Recruiting "Internet celebrities" and creating IP, is JD.com's ambition for live streaming no longer hidden?

JD.com is recruiting influencers through live streaming and trying to build its own IP. Can its ambition support a new chapter in content e-commerce? This article analyzes the strategic transformation of JD.com's procurement and marketing team and explores the future trend of content-based e-commerce platforms. It is suitable for e-commerce industry observers and marketing professionals.

JD.com's procurement and sales department has welcomed a "net celebrity employee". Recently, Ren Yuechao, a former Huawei HR who became famous for his good looks, announced that he would join JD.com and become the HRBP and anchor of the procurement and sales team of JD.com.

Since becoming popular with its unique live broadcast style during last year's Double Eleven, JD Procurement and Sales has brought a new turn for JD Live and has become the focus of this year's JD 618. Xinbochang found that JD Procurement and Sales has opened accounts on platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu, showing great momentum in building IP.

Can JD.com’s procurement and sales, which actively embraces traffic, support JD.com’s live streaming ambitions?

1. "Internet celebrity HR" joins JD.com's purchasing and sales department

"After joining the company, I threw myself into the battle of JD.com's 618 and aligned myself with the battle atmosphere of JD.com's 618."

On the afternoon of May 29, Ren Yuechao, the former Huawei HR who became popular on the Internet for his good looks, wore a red vest of JD.com Procurement and Sales and explained electronic digital products to netizens in the JD.com Home Appliances and Furniture Procurement and Sales Live Broadcast Room. This was also his first live broadcast after joining JD.com. Previously, it was reported that after Ren Yuechao left Huawei, he took the offer from JD.com and served as the HRBP of JD.com Procurement and Sales Department, and also served as a part-time anchor of the team.

At the same time, "Former Huawei high-value HR joins JD.com" quickly became a hot search on Weibo. Who is Ren Yuechao? Let's review his history of becoming famous.

At the end of November last year, a netizen posted a video on social media about Huawei's 2024 campus offline recruitment fair. Ren Yuechao, who was still Huawei's HR at the time, quickly became popular with his handsome appearance and lazy and uninhibited temperament. Some netizens even went to Huawei's official website to ask for Ren Yuechao's contact information.

On April 18 this year, Ren Yuechao suddenly posted a note on Xiaohongshu: "Challenge 500 likes to resign", and marked the labels of Huawei and resignation. This resignation challenge note received 22,000 likes.

After that, Ren Yuechao started broadcasting on Douyin, but he did not sell goods through live broadcasting. He just opened a showcase on the homepage and posted product links. New Broadcasting Field found that Ren Yuechao currently maintains a rhythm of broadcasting once a day on Douyin, but basically only broadcasts for one or two hours. Even after joining JD.com, he did not stop live broadcasting on Douyin.

As of June 4, Ren Yuechao had 74,000 followers on Douyin and 26,000 followers on Xiaohongshu.

The fact that such an "Internet celebrity employee" joined JD.com's procurement and sales department inevitably makes people wonder: What is JD.com doing? Will he become the new traffic code for JD.com's procurement and sales department?

2. Procurement and sales: JD Live’s top IP

This year is JD.com’s 21st “618” and also the procurement and sales team’s first “618”.

On June 1, JD.com released the 4-hour battle report of the first day of the 618 event. Among them, the number of people watching JD.com's live broadcast increased by 460% year-on-year; the number of orders for JD.com's procurement and sales live broadcast increased by 300% compared with the 4-hour opening of JD.com's 11.11 in 2023.

During the Double 11 last year, the JD.com procurement and sales team, relying on their simple and sloppy work but their professional knowledge of products, found a suitable live broadcast track among the top anchors, which made the 140 million users who flocked to the JD.com live broadcast room say "it's awesome". The JD.com procurement and sales live broadcast room achieved a sales record of over 1 billion yuan during the Double 11 period, which is a brilliant report card for JD.com's live broadcast e-commerce.

Since then, JD.com's live broadcast room has continued to be the center of topics and hot searches. JD.com Chairman and Founder Liu Qiangdong's digital figure appeared twice in JD.com's core category live broadcast room. The first live broadcast had 20 million viewers and the overall sales reached 50 million yuan.

In order to support this year's 618 promotion, CEO Xu Ran sat in the procurement and sales live broadcast room for the first time and talked about AI with 360 founder Zhou Hongyi. Not only that, the anchors in the procurement and sales live broadcast room collectively called out to Li Jiaqi, "We sincerely invite Li Jiaqi to be the anchor in JD's procurement and sales live broadcast room."

Not only that, JD.com has recently made a major adjustment to its personnel structure, with layoffs re-emerging and strict rectification of the phenomenon of proxy attendance, but the JD.com procurement and sales team has increased from the original 16 salaries to 20 salaries, and there is no upper limit on performance incentives. In fact, this is the second time that JD.com has increased the salary of its procurement and sales team this year. At the end of last year, JD.com announced that the annual fixed salary of JD.com's procurement and sales and other front-line business personnel will increase by nearly 100% starting January 1, 2024.

At the launch conference of JD.com's 618 this year, the "Champion" procurement and sales segment filled the entire launch ceremony of the conference, and JD.com's major procurement and sales teams also took the stage to explain and promote. CEO Xu Ran, wearing a red procurement and sales vest, gave the evaluation of "professional, reliable and enthusiastic" when introducing JD.com's procurement and sales team.

An industry insider commented: "From the fact that CEO Xu Ran wore a red purchasing and sales vest to share the 618 theme, we can see that JD.com relied on purchasing and sales for 618 this year."

Xinbochang also observed that JD Procurement and Sales has opened accounts on platforms such as Douyin, Xiaohongshu and Video Account. The account avatars are uniform cartoon avatars of male and female anchors wearing red vests. Among them, on the Video Account, the MCN displayed on the homepage of "JD Procurement and Sales" is JD Shopping.

The content posted on the account includes product selection tips, the daily work of the procurement and sales team, etc. Among them, Douyin has also created a collection called "Procurement and Sales Theater", which has been updated to 8 episodes and has been played 860,000 times.

It can be seen that JD Procurement and Sales is now building its own IP.

Therefore, JD.com recruited Ren Yuechao, perhaps because of Ren Yuechao's own traffic and popularity, and hoped that the procurement and sales team could truly become a resounding business card for JD.com's live broadcast.

3. Content Campaign of E-commerce Platforms

The head of a JD MCN agency told Xinbochang that unlike other platforms, "JD is a purchasing and sales logic, the platform is very strong, and has stronger control over brands." Therefore, this is also the bargaining chip that the purchasing and sales team can use the low-price advantage to call on big anchors.

"JD.com has always been a self-operated model." In the opinion of the head of the MCN agency, this is also JD.com's unique advantage. The procurement and sales model means more control over prices. After the IP of JD.com's procurement and sales is established, it is equivalent to JD.com Live having its own "big anchor" to the outside world, a "big anchor" who can really get low prices.

In this way, after the purchasing and sales live broadcast room attracts more users, it will actually further feed back to the content ecology of the platform.

For platforms and merchants, content is the best way to attract and retain users. Major e-commerce platforms are paying more and more attention to content.

In March this year, at the 2024 Taobao Content E-commerce Festival, Taobao announced that it would increase its investment in content e-commerce by adding 10 billion yuan in cash and 100 billion yuan in traffic. Content and e-commerce will change from addition to multiplication, releasing a new round of content e-commerce dividends for the platform's anchors, organizations and merchants.

As live streaming and short videos have become extremely important traffic entrances for e-commerce, JD.com has taken a lot of actions in live streaming and short videos, introducing agencies, recruiting experts to create content, and serving brand merchants on the platform.

In the past six months, JD.com has focused on live streaming and carried out a series of changes, taking content ecology as an important strategic layout, and launched a number of support plans, providing traffic and cash to continuously recruit high-quality content creators.

At the beginning of 2024, JD Retail set a strategic layout of "three must-win battles", with instant retail, content ecology and open ecology on a par. This innovative move has also become the core direction of JD's development.

In February, JD.com formulated a plan to recruit anchors, which did not require them to be assessed on GMV or gross profit. The purchasing and sales live broadcast room also repeatedly called on Dong Yuhui to come to JD.com for live broadcasts.

In April, JD.com officially announced that it would invest 1 billion in cash and 1 billion in traffic as rewards to attract more original creators and high-quality content organizations to join and help high-quality talents create better content. The live broadcast period of this event will end on June 30, with a total of at least 20 days of broadcasting; the daily live broadcast time will be at least 4 hours, and the assessment indicators are UV greater than 50, average average stay time > 120s/day, and reward income of 100 virtual coins/day. The live broadcast subsidy standard for qualified sessions is 40 yuan per hour.

Recently, according to Xinbochang, JD.com launched exclusive subsidies for content live streaming in June, mainly targeting live streaming rooms for life sharing, knowledge sharing, game live streaming, and entertainment and leisure.

The content-oriented battle of e-commerce platforms is still going on. It remains to be seen what kind of splash JD Live can make.

Author: Changmei Xinbochang; Source public account: Xinbochang (ID: 1093973)