Oriental Selection Live Room: The consequences of blindly pursuing growth

In the past few days, there has been a quarrel in the live broadcast room of Dongfang Zhenxuan. The reason is that the live broadcast room of Dongfang Zhenxuan has also started to sell "123 link", and supporters and opponents are arguing. In the author's opinion, in the current environment, it is excessively wasteful to still demand "growth".

Recently, netizens dug out a comparison of the live broadcast rooms of Oriental Selection, implying that Oriental Selection has changed and become a hawking style.

In fact, Oriental Selection and Oriental Selection Beautiful Life are two accounts with two different styles, which is completely understandable. But it is easy to cause discomfort if all the big anchors are moving towards "Li Jiaqi".

The main reason is that Oriental's selection of beautiful life numbers "violates public psychological expectations":

1. The public expected that Dongfangzhenxuan would be a breath of fresh air in the live streaming industry, but it turned out to be not much different from other live streaming rooms:
2. The public expected that Oriental Selection could maintain its cultural tone, but they found that once they entered the live broadcast room, it was full of 321 hawking;
3. The public expected that Oriental Selection could represent a new live broadcast ecosystem, but it turned out that when it comes to interests, everyone chooses quick money.

Because the public's expectations are contrary to the platform's style, conflicts and topics will naturally arise, and Dongfangxuan has undoubtedly become a hot topic. In fact, the live broadcast style is an explicit feature, and the essence behind all commercial behaviors comes from corporate operations.

The purpose of this hawking style is to sell products quickly. The essence of this rapid sales is nothing more than the growth mentality within the enterprise.

I think "growth mindset" is the worst mindset in modern business, because it digitizes everything and only seeks the cumulative growth of business data, while ignoring the most emotional need of consumers - experience.

Let me give you three examples:

1. Internet giants: using whatever means necessary to achieve their goals

The first example is that when I was working at a large company, I found that there were several particularly important data behind the performance evaluation of APP operations in the large company:

1. User retention time;
2. Number of daily active users;
3. Number of monthly active users.

To achieve these goals, several methods are usually used.

1. Use attractive push ads to attract more users to open the app;
2. Set up some content columns to link repeatedly and jump horizontally;
3. The search results are appropriately vague, deliberately increasing the user's search time, etc.

After all these operations, the overall data can be improved and the KPI can be achieved. However, in my opinion, the "user experience" is greatly compromised.

For example, will more PUSHs lead to more people becoming disgusted with the app, leading to more uninstalls? For example, will the appropriate blurring of search results take up more people's time, leading to a poor experience?

There is also a more crude way of thinking: "Our platform has such a large amount of traffic, why not open a new content column, which can increase the overall benefits of the platform."

The underlying logic behind this is growth, growth, and growth. This is true for almost all domestic platforms. It is almost impossible to see Internet products with simple interfaces, clear content, and simplicity.

Rapid growth and iteration, reaching a bottleneck in the short term, followed by slowing growth, followed by layoffs, reputation crisis, and finally mediocrity. This is the fate of contemporary Internet products, and many managers don’t take it seriously.

I believe the right approach is to focus on the core elements of a certain field, build an experience ecosystem of tools + content, and enhance users' dependence on the platform rather than growth.

2. Food delivery platforms such as Nanchengxiang: Designing traps for growth

I love to eat Nanchengxiang for breakfast, because its soy milk and egg cream bar products make me feel safe and clean. But at the same time, its ordering system really disgusts me to a certain extent.

For example, two fried dough sticks + a bowl of soy milk is about the standard breakfast for an adult male. However, this combination does not meet the minimum delivery standard, so you have to make up the order, which is a common trick used by food delivery platforms.

For other platforms, adding an egg might be enough, but not for Nanchengxiang. The standards it designs are more exaggerated. I have to add a serving of wontons or something else worth more than ten yuan each time to make it enough.

The problem is that we can’t finish it. So, generally speaking, the food that can’t be eaten is either wasted or saved for lunch.

For Nanchengxiang, this design has increased the store's sales, and the boss is very happy to make a lot of extra money at the end of the month. However, it is accumulating my disgust for this brand. If this disgust accumulates to a certain level, I may give up this brand, and even if I go to McDonald's or KFC, I will no longer patronize Nanchengxiang.

The core behind it is actually the experience. If the experience is bad once, you can tolerate it; if the experience is bad twice, you can make do with it; if the experience is bad ten times, you should just give up.

This consumption logic has no data support, but it is a real behavioral idea. This is also what I think is the risk behind the growth.

3. Xiaohongshu and other content platforms: suicidal growth logic

Xiaohongshu is positioned as a "lifestyle social platform". In its original development process, it has a large number of high-level female fans, and plays a guiding role as a "advocate of a better life".

The original combination of pictures and texts is very different from Douyin and Kuaishou, and it just harvested those fans who are unwilling to post videos. But in the past six months to a year, the Xiaohongshu platform has always pushed messages to me, encouraging "video creation" and thus supporting traffic.

What’s behind encouraging video creation?

1. Get more forms and traffic;
2. The content is developing towards short videos.

In my opinion, this is "suicidal" growth behavior.

Obviously, the biggest advantage is "beautiful pictures + beautiful articles", and now video creation is encouraged every day. Why attract so many Douyin and Kuaishou bloggers? Xiaohongshu cannot become the second Douyin or Kuaishou, it can only be the first Xiaohongshu. Xiaohongshu's strategy should be to increase the guidance and investment of "picture and text content", not to make all the content video. This is very dangerous.

"Acting for growth" is the basic thinking of today's business entities. It is essentially an expansion mindset, not an experience mindset. Experience mindsets such as Pang Donglai, "not being too big or too exaggerated", maintain the ultimate experience; "fire senior executives if drug prices are too high" to maintain a good reputation.

Non-growth thinking means no worries about growth; growth thinking means always running into deficit. This is actually a concept that all companies should learn, which is what we often say: "less is more, more is less."

In today's increasingly oversupplied industrial ecosystem, "growth thinking" means excessive waste, while "experience thinking" can maintain perfection.