 20 categories such as clothing, shoes and bags, home textiles, food, and wine, with brand stores and expert live broadcast rooms displayed side by side.

At the same time, the video account also launched the 618 Goods Festival sales ranking, which is divided into four dimensions: today's sales, overall sales ranking, brands, and influencers. At 10 pm on June 18, the top five in the overall sales ranking were "Image Styling Master Qiao", "Putuoshan Xiaoshuai Tour Guide", "yiyi is me", "Guo Yiyi", and "Yan Yi Couple", with the highest popularity value reaching 3.88 billion.

This overall list shows the current status of the development of video live e-commerce. First of all, the clothing category is the flagship, especially middle-aged and elderly women's clothing . For example, the first and third place "Image Styling Master Qiao" and "yiyi is me" are both clothing experts. They recommend quality clothing suitable for middle-aged women, and the price of single items is mostly over 200 yuan. "yiyi is me" directly stated in the self-introduction on the homepage that "high-quality clothing provides 30+ women with a sense of respect, accomplishment and value", and often shares emotional videos on "how 40+ women can enrich themselves".

Secondly, lifestyle experts are quite popular . Positive energy content such as marriage, family matters, and mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships are widely popular. For example, the fourth place "Guo Yiyi" mostly records the daily life of marriage in her videos. She has a distinct personality. She is not only a mother of two children but also a highly educated graduate student. Her luxurious life with her wealthy husband is a topic of conversation. According to reports, her sales in a single live broadcast on Double 11 last year exceeded 50 million yuan. She is also a benchmark case promoted by the video account and was invited as a guest of WeChat Open Class. From June 16th to 18th, "Guo Yiyi" broadcast live for 3 consecutive times, mainly selling daily household items. "Yan Yi Couple" is also a couple who went online. With positive energy topics + couples, they attracted fans' attention. The content focused on positive energy topics related to deaf-mute male nannies that the audience liked to see. In the comment area, you can often see the empathy of many users, feeling "married well" and "married well". The selection of products is mainly beauty and makeup, supplemented by just-needed products and cost-effective products.

Secondly, there are bloggers who have a certain degree of popularity and fans both inside and outside the site, but their core fan base is middle-aged and elderly people . For example, "Putuoshan Xiaoshuai Tour Guide" has 20.5 million fans on Douyin. He introduces many tourist attractions across the country, including Putuoshan. Most of the jewelry sold in the video account window is Buddhist-related, which means good luck and caters to most middle-aged and elderly people. These accounts are firmly on the 618 video account sales list, which is closely related to the consumer portrait of the video account.

At this year's WeChat Open Class, the relevant person in charge said that female consumers accounted for 78% of video accounts, consumers in first-tier, new first-tier and second-tier cities accounted for more than 60%, and people aged 30-50 contributed 40% of the increase in video accounts. In summary, this is a group of middle-aged women around 40 years old, who are rich and have free time. They have strong consumption power and low product return rate. They are the incremental population that Douyin and Kuaishou have not yet covered, and they have also become the main consumer of video accounts on 618 this year.

2. Make a list, find celebrities, and lower the profile of the video account

"Not exclusive to top players, no celebrities invited to join, no money spent on content" is the principle of equality and inclusiveness of video accounts emphasized by Zhang Xiaolong. However, in the face of "iron platform traffic and changing top anchors", this set of inclusive principles has failed. Whether it is Li Jiaqi of Taobao, Dongfang Zhenxuan of Douyin, Simba of Kuaishou, Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui of Xiaohongshu, e-commerce players have all found top anchors with enough influence to break the circle. Combining the top 5 influencers in the overall list of goods brought by video accounts on the night of 618, although "Image Styling Master Qiao" and "Guo Yiyi" are native clothing and life experts of video accounts and have accumulated a stable fan base, there is still a significant gap in the degree of public discussion compared with the top anchors of other platforms.

Similarly, Video Account does not want to see a "one-of-a-kind" situation, and intervenes as a platform to regulate. Some media have reported that in 2023, the Oriental Selection team sent two vice presidents to visit WeChat to discuss the entry into Video Account. WeChat only expressed its welcome to start broadcasting, but made it clear that there would be no traffic support and that it would not be treated differently on a daily basis. On the other hand, Taobao once sent a small team of 20 people to invite Oriental Selection, and soon after in September 2023, Oriental Selection entered Taobao Live in a high-profile manner. An MCN founder told Yifan (ID: finance_yifan) that Video Account rarely released MCN or talent ranking lists before, and sometimes the internal rankings of service providers were not even allowed to be announced to the public. " After the announcement, many talents/brands may tend to choose head service providers. WeChat hopes that all service providers will rely on their own energy to compete fairly, and do not want to have a situation where some service providers dominate because of the endorsement of the rankings."

It is interesting to note that in February this year, the video account launched the "Hourly Sales Ranking". Entering any live broadcast room with sales, you can see the ranking of live broadcast rooms of different categories through the list. The founder of the above-mentioned MCN also expressed his feelings: "The video account has finally bowed to the public trend."

Another change is that "celebrity is not invited to join". On the evening of June 18, celebrity Christy Chung live-streamed products on Video Account, with a total heat value of 420 million, setting a record for the first live-streaming room with more than 10 million viewers, becoming the No. 1 celebrity live-streaming product on Video Account that day. On May 13, before the broadcast, the official WeChat account of Tencent Advertising also released a promotional tweet for the premiere of Christy Chung's Video Account.

According to statistics from Yibang Power, in the 618 live broadcast, there were 9 brands that appeared in the live broadcast room of Christy Chung's video account, including Feike razors, Fuanna, MissWiss, Chando and other skin care and life types, with 29 trailer links, and estimated sales of 7.1 million to 7.5 million yuan. At present, Christy Chung has 8.68 million fans on Douyin, which is a big gap from Jia Nailiang, who is also a star with goods, and her road to bringing goods on Douyin has not been smooth sailing. Some media reported in 2023 that Christy Chung only sold 7 orders after receiving a pit fee of 50,000. This time, Christy Chung switched to the video account to broadcast, which to a certain extent also avoided the fierce internal battle of Douyin. However, some media and merchants said that the sales data of Christy Chung's live broadcast room in the morning was about 5,000 orders, and the merchants also had to pay a pit fee of 30,000 yuan, and the conversion rate was only 5/10,000. Compared with the single-game record of 20 million to 50 million of other native talents of the video account, Christy Chung's effect was not ideal.

Another merchant added that the reason why Christy Chung’s live streaming sales this time was not well received was related to her youthful style of selecting products. Moreover, Christy Chung was selling products through a video account without the support of private domains such as official accounts, group chats, and Moments. She only relied on the platform to divert traffic, and the source of traffic was too single and inaccurate.

3. Does the video account need a “super head”?

This year's 618 is almost the quietest since its inception, and it also heralds the end of the era of big promotions. According to Star Chart data, the total sales of the entire network during this year's 618 was 742.8 billion yuan, compared with 798.7 billion yuan last year, a year-on-year decrease of 7%. Among them, comprehensive e-commerce Tmall, JD.com and Pinduoduo totaled 571.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6.9%; live e-commerce Douyin, Kuaishou and Diantao totaled 206.8 billion yuan, an increase of 12%. Not only sales were weak, but even the top anchors were flat.

According to Chanmama data, as of 17:00 on June 18, the top three Douyin influencers in the 618 promotion were Guangdong Couple, Jia Nailiang and Yuhui Xingxing, Make Friends and Oriental Selection ranked 10th and 11th, and Crazy Xiao Yangge ranked 17th. On the other hand, Simba of Kuaishou also said in March this year that there is nothing exciting in the live streaming industry anymore, and he will stop live streaming for two years to learn artificial intelligence, and then choose a new track to start again.

Faced with such a background, video live e-commerce obviously cannot simply copy the previous successful model to break through, and whether it needs to be super-headed is not the key to solve the problem. If you rely on native talents to make steady progress in the private domain, you can attract a group of sticky audiences, but you are lacking in brand building, most of which are expert free brands or white labels. On the other hand, there are also international brands such as Estee Lauder that started broadcasting on video accounts during the 618 period, but the welfare mechanism is basically the same as that of Taobao and Douyin stores, and it is difficult to find the difference. The head public account owners of the classical self-media era, such as "Insight" and "Li Xiaoyi", also performed on the night of 618, basically facing the original public account fan groups, which already have high stickiness.

It is worth mentioning that Video Account has recently released detailed rules to restrict live broadcasts of digital people. For example, using plug-ins, AI and other tools to generate virtual images for live broadcasts is a typical violation. In the past one or two years, digital people's live broadcasts have become a perpetual motion machine for live broadcasts with low costs and 24-hour operation. JD.com even launched a digital human anchor "Caixiao Dongge" in the image of its founder Liu Qiangdong this year. Some industry insiders believe that Video Account's move to restrict live broadcasts of digital people is mainly because users are generally older and have a weaker ability to distinguish between digital people, and they are worried about problems such as digital people fraud.

In this way, middle-aged and elderly users are both the differentiated advantage of video accounts and also limit the development of video account e-commerce. As to whether e-commerce can really break through and when the warm water of video accounts will boil, this 618 did not give an answer. How to solve the problem will continue to puzzle the next Double 11 cycle.

Author: Houma; Source public account: Yifan YIFAN (ID: 1089389)