A brief history of CEO live streaming in China

The birth of the Internet PR industry is closely related to the big guys’ love of speaking out. Whenever a big company is anxious, they love to speak out. It can be said that the brief history of China’s CEO live broadcast is actually a “barometer” of the industry’s development.

It is a traditional Chinese culture that leaders love to speak out. This can be seen from the fact that Emperor Qianlong loved to stamp his seals on famous paintings. In the 3Q war era, Weibo became a battlefield for bigwigs to "quarrel", and Fanfou became a diary for some people who valued their reputation.

To some extent, the birth of the Internet PR industry is directly related to the bigwigs’ love of speaking out. But I never expected that one day “PR No. 1” would actually become a title.

Looking back at the past 20 years of the Internet, we can see that whenever big companies are anxious, they love to speak out. It is no wonder that in the most anxious years, the public relations departments that were supposed to control the microphone also came out to grab the microphone. During the epidemic, the tourism industry was completely annihilated. Liang Jianzhang went to the live broadcast room to play Cosplay, which started the trend of CEOs entering the live broadcast room.

In the following three years, countless names, both familiar and unfamiliar to us, have transformed into Douyin "big Vs". Some have even almost given up their main business and kept talking about "my AI experience".

▲Source: Screenshots of the main businesses of Douyin CEOs

In 2024, the elimination round of new energy vehicles started. Lei Jun, Li Bin, and Zhang Yong were shoulder to shoulder, and anxious CEOs began to enter the live broadcast room again.

The brief history of Chinese CEO live broadcasts is actually a "barometer" of industry development. Simply put, the development of a company may be directly inversely proportional to the number of live broadcasts by the CEO. The traffic anxiety of companies is also becoming the last straw that overwhelms them.

01

The Anxious CEO and His Way Out Looking back at the history of live streaming by Chinese CEOs, if the criterion is to appear in public and sell goods through live streaming, then the first person to lower himself and walk into the live streaming room should be Liang Jianzhang, co-founder and chairman of Ctrip.

In March 2020, the epidemic came with great force, and the tourism industry was the first to bear the brunt. According to the financial report data of Ctrip Group in the first quarter of 2020, net revenue decreased by 42% year-on-year, and the operating loss was 1.2 billion yuan.

In order to save itself, Ctrip launched an activity called "Revival V Plan", which pre-sells various travel products through live streaming. Liang Jianzhang is the biggest "big shot" in this activity.

From March to September of that year, Liang Jianzhang did more than 20 live broadcasts. He changed his previous dignified demeanor in front of the public and sang, danced, acted cute, and did COSPLAY in the live broadcast room, helping Ctrip and many companies in the industrial chain get through the most difficult period.

▲Liang Jianzhang’s live broadcasts at different times Source: Deep Sound

This seemingly strange appearance cannot hide Liang Jianzhang's sadness. Equally sad are the New Oriental "duo", Luo Yonghao and Yu Minhong, who followed closely.

In April 2020, the news of Luo Yonghao's first live broadcast dominated the opening ads of Douyin, and with the support of 1 billion traffic, he launched his "True Return"; about 25 days later, Yu Minhong also completed his first live broadcast on Douyin. That month, the two largest MCN companies on Douyin were born: Make Friends and Oriental Selection. One was in debt, and the other changed careers.

In November 2019, Luo Yonghao wrote on Weibo, "Confessions of a 'Deadbeat' CEO," claiming that he owed a total of 600 million yuan to banks, partners and suppliers, and planned to "sell his art" to pay off his debts.

At this time, it had just been two months since he was issued a consumption restriction order because of Smartisan Technology.

Yu Minhong's anxiety had to wait until July 2021, when the implementation of the double reduction policy caused the K12 education and training industry to collapse overnight, and New Oriental became precarious.

At the beginning of 2022, Yu Minhong posted on his personal WeChat account that New Oriental's market value fell by 90% in the past year, operating income decreased by 80%, 60,000 employees were dismissed, and cash expenditures of 20 billion yuan were incurred for refunding tuition fees, employee dismissal N+1 (severance pay), and teaching point lease termination. It was also at the end of this year (2021) that Oriental Selection officially started broadcasting on Douyin, with Yu Minhong appearing in person.

As Luo Yonghao's former boss, the two of them finally stepped into the same river after many years. We will find that the underlying tone of CEO live broadcast is actually a kind of helplessness in the face of difficulties. Even today, this underlying tone has become a trend, and it still affects the decisions and behaviors of all CEOs. For example, Li Bin, CEO of NIO, who decided to stop live broadcasting this year, is also facing huge pressure.

In 2023, NIO's delivery volume only achieved 65.32% of Li Bin's target. More importantly, since 2020, NIO's new car deliveries have continued to slow down.

▲Data source: NIO financial report, self-image restriction diagram

At the beginning of 2023, Li Bin said that he wanted to achieve break-even in the fourth quarter of 2023, but in reality, by the fourth quarter of 2023, NIO was still in a loss-making state, with a net loss of 5.3677 billion yuan.

These reasons also directly affect NIO's stock price. Since 2024, NIO's stock price has fallen from HK$72 in early January to HK$30 today, which is a halving. In addition, Li Bin must also solve the problem of NIO's high sales costs.

In 2022, NIO's sales cost was 44.125 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 50.5%. In 2023, sales cost increased by 19.1% year-on-year to 52.566 billion yuan.

Li Bin's decision to sell cars was a last resort, but also a life-saving straw. After all, both Richard Yu and Lei Jun have proven that turning a CEO into an Internet celebrity is more cost-effective than any other marketing method.

Of course, for Li Bin, he is just a concrete epitome of the fierce competition in the current automotive industry. Behind this incident actually represents the anxiety of the entire automotive industry.

Overseas, Tesla announced a price cut for all its domestically produced models, kicking off a price war for new energy vehicles in China. BYD took over, followed by Beijing Hyundai, Changan Automobile, Wuling and more than a dozen other brands. This was undoubtedly a fatal blow to NIO, which has always been pursuing a mid-to-high-end route.

In such a competitive environment, Xiaomi is still coming on strong, Su7 has become a Porsche alternative, who still remembers Weilai's new model? When the CEO starts to worry, the live broadcast room seems to be the last way out.

02

Live streaming is not a panacea. So the question is, is live streaming really a road to Rome? The first person to prove that this road is feasible was Luo Yonghao.

Starting from April 2020, Luo Yonghao completely transformed from an entrepreneur to an internet celebrity, selling goods through live broadcasts, doing talk shows, and appearing on variety shows. In more than two years, he not only paid off his previous debts, but also removed his name from the list of deadbeats and even started a new business. After more than five months of obscurity, Dongfang Zhenxuan finally waited for Dong Yuhui to become popular, and then soared to the sky.

The success of Luo Yonghao and Yu Minhong proved the feasibility of live streaming sales, and became a model for many entrepreneurs, executives, and CEOs to seek a way out when they encounter difficulties. For example, Chen Xiangdong, CEO of Gaotu, who also came from the education and training industry, imitated Dongfang Zhenxuan and created a "Gaotu Jiapin".

In March this year, HiPhi Auto also started live streaming on Douyin after its bankruptcy, hoping to help the company recover through selling products. From the perspective of live streaming, the high degree of binding between the CEO and the company itself allows him to quickly break out of the circle by leveraging the brand's popularity. In addition, with the successful cases of Liang Jianzhang, Yu Minhong and others, many CEOs have rushed to the front line.

Famous "CEOs" at that time included Dong Mingzhu, chairman of Gree Electric Appliances, Ding Lei, CEO of NetEase, Hou Yi, president of Hema, Chen Xiaodong, CEO of Intime, and even Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the world's top asset management company Blackstone Group.

Taking advantage of this round of opportunities, the bigwigs who used to stay behind the scenes have stepped out to the front and indulged in the addiction of being an internet celebrity. During the 618 period in 2020, Tmall claimed that 600 CEOs were live-streaming, including those from Huawei, Lenovo, Suning, etc.

But from today's perspective, CEO live broadcasts were not mature at the time, and many CEOs were forced to do it temporarily. So the CEO live broadcasts at the time had a characteristic, that is, the CEO was only responsible for showing his face, tasting samples and chatting, and as for bringing goods, there would be another professional anchor in the live broadcast room. So for quite a long time in 2020, this kind of two-person combination, or even four or five people's group broadcasts was very popular.

▲ Screenshot of Ding Lei’s live broadcast on NetEase Source: New Consumer Promotion Officer

But this is obviously not a long-term solution. In regular live broadcasts, the host is the absolute protagonist of the live broadcast room. Even the assistant hosts usually do not show their full faces, and those who are mainly responsible for "supporting the host" only make sounds.

So in comparison, in this round of CEO live broadcasts, the CEO seems to be the main guest in the live broadcast room, but in fact he is more like a supporting role.

Therefore, the entire process of the live broadcast room is to attract traffic in the name of the CEO, and then the anchor who brings the goods completes the conversion. At this time, the CEO is essentially a mascot, whose purpose is to cooperate with the work of the marketing department. And the result is also obvious. When the traffic and that special period are over, the CEOs will soon disappear from the live broadcast room and return to the position that truly belongs to them.

To this day, such a situation is still common. For example, Yin Tongyue claimed that he wanted to "learn from Lei Jun and Yu Chengdong." Other CEOs drove and explained themselves during live tests, expressing their intuitive feelings as a user. But in Chery's live broadcast room, Chairman Yin sat in the passenger seat.

Many CEOs, such as Yin Tongyue, have not yet gotten rid of the attribute of being a "tool man" in live streaming and become a real anchor. Although they have seen the success of Lei Jun, Yu Chengdong and others, they also clearly want to change and learn, and communicate with consumers in new ways.

But they obviously don’t understand the real reason why Lei Jun and Yu Chengdong can bring incremental growth to the company. Compared with ordinary CEO live broadcasts, the key difference between Lei Jun and Yu Chengdong is that they are CEOs and top Internet celebrities at the same time. Their personal IP is independent of the brand of their company, and their personal IP influence must be equal to or even greater than the brand influence. Only in this way can they bring incremental growth to the brand through the popularity of their personal IP and form a marketing event.

Lei Jun has 19.817 million fans on Douyin and as for Weibo, Xiaomi’s official account has only 3.669 million fans on Douyin; the Xiaomi official flagship store, which aims to bring products to consumers, has only 10.309 million fans.

Lei Jun has 23.819 million followers on Weibo, while Xiaomi has only 13.799 million followers. It is not live streaming that makes you an "Internet celebrity", but rather "Internet celebrities" enter live streaming. So becoming an "Internet celebrity" is the first step to live streaming.

Since Li Bin, CEO of NIO, posted his first short video on Douyin on March 14, he now updates his Douyin video once every two days on average; Lei Jun, known as the model worker of Zhongguancun, has updated his video with an average of 1.7 short videos per day in the past month; and Zhou Hongyi, the king of content from 360, has output an average of 3 pieces of content every day in the past month, and reads "Internet jokes" to the camera almost every day.

▲ Screenshot of NIO Li Bin's TikTok "Self-quadrant"

Investors close to Zhou Hongyi learned that: "Lao Zhou seems to want to make money from internet celebrities, not for 360." These CEOs are also working hard to use their influence to create topics and traffic. For example, Zhou Hongyi can make peace with Ma Huateng, with whom he has had a long-term grudge, just for the sake of topics, and Fu Sheng can also appear on the same stage with Zhou Hongyi, with whom he has broken up for 16 years, just to get attention.

So when CEOs roll up, they actually work harder than those internet celebrities who really make a living from their own media, and this also means that CEO live streaming is entering a new era, where a CEO is no longer just a mascot, but a "big anchor" in the live broadcast room.

03

The more you broadcast, the more you turn over? We still remember the "accident" of the bigwigs making the wrong statement, so that for a long time, the bigwigs closed their Weibo accounts, and Li Yanhong could only send short messages on Baijiahao. Pushing them to the live broadcast room, a character who is most willing to express, preach, and "throw the phone" in meetings, showed his truest self in front of the majority of netizens.

In December 2023, Dongfang Zhenxuan CEO Sun Dongxu "threw his phone" and "held a meeting with fans" in the live broadcast room because of the "small composition" incident, which also caused a huge public opinion storm on the Internet. Then in April this year, Nezha Automobile CEO Zhang Yong was criticized by netizens for crossing his legs in the live broadcast room. After the conflict broke out, he attracted a greater public opinion backlash because he implied that netizens were "licking dogs" on Weibo.

▲ Screenshot of Zhang Yong’s Weibo

Even a well-seasoned anchor has to accept the scrutiny of netizens.

In September 2023, Li Jiaqi educated the audience in a live broadcast about how expensive a 79 yuan eyebrow pencil is: "Sometimes look for the reasons yourself, whether your salary has increased over the years, and whether you have worked hard." After the live broadcast, he was criticized by the entire network.

However, in contrast to these cases where netizens complained and attacked, some CEOs were widely praised by netizens for their live broadcasts, and became phenomenal communication events. For example, in September 2023, the old daily chemical brand Vitality 28 accidentally went viral because of a live broadcast. After that, the chairman of Vitality 28 regularly held "meetings" in the live broadcast room to report to netizens on recent work, the distribution and use of reward income, etc.

Many netizens have become fans of Vitality 28 and have expressed that they are cloud shareholders of Vitality 28.

Netizens commented, "It's the same spending, some live broadcast rooms think I'm poor, and some live broadcast rooms' chairman reports to me", "It's the same spending in the live broadcast room, some people throw their phone at you, and some people let you be a shareholder."

In early April this year, Lei Jun personally opened the car door for Xiaomi car owners at the Xiaomi first batch car delivery ceremony, and later at the Beijing Auto Show, Xiaomi specially prepared mineral water for the audience waiting in line. These "little things" have been widely praised and actively spread by netizens.

Therefore, some people compared Lei Jun's behavior with the live broadcast of Nezha CEO, saying: "Lei Jun is really humble in his bones, while Zhang Yong still has a condescending attitude."

Obviously, many CEOs who rushed to the live broadcast room did not really change their mentality and position. They communicated with consumers with a proud attitude and regarded it as a "gift", but today's consumers no longer pay for this kind of "daddy-style" preaching. This is the fundamental reason why CEOs' live broadcasts failed and conflicts occurred with viewers and consumers.

The CEO's real performance in the live broadcast room has also begun to become a criterion for people to judge companies. CEO live broadcasts should be the optimal solution and the best way for companies to express their attention and sincerity to consumers.

When the market environment shifts from an incremental market to a stock market, in the incremental market, since the needs of a large number of consumers are not met, the main task of the company at this time is to expand production and fill the market gap with homogeneous products. Products in this period are usually easy to sell, so the company's marketing strategy is usually large-scale indiscriminate advertising.

They also need this method to educate and change the market. When the situation changes, nowadays, CEOs should really put consumers in a respected position, put themselves in the position of service providers, think about problems from the perspective of consumers, design products, and optimize services.

In the new era, what enterprises really need to achieve is a new attitude to serve consumers and customers. This goal cannot be achieved by a live broadcast. Instead, it is a comprehensive consideration of improving the cost-effectiveness of products, innovating product forms, optimizing service methods, etc.