The strategy behind Xiaohongshu's surprise appearance on the Spring Festival Gala

Xiaohongshu has joined the Dragon Year Spring Festival Gala and has become a platform for sharing notes and live broadcasts of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala. What is Xiaohongshu's strategy behind this? This article will reveal Xiaohongshu's multiple strategies one by one. Let us look forward to how Xiaohongshu cleverly uses the Spring Festival Gala window to achieve user growth and e-commerce conversion.

After being briefly sponsored by a number of liquor brands in the Year of the Rabbit, the Spring Festival Gala returned to the embrace of major Internet companies.

Recently, Xiaohongshu and JD.com officially announced their participation in the Spring Festival Gala of the Year of the Dragon. The former became the CCTV Spring Festival Gala notes and live broadcast sharing platform; the latter became the exclusive interactive cooperation platform of the Spring Festival Gala.

It is understood that JD.com's approach is to prepare 100 million physical gifts for the Spring Festival Gala audiences, which will be distributed in the form of interactive raffles; while Xiaohongshu has adopted a more cost-effective approach - watching the Spring Festival Gala together and then posting the link.

According to AI Blue Media's observation, Xiaohongshu has released the outfits of celebrities on the way to the Spring Festival Gala rehearsal, and in the notes on the Spring Festival Gala topic, it guides users to make reservations to participate in "Everyone's Spring Festival Gala" at 6 pm on February 9.

As of now, the "Spring Festival Gala" account on Xiaohongshu has attracted over 100,000 followers; the number of reservations for "Everyone's Spring Festival Gala" has exceeded 400,000.

In the past few years, WeChat, Alipay, Douyin and other big companies have already tasted the traffic dividend brought by the Spring Festival Gala. Every year, the "big companies" of the Spring Festival Gala are the exclusive title sponsors, spending hundreds of millions to create a marketing feast for the Spring Festival Gala.

It can be said that the "big companies" that have appeared on the Spring Festival Gala are the real big companies. Although Xiaohongshu came late, it finally got the Spring Festival Gala.

Why does Xiaohongshu need the Spring Festival Gala?

01 To increase daily activity, you must rely on sinking

In a word, Xiaohongshu needs to achieve a qualitative change in DAU.

By 2023, in terms of users, business capabilities and other dimensions, the strong will become stronger and the weak will become weaker, and the most uncomfortable thing will be to be neither up nor down.

What cannot be ignored is that the mainstream apps dominated by interest and social networking have formed a pattern of "Douyin, Kuaishou, B and Xiao", but the gap between the latter two and the former two is not small. Under the involution, the market share of mid-level apps will only be further squeezed by the top ones.

For Xiaohongshu, the choice is either to move forward and become the leader, or to continue to be cannibalized by the leader. Naturally, it is the former.

At the beginning of 2023, Xiaohongshu broke through the 100 million daily active users mark and reached 260 million monthly active users. Going a step further, it is understood that there are reports that Xiaohongshu has set a relatively conservative small goal internally - to reach 140 million daily active users by the end of 2023.

But by the end of 2024, Xiaohongshu's daily active users had not exceeded 120 million.

Xiaohongshu is facing difficulties in user growth.

Looking outward. Kuaishou has been focusing on short dramas in 2023. According to its Q3 2023 financial report, the average number of daily active users has reached 387 million, and the daily active users brought by Kuaishou short dramas are 270 million.

Not to mention, the daily active users of Douyin, the top app in the industry, have reached over 800 million.

This also means that Xiaohongshu needs to run faster.

Over the past 10 years, the platform has instilled the idea of ​​"refined life" in its users, which has become a memorable point for Xiaohongshu for a certain period of time, but it has also brought resistance to Xiaohongshu's downward expansion.

According to Qiangua data, Xiaohongshu's main users are concentrated in first- and second-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, accounting for as much as 70% of users in these cities. Xiaohongshu has not yet fully penetrated users in lower-tier cities.

This is also the reason why Xiaohongshu embraced the Spring Festival Gala in the Year of the Dragon in 2024 - to seize the rare opportunity to go deep into the market and tap into low-end users.

According to CCTV Video data, the total number of viewers of the 2023 Spring Festival Gala in the Year of the Rabbit reached 1.1 billion, the number of users of new media live broadcasts reached 655 million, and the number of people watching the Spring Festival Gala in vertical mode reached 179 million.

For Xiaohongshu, the Spring Festival Gala will be a great opportunity to grow and break through.

However, there are challenges. Judging from the results of the billions of dollars invested by big companies in the past to obtain the exclusive interactive rights of the Spring Festival Gala, it was a peak for a while, but it did not last long. It is still unknown whether Xiaohongshu can open a new door to attract new users by riding on the Spring Festival Gala.

02 Boosting e-commerce business

However, Xiaohongshu also has its own strengths: selling products.

The same popular items worn by celebrities during the Spring Festival Gala are always a hot topic of discussion every year. Liu Tao’s lipstick color, Zhang Xiaofei’s elegant coat, Qin Lan’s whitening sweater...they are sold out in minutes.

In other words, the Spring Festival Gala is a large-scale live broadcast of goods, where people can watch and buy at the same time. This is also what Xiaohongshu is best at - planting grass.

Over the past year, Xiaohongshu has not only wanted to be a platform for promoting products, but has also made great efforts in e-commerce, allowing users to promote products and make purchases at the same time.

Cooperating with the Spring Festival Gala can further free up space for selling goods.

It is understood that when Xiaohongshu accompanies everyone to watch the Spring Festival Gala, it will directly post links to the same products as the stars, allowing users to purchase smoothly.

Recently, the outfits of celebrities during the Spring Festival Gala rehearsal were also exposed by Xiaohongshu bloggers. In the comment section, many netizens have already responded with three comments: "Which brand? Where can I buy it? Please provide a link."

It seems that Xiaohongshu wants to take advantage of the Spring Festival Gala, and its main goal is not only to increase users, but also to transform the program content into a marketplace, leverage e-commerce transactions on the site, and convert users into consumers.

Over the past year, Xiaohongshu has integrated other e-commerce businesses and live streaming businesses, established a new first-level department, anchored "buyers", and made all-out efforts in e-commerce.

On Xiaohongshu, celebrity influencers such as Gigi Leung and Dong Jie have promoted products on the platform, which has given Xiaohongshu confidence in promoting products on the platform.

However, it is not easy for a latecomer to gain a foothold in the red ocean of e-commerce.

As it stands, Xiaohongshu’s “buyer e-commerce” still has many hurdles to overcome.

For example, whether Xiaohongshu’s tone as a “buyer e-commerce” can withstand the impact of the “low-price” market environment.

In the past year, almost all e-commerce platforms, including Pinduoduo, Taobao, JD.com, and Douyin, have been offering “low prices across the entire network.” Xiaohongshu, as an e-commerce platform, also has to face the fierce competition for users’ minds with low prices.

However, Xiaohongshu is also gradually breaking through. Last year, two influencers came to Xiaohongshu: Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui. They set sales records of 30 million and 100 million respectively.

On the one hand, in order to increase daily activity, and on the other hand, to develop e-commerce, Xiaohongshu has taken advantage of the Spring Festival Gala as a window, and it remains to be seen what tricks it can come up with.

Author: Yang Lei

Source: WeChat public account “AI Lanmeihui” (ID: lanmeih001), a well-known new media reporting on AI and Internet industries.