There is no top female star on TikTok

This article explores the reasons behind the lack of a top anchor on the Douyin platform, analyzes the impact of gender differences on the success of anchors in the live streaming industry, and discusses the challenges faced by female anchors in the current market environment. It is recommended for readers who are interested in live streaming e-commerce, gender studies, and the impact of social media.

The competition for the top anchors on Tik Tok is only between male anchors.

The third-party data platform Sanyancha Pro shows that after topping the Douyin sales list in January, Dong Yuhui's "Walking with Hui" once again became the number one on the Douyin sales list in March this year; in February, the number one on the Douyin sales list was Mr. Dong, whose GMV reached 500 million yuan.

In this battle for the top anchors, female anchors have disappeared. If we count them carefully, there are Luo Yonghao, the earliest Douyin anchor, Dong Yuhui and Mr. Dong who have topped the sales list this year, Xiao Yangge, the first Douyin anchor to have over 100 million fans, and Jia Nailiang who sold over 1.3 billion yuan worth of goods on Singles’ Day last year... Douyin’s top anchors have always been male anchors.

Compared with the discussion about the competition for the top male star on TikTok, the voice of the top female star on TikTok seems to be much weaker.

Zhang Lan, who hyped up her son's divorce, Xiang Tai Chen Lan, who created 300 million yuan in GMV in her first broadcast, and Zheng Xiangxiang, the "Pinduoduo of the live broadcast industry", were all briefly crowned as "the No. 1 anchor of Douyin". In terms of sales, Liu Yuanyuan, Macau Xiaoyuan, Qi'er and other female anchors have been in the top 20 of Douyin's sales list this year, but compared with those super-head male anchors on Douyin, these female anchors' long-term sales power and influence are much weaker and have failed to form a commercial phenomenon. The recently popular Northeast Yu Jie and Kaifeng Wang Po have not yet made a name for themselves in the live broadcast room.

Tik Tok, there is no top female influencer in selling products.

Douyin is not short of female anchors . According to data from the Economist APP, the proportion of female anchors on Douyin in 2020 was 57.5%. What Douyin lacks is female anchors with distinct personalities who can create topics and discussions. In fact, the lack of a top anchor is also the current situation of the entire live broadcast industry.

According to data from the Economist APP, in 2020, female anchors accounted for 65.3% of the live broadcast e-commerce industry in my country, nearly 70%. Among them, female anchors on Kuaishou accounted for 71.5%, and female anchors on Taobao accounted for 68.3%. The data from the "2020 First Half of the Year Live Broadcasting Talent Report" released by BOSS Zhipin also showed that young female anchors accounted for as high as 78.2% of the industry. In the live broadcast industry dominated by women, there are no top female anchors. Among the four top anchors, only Wei Ya is a woman.

Image source: Qianzhan.com

The Guangdong E-Commerce Summit announced the top 50 online anchors in terms of net income in 2023. The top five anchors are all male anchors, namely Xiao Yangge, Simba, Li Jiaqi, Dong Yuhui, and Chen Xiang Liudianban. The only female anchors who made it into the top ten are the Seven Bosses (Three Sheep), Chen Sanfei's siblings, and the Guangdong couple, who ranked eighth to tenth.

Not only is Douyin unable to create the next Viya, but after Viya, there is no longer a "number one host" in the live streaming room.

01

If you open the Douyin sales rankings, you can see that there are very few female anchors appearing in the top 10 of the list.

From January to March this year, there was only one female anchor, Mi Daodao, in the top five list of sales. Most of the female anchors in the top ten appeared as couples or siblings. For example, the Guangdong couple ranked eighth in the January sales list, and Chen Sanfei and his sister ranked ninth. In the February list, Liu Yuanyuan ranked seventh, and Chen Sanfei and his sister ranked tenth. In the March list, the Rainbow couple and Chen Sanfei and his sister ranked seventh and eighth respectively.

Despite making it into the top ten of Douyin’s sales rankings, these female anchors can hardly be called “Douyin’s top female anchors.” According to the standards for Douyin’s top male anchors, the standards for Douyin’s top female anchors are nothing more than these two: one is the sales data of live broadcasts, whether it has formed a commercial phenomenon; the other is fame and influence.

Dong Yuhui's influence is unquestionable. As for his ability to bring goods, after he became popular in June 2022, he is still ranked at the top of the Douyin sales list. After the short composition incident, his influence has grown by leaps and bounds. In 2022, Xiao Yangge became the first and only amateur anchor on Douyin with over 100 million fans, and has entered the top three of Douyin's sales list many times. Luo Yonghao, once the number one anchor on Douyin, is a benchmark anchor for the rise of Douyin e-commerce, and the GMV of "Make Friends" in 2023 also reached 12 billion yuan.

According to this standard, Douyin still has no top female celebrity. Mi Daodao, who broke into the top five of Douyin's sales ranking in January this year, mainly sells low-priced down jackets and has 2.7 million fans. Its sales performance is highly seasonal. Its performance is good in January and February, but it is difficult to squeeze into the top of the list in other months. Its sales in the most recent month have fallen to 25 million to 50 million. Its sales ability is not stable and has not generated any topics or discussions.

In fact, there is no shortage of female anchors on Douyin who are dubbed "Douyin's No. 1 Queen", but most of them are short-lived.

Zheng Xiangxiang, the "Pinduoduo of the live broadcast industry", was once regarded by many media as the "new No. 1 female star of Douyin". In October 2023, her "dealer-style" outfit in "All or Nothing", her direct quote style of "10 yuan, 19 yuan", and her quick payment style of "one product in 3 seconds" made Zheng Xiangxiang popular on Douyin, bringing in more than 100 million yuan in sales in a week, leaving behind Dongfang Zhenxuan and Jiaoge Pengyou. However, the "quick payment" style was identified as a violation by the platform, and Zheng Xiangxiang's live broadcast room was banned.

Earlier, Xiang Tai Chen Lan created a record for Douyin's sales for the first time - single-day sales exceeded 300 million, and the number of fans increased by nearly 6 million. However, Xiang Tai's arrogant attitude and product selection quality in the live broadcast room were criticized. Xiang Tai was the "No. 1 saleswoman" for one day, and then fell from the altar.

Before Xiang Tai, the record holder for the first broadcast of a female anchor on Douyin was TST founder and celebrity Zhang Ting, whose first broadcast in June 2020 set a sales record of 250 million yuan in 5 hours, far exceeding celebrity anchors such as Luo Yonghao and Chen He. However, during the two years of being caught up in the pyramid scheme storm, Zhang Ting's social accounts were suspended from updating, and she also missed the feast of Douyin live broadcasting.

In terms of topicality, Zhang Lan is the most worthy of the title of "Tik Tok's No. 1 Sister" and the most ambitious. Zhang Lan's products have gradually expanded from Ma Liuji to accessories, beauty products, and home furnishings. However, those who play with traffic are also defeated by traffic. Without the traffic from her son Wang Xiaofei's divorce and love affair, the original form of her live broadcast room has also appeared.

It is easy for the "No. 1 Douyin anchors" to gain popularity, but they also have their own problems and it is difficult for them to remain popular for a long time, let alone compete for the title of "No. 1 Douyin anchor". The rising dark horse anchors in the live broadcast room have the opportunity to wear the crown of "No. 1 anchor for selling goods". Xiang Tai and Zhang Lan were discussed by the media at the same time. However, unlike Dong Yuhui, Xiao Yangge and others who have stable sales results, their results only remain at a certain stage.

02

Why doesn't Douyin have a top anchor? Why are male anchors more likely to become Douyin's top anchors?

Zhang Xiaorong, director of the Deep Technology Research Institute, said that this phenomenon is related to the live broadcast content and the audience group. Male anchors may be better at or more inclined to promote certain types of goods, which happen to be popular with Douyin's main consumer groups. Secondly, this may also be related to social culture and market environment. Male anchors may be more likely to gain attention and support in some aspects. Female anchors lack the potential for sustained growth in bringing goods. In the current market environment, they may need more time and effort to break through the existing limitations.

Chen Ming (pseudonym), a practitioner at a leading MCN agency, also said that there are also many excellent female anchors on the Douyin platform, but due to reasons such as deviation in content positioning, single content format that is easy to be eliminated, and different operations and promotions, many excellent anchors encounter bottlenecks during their rising period, failing to achieve the original development scale and do not have the same influence as male anchors.

There are two types of Douyin top stars: those who rely on the Douyin platform to invest money and traffic to support them, such as Luo Yonghao, the first generation of Douyin top star. According to Tech Planet, Luo Yonghao reached a cooperation with Douyin at that time, and the cooperation amount reached 60 million yuan. Douyin also provided traffic support, including opening screen advertising, live broadcast room push for all users on the site, and other resource support.

Dong Yuhui's rise to the top was made possible by the platform and fans. 36Kr once reported that the initial popularity of Oriental Selection was supported by Douyin, and Dong Yuhui was obviously the anchor who left the deepest impression on the public during the Oriental Selection explosion. After the Xiaozuowen incident in December last year, Dong Yuhui's personal IP value was released. This year, the Yuhui Xingxing live broadcast room won the first place in Douyin's monthly sales ranking twice.

Douyin and Dong Yuhui are also closely connected. On March 13, Dong Yuhui revealed in a live broadcast that the Douyin team had a meeting with him that afternoon and put forward many development ideas and expectations to Yuhui Tongxing, especially hoping that Yuhui Tongxing would develop faster. Obviously, the emergence of Douyin's number one is inseparable from the support of the platform behind it.

Dong Yuhui emerged when the live broadcast industry was initially established, which was also related to the high overlap between his fan base and the mainstream user group of Douyin. As early as 2018, Douyin announced that the proportion of female users was 60%. The latest data released by QuestMobile in September 2023 also showed that female users of Douyin accounted for 51.5%, higher than the 48.5% of male users.

Li Jiaqi's success has long proven the strong spending power and purchasing power of female users. According to Accenture data, China has nearly 400 million female consumers aged 20-60, who control up to 10 trillion yuan in consumer spending each year. Needless to say, 63% of Dong Yuhui's fans are female; Luo Yonghao's fans have also become more balanced from the previous male-dominated ratio.

A research paper from the School of Media at Capital Normal University's Code College shows that in the process of selling goods, male anchors are good at transforming the relationship between "goods and people" into a relationship between "people and people", quickly establishing an intimate relationship that is comparable to family and friendship. In this relationship, female viewers imagine multiple identities in ideal relationships and project them onto the male anchors, thereby gaining a real-time, intuitive but virtual emotional experience.

Many top anchors have given their fans exclusive names. For example, Li Jiaqi calls the fans in the live broadcast room "all girls", and Dong Yuhui and his fans have the relationship of "mother-in-law and son-in-law".

Zimubang (ID: wujicaijing) interviewed 8 live streaming e-commerce users and asked them whether the gender of the host would affect their desire to buy. Most users said that there would be no difference in consumption due to the gender of the host, but three female users said that they would not buy things because the female host was good-looking, but would stay in the live streaming room more because the male host was good-looking, and would also consume and support him in the live streaming room.

However, Chen Ming also said that Luo Yonghao, Xiao Yangge and Dong Yuhui have successively become the top brothers, which is a survivor bias. Of course, it is also related to the specific market demand and audience preferences. Men and women have their own relatively good tracks. For example, Luo Yonghao is good at digital categories, and Liu Genghong in 2022 also became a "top streamer" with a set of aerobics accompanied by "Compendium of Materia Medica".

Liu Yi (pseudonym), another live broadcast e-commerce practitioner, said that male anchors have more advantages in the fields of mobile phones, technology, and digital products, while female anchors are better at beauty, fashion, and home furnishing. However, at a time when "male sex consumption" is prevalent, with the emergence of the phenomenon of "men bringing women's goods" by anchors such as Li Jiaqi, more and more male anchors are active in the fields of beauty, fashion, etc. Under this trend, male anchors have more advantages than female anchors in bringing goods.

Liu Yi explained that the most popular category of live streaming sales is beauty and skin care products, and this category once accounted for as much as 80% of Li Jiaqi's live streaming room. "Male sex consumption" has become an important sales strategy for live streaming e-commerce, such as the male model showing muscles in the Coconut Tree live streaming room, which has been very popular in the past year, and the "macho strip show" of Wang Shanzha.

The essence of live streaming is sales, and Zhang Xiaorong also said that sales work is relatively more suitable for men. Offline, there are also many more male sales champions than female ones in the industry.

03

Opposite to Dong Yuhui is the wild growth path of Brother Yang. Brother Yang copied Simba's live streaming and selling model on Kuaishou. In five years, he has 120 million fans on Douyin and became a top anchor. He also established the Three Sheep Network to enter the e-commerce field, greatly improving the commercial value of his own IP.

From the perspective of growth, Xiao Yangge has taken the route of vulgar and spoof live streaming. However, it is even more difficult for female anchors to succeed in the same spoof route. Last October, when Xiao Yangge's apprentice "Red Light Yellow" was promoting YSL products, he was banned for his ugly, weird, and hysterical live streaming style, which caused controversy. So far, he has been off the air for three months.

In 2021, Lei Technology published an article titled "Why doesn't Douyin ban male anchors when both of them are showing their bodies?" It pointed out that the Douyin platform deliberately raised the bottom line for the review of female anchors. It was not intentional on the part of the platform, but female users were forcing the platform to raise the bottom line for the review, forcing the platform to treat male and female anchors differently.

Lei Technology reported that most of the reports of banned female anchors’ spoofs and borderline videos came from female users rather than male users. A large amount of reported information is aggregated to the background of platforms such as Douyin, and the intelligent ban system will analyze it. As a result, the tolerance for similar videos is getting lower and lower, and as long as similar words appear in the video content or text, it may lead to a system ban.

Zhan Junhao, founder of Huace Brand Positioning Consulting, said that this phenomenon may involve multiple factors. First of all, the attributes of platform users are indeed an important consideration. When attracting users, platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Taobao may have formed their own specific user group characteristics, which directly affects the audience base of anchors. For example, users of certain platforms may prefer the style or product recommendation methods of male anchors.

Secondly, factors such as the anchor's personal characteristics, live broadcast content, fan base, and marketing strategy will also have a significant impact on the anchor's popularity and influence. In some cases, female anchors may find it difficult to stand out due to the lack of these key elements. In the competition with male anchors, female anchors may face various challenges in their journey of live broadcasting. For example, they may need to overcome gender stereotypes and break the inherent idea that "women are only suitable for selling certain types of products."

If live streaming with goods is a path to level up and fight monsters, then female anchors may often be eliminated for various reasons before they reach the end.

Teacher Huang, who became famous because of "Wah Wa", gained 2 million followers overnight and sold millions of goods in 3 days of live broadcast. However, she was frequently criticized and exposed, and failed in the early stage of live broadcast. Huang, a female anchor who also became famous for spoofs, received more abuse than Crazy Brother Yang and never resumed live broadcast.

In the reports on live streaming, most of the cases that expose the difficulties of anchors are also female anchors. For example, Henan Business Daily once reported that in the Zhengzhou clothing market, a group of female anchors born in the 1990s had to live broadcast for 6 hours at a time without changing anchors in the middle. They had to talk non-stop for 360 minutes to endure the slow growth of the number of fans in the single digits, which was a great test both physically and mentally.

Alphabet List once interviewed 10 anchors who had transformed, 8 of whom were female anchors. Of course, this is related to the fact that female anchors account for a higher proportion in the market.

Most of the reasons for transformation are physical illnesses caused by long-term live broadcasting. A 27-year-old female anchor who has been live broadcasting for two years said that she was hypoxic due to continuous loud talking for four hours a day, and she had to carry an oxygen bottle with her. A 27-year-old female anchor who has been doing this for three years said that she was diagnosed with depression and vocal cord polyps. There are also female anchors who choose to transform because they are old and cannot see the upward channel of live broadcasting.

In fact, it’s not just that there is no more top anchor now, but there are no more big anchors. It is difficult to create super anchors like Li Jiaqi, Wei Ya, and Dong Yuhui in this era.

Author: Xue Yaping; Source public account: Zimubang (ID: 686668)