New "Spring Festival Gala Economics": No red envelopes, just want to sell goods?

As the year draws to a close, in addition to Spring Festival travel ticket grabs and New Year's goods, the Spring Festival Gala is also a topic worth paying attention to. Unlike the collective absence of Internet giants in 2023, this year Xiaohongshu and JD.com joined the Spring Festival Gala, but neither mentioned "cash red envelopes", but instead distributed relevant rewards in the form of live broadcasts and physical gifts.

As the year draws to a close, the festive atmosphere is getting stronger. In addition to the rush for tickets during the Spring Festival travel rush, the Spring Festival Gala remains one of the most watched topics during this period.

As of press time, the program list for the Dragon Year Spring Festival Gala has not yet been announced, but just a few leaked photos of celebrities during the rehearsal have repeatedly appeared on the hot searches on Weibo.

Social media and short video platforms have even sparked a trend of "predicting the topic" of the Spring Festival Gala. Netizens are busy predicting Spring Festival Gala skits and guessing the programs, and the war of Spring Festival Gala marketing has also begun.

Screenshot of Xiaohongshu

Unlike the collective absence of major Internet companies from the Spring Festival Gala in 2023, Xiaohongshu and JD.com recently announced their cooperation with the 2024 Spring Festival Gala. JD.com became the exclusive interactive cooperation platform for the Spring Festival Gala, while Xiaohongshu became a note and live broadcast sharing platform.

It can be expected that these two major official announcements have only revealed a corner of this year's new "Spring Festival Gala Economics". Whether there will be a title sponsor and who will win the horizontal and vertical screen broadcasting rights of the Spring Festival Gala remain to be revealed.

A month ago, JD.com exclusively sponsored the "Hunan Satellite TV Mango TV New Year's Eve Gala". It seems that the New Year's Eve Gala is more like a "mock exam" for the Spring Festival Gala. After the New Year's Eve Gala rehearsal, JD.com has made sufficient preparations for the Spring Festival Gala.

It is worth noting that since the Internet platform began to cooperate with the Spring Festival Gala, it has entered the game with the attitude of red envelope interaction, but this year's official announcement copy of JD.com and Xiaohongshu tacitly did not mention the words "cash red envelopes".

JD.com emphasized the 100 million physical gifts, while Xiaohongshu pointed out that it was a "companionship live broadcast." It seems that after reducing costs and increasing efficiency, Internet giants have returned to the Spring Festival Gala stage and have begun to look for more cost-effective strategies.

1. We need to “go down” and “bring goods”

According to JD Blackboard, during the Spring Festival Gala, users who log in to the JD App will have a chance to win 100 million physical gifts. These gifts will be given out in the form of interactive lucky draws, and users only need to pay one cent.

It is not difficult to see that the slogan of "one cent" in the Spring Festival Gala is JD.com's effort to establish a low-price mentality in the price-sensitive sinking market.

Compared with the previous Spring Festival Gala sponsors' direct sharing of cash red envelopes, JD.com's gift-giving campaign has an additional payment process. Although it is only one cent, this step can convert the 100 million gifts into 100 million transactions that can be completed on the site.

At present, it is not clear whether there will be additional conditions when making payments, such as whether you need to pay for shipping, whether you need to open JD Pay, etc. If so, it will be a significant progress for many businesses in JD Pay system.

According to a previous report by LatePost, JD.com's assessment of the revenue of the Spring Festival Gala cooperation projects this time is more stringent than in 2022. It is necessary to examine two indicators: GMV (transaction volume) and the number of transaction users. This also reflects that JD.com has returned to the Spring Festival Gala stage and has higher requirements and greater ambitions for project output.

When JD.com cooperated with the Spring Festival Gala for the first time in 2022, it distributed four rounds of red envelopes starting from the 22nd day of the twelfth lunar month, and a total of red envelopes and goods worth 1.5 billion yuan were distributed. The focus of the assessment that year was user activity.

Of course, JD.com has also achieved considerable results. QuestMobile data shows that on New Year’s Eve 2022, JD.com’s daily active users reached 151 million, a month-on-month increase of 81.4% from the previous day.

"The cooperation between Xiaohongshu and the Spring Festival Gala is more likely to be aimed at increasing user activity."

Xie Qian, an internet worker, said that a few months ago, there were rumors on Maimai that Xiaohongshu would cooperate with the 24th Spring Festival Gala. Almost everyone believed that this step was undoubtedly the only way for Xiaohongshu's users to generalize and sink.

At the beginning of 2023, Xiaohongshu exceeded 100 million daily active users and reached 260 million monthly active users. According to Leifeng.com, Xiaohongshu had set a goal of 140 million daily active users by the end of 2023, but by the end of the year, Xiaohongshu's daily active users did not exceed 120 million. It was speculated that He Tong (Potato name), the then head of community content, resigned because he failed to reach the goal.

At the beginning of 2024, cooperation with the Spring Festival Gala may become a reassurance to alleviate Xiaohongshu's growth anxiety.

The note-sharing and live broadcasting platform is a form of cooperation pioneered by Xiaohongshu. "Everyone's Spring Festival Gala" (Xiaohongshu's companion live broadcast) can be roughly understood as the social interaction platform officially designated by the Spring Festival Gala.

Specifically, Xiaohongshu set up a live broadcast room next to the Spring Festival Gala studio, starting at 6 pm on New Year's Eve, to broadcast behind-the-scenes stories and interact with celebrities in real time. Most importantly, the same items worn by the Spring Festival Gala stars can be purchased directly in the live broadcast room.

Cooperation method (left) Setting up the live broadcast room (right) | Image source: Xiaohongshu account @大家的春晚

In the vast land outside the Fifth Ring Road, the Spring Festival Gala has a large audience, and there is a natural trust and goodwill towards the brands and products that appear on the Gala. Therefore , the sales of products on the Gala can be regarded as a golden combination of traffic and business.

There are often hot-selling products that celebrities wear during the Spring Festival Gala. In the 2022 Spring Festival Gala, Zhang Xiaofei's coat was sold out in 10 minutes. In the 2023 Spring Festival Gala, Qin Lan took over from Zhang Xiaofei as the queen of sales, and Qin Lan's sweater was sold out in 12 minutes.

After the live broadcast, the search popularity on Taobao for the same red dress as Zhao Liying and the same women's shoes as Yang Zi remained high. Many clothing brands took advantage of this wave of huge wealth and achieved "easy wins" at the beginning of the year.

After a year of rapid development in the e-commerce field, Xiaohongshu naturally did not want to miss this opportunity. On the evening of January 28, Xiaohongshu's hot searches began to warm up for the product, and many bloggers spontaneously dug out the same items that the stars wore during the rehearsal, and many users asked for links in the comment section.

Screenshot of Xiaohongshu's hot search list

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.

Second, it’s not that the Spring Festival Gala is not available, but that it is more cost-effective behind the scenes

The IP marketing of the Spring Festival Gala is mainly divided into two categories: advertising marketing and copyright distribution. Xing Yiming, an advertising agent of CCTV, revealed that as of now, partners have been confirmed for major projects such as exclusive interaction with the Dragon Year Spring Festival Gala, special Spring Festival Gala, notes and live broadcast sharing platform, and vertical screen viewing of the Spring Festival Gala. Without CCTV's broadcast authorization, no platform can broadcast the Spring Festival Gala, otherwise it will face huge fines.

Xing Yiming told Hedgehog Commune:

"In recent years, the cost of sponsoring the Spring Festival Gala has been rising year by year. A few years ago, there were players who sponsored the Spring Festival Gala in the tens of millions, but now it costs at least hundreds of millions of yuan. Not only is it getting more and more expensive, it is also getting more and more mysterious. In the past, there would be public bidding, but in recent years, it has been purchased individually."

How to make the money worth spending has become the top priority for many platforms during the Spring Festival.

To this end, some Spring Festival Gala sponsors will find sponsors for themselves again to spread the costs in a "nesting doll" manner, while some platforms will adopt a cooperative approach to seek win-win results.

For example, in 2023, Video Account obtained the vertical screen broadcasting rights for the Spring Festival Gala and jointly promoted products with Yili. During the live broadcast, Amul and Jindian launched product links to facilitate viewers to place orders while watching the live broadcast.

As we all know, in the past few years, the benefits brought by the Spring Festival Gala are more reflected in new users and daily active users. Short-term traffic peaks cannot solve long-term retention problems.

Therefore, after experiencing the red envelope war where people spent money lavishly, the Internet platforms have become more rational and calm.

It is particularly obvious that there is no exclusive sponsor since last year.

Instead, the rights and interests of the Spring Festival Gala are divided into multiple parts, and each part chooses the optimal solution that fits the platform, so as to share the dividends of the Spring Festival Gala in a way that reduces costs and increases efficiency.

Take Xiaohongshu as an example. Judging from the existing public information, the way it chooses to participate is more "behind the scenes", avoiding direct competition with giants, and also highlighting its advantages in bringing goods in the fields of clothing, beauty and so on.

More importantly, they can take advantage of their geographical location to directly invite celebrities participating in the Spring Festival Gala to interact and direct the "starlight" of the Spring Festival Gala to their own live broadcast room.

In addition to the cooperation fees, there is no extra red envelope expenditure. It has to be admitted that this is a very cost-effective "conspicuous package" strategy.

Comparing the user size of Weibo and Xiaohongshu and the degree of attention paid to the Spring Festival Gala, Weibo's official Spring Festival Gala account has accumulated more than 13 million fans over the years, while Xiaohongshu's official Spring Festival Gala account was only opened on January 19 and currently has only 103,000 fans, and "Everyone's Spring Festival Gala" has only received reservations of more than 200,000 people.

Image source: Xiaohongshu (left) Weibo (right)

In terms of the time gap, such a comparison may be a little unfair to Xiaohongshu, but following and complaining about the Spring Festival Gala on Weibo is obviously more in line with users' content consumption habits.

Therefore, Xiaohongshu's choice is more cautious and rational. It does not intend to rely on its "cash power" to compete for the top position on New Year's Eve, nor does it pin its hopes on the Spring Festival Gala to broaden the age range of users and penetrate the sinking market.

When the Spring Festival Gala officially announced its cooperation with Xiaohongshu, Xie Qian asked her grandfather who was watching TV if he knew about Xiaohongshu. She said: "At that time, my grandfather immediately took out a collection of leaders' quotations from under the table."

This may also indirectly reflect that Xiaohongshu's road to breaking out of its circle and sinking is long and difficult, and it cannot be rushed.

3. Spring Festival Gala, the "mysterious power" of the East

Although various Internet platforms are looking for smarter and more profitable ways to sponsor the Spring Festival Gala, as an audience, what we are even more reluctant to see is that the New Year's Eve carnival also takes on the colors of an e-commerce shopping festival.

In 2015, Internet companies began to appear on the Spring Festival Gala stage. Prior to this, the Spring Festival Gala did not have any exclusive interactive partners. At that time, the wine companies, pharmaceutical companies, and home appliance industries were competing for the right to tell the time at midnight and the prime advertising time before the Spring Festival Gala began.

The first to compete for the right to interact with the Spring Festival Gala were payment tool apps - WeChat and Alipay. Of course, this is also because red envelopes are more compatible with the Spring Festival.

Once upon a time, WeChat used the Spring Festival Gala to reach the number of users that Alipay had in eight years in just two years, which was called the "Pearl Harbor attack" by Jack Ma. In 2016, Alipay launched a counterattack and creatively launched the "Collect Five Blessings" game, making the collection of five blessings a successful new year custom in the Internet era.

Since then, the then Internet giants BAT have all appeared on the Spring Festival Gala stage, and the red envelope interaction of the 2020 Spring Festival Gala has also become a key battle for Kuaishou to attract new users and increase daily active users.

Although it is unknown what the user retention and actual revenue will be after spending huge amounts of money and becoming the top traffic overnight, the Spring Festival Gala has become an antidote to alleviating the traffic and growth anxieties of large companies.

Xing Yiming said: "Spending a lot of money on the Spring Festival Gala has always brought hundreds of millions of traffic exposures, and the server investment on the day of the Spring Festival Gala is roughly equal to the server cost of a year."

Corresponding to this is a widely circulated story. In 2017, Luo Zhenyu's team wanted to promote the "Get" APP on the Spring Festival Gala, but it did not meet the threshold for Internet product investment for the Spring Festival Gala. The reason is that if the daily active users are not over 100 million, once the Spring Festival Gala starts, the platform's server may not be able to handle this wave of "overwhelming traffic."

Therefore, for the platform, cooperation with the Spring Festival Gala is also a comprehensive challenge, and each department must carry out stress testing and contingency planning.

The Spring Festival Gala combines the three magic weapons of traffic in one - stars, hot topics and special nodes. Not only that, its own cultural attributes also determine that its commercial value is not just traffic and growth, but also the value of brand communication and credibility.

Because of this, the Spring Festival Gala, this mysterious force from the East, is regarded by all kinds of companies as a must-win high ground for becoming famous, and the 40-year history of Spring Festival Gala sponsors has become a microcosm of the ups and downs of the business world and the changes of the times.

(At the request of the interviewees, Xie Qian and Xing Yiming are pseudonyms)

Author: Yi Tong; Editor: Chen Meixi

Source: Hedgehog Commune (ID: ciweigongshe), observation and research on the Internet content industry.