From social shaking to subject three, it’s hard for people to become famous

Internet memes are constantly being updated, such as the recently popular "Subject Three" dance. However, from social shaking to "Subject Three" dance, it is not difficult to find the phenomenon that "the meme is popular but the person is not". In this context, businesses may need to think about how to find their own universal marketing routine.

The hips sway left and right, and the hands swing in relay, accompanied by the ancient style BGM "You are a passer-by in the mountains and rivers, but you always sigh for parting", this is the most popular dance nowadays, "Subject Three".

This old internet meme, whose origin is now difficult to trace, has suddenly gained new life recently. Offline, people are chasing after the guy who skipped the "subject three" test and crowded Haidilao and China Gold stores; online, any internet celebrity who is willing to take advantage of it can get the gift of traffic.

The entry of Haidilao is a key step in promoting its entry from online subculture into the mainstream circle. Behind this is the fact that the "social shake" which is quite similar to Subject 3 has been popular and developed on the Chinese Internet for ten years.

However, from social shaking to Subject Three, behind the super popular and popular memes, it seems that the wealth and prosperity have not been bestowed on anyone alone. Even the old internet celebrity "Lord of Shadows" who became popular again because of jumping to Subject Three only gained more than 100,000 fans among the tens of billions of views.

Offline, how much benefit can brand stores that have made the most of content marketing gain from this wave?

1. From Guangxi Subject 3 to "Subject 3"

On the Internet, there are many legends about the origin of Subject 3, and there are also people who pretend to be the founder for traffic. However, adding the word "Guangxi" in front of "Subject 3" and calling it "Guangxi Subject 3" is indeed a recognized statement.

The origin of this saying is that every Guangxi person will go through three tests in his life: singing folk songs, eating rice noodles, and dancing a smooth dance. This smooth dance is generally believed to be originally created by Guangxi people. After many changes on the Internet, it has become the current "Subject Three".

From the few video materials available on the Internet, it can be seen that "Subject Three" has a history of at least 20 years, and is closely related to the flexible breakdance that was popular in China in the 1980s. Judging from the fact that Subject Three has few movements in the lower body and relies only on the upper body for fancy moves, it is also quite similar to the "Shehui Yao", a special dance with an equally long history.

However, unlike social dance or break dance, the former two are all-encompassing "big categories", and social dance has even spawned many categories such as "elegant shake", "suspense shake" and "everything can be shake". However, the subject three that the audience is more familiar with now is a relatively fixed "pattern" from dance moves to background music and even video content.

First of all, the soundtrack of Subject 3 is an ancient style song "A Smile in the Rivers and Lakes" created by the ancient style creator "Wenren Tingshu" and released in 2020. After the DJ version was adapted, the gears of fate turned quietly.

Before the release of "One Smile, One World DJ Version", "Subject Three" had been well-known on the Internet for a long time, but it was far from being as popular as it is today. It was not until February 2023 that "Shen Bu Zai Handan", one of the masters who made important contributions to the development of "Subject Three", first used "One Smile, One World DJ Version" as the soundtrack for his video content.

Soon after, this expert who specializes in "Subject Three" discovered that among the many videos with the soundtrack of "A Smile in the Rivers and Lakes DJ Version", the video with better traffic, and began to repeatedly reproduce the traffic password, so the combination of the two became a pattern.

It can be said that the original Silky Dance Subject Three was only one song away from becoming a national hit, "A Smile in the Jianghu", and the traffic-chasing "God is not in Handan" discovered this traffic code through its own continuous attempts.

The contribution of "God is not in Handan" to the third subject is not limited to this. He ingeniously combined the third subject with the "social phobia challenge", that is, dancing in the crowd, making the social phobia sweat and making people tremble with fear. This special content form has been borrowed by many followers and has become another well-known feature of the third subject, and derived from it, such as "directing traffic".

Through continuous exploration of Subject Three, Shen Bu Zai Handan has become an Internet celebrity with nearly one million fans. There are also those who imitate Shen Bu Zai Handan, such as "Shen Bu Zai Taiwan" and even "Shen Bu Zai New Zealand", who have gained tens of thousands of fans.

Of course, up to this point, it is just another carnival popular on the Internet or even only on short video platforms. Before "Subject Three" becomes a national hit, someone needs to continue to add fuel to the fire.

Second, subject 3 is popular again, and everyone has a chance

Haidilao’s entry into the market is a key step in making Subject 3 a national hit.

According to Baidu Index, before November 2023, the search index of "Subject 3" remained below 3,000 all year round. Until the end of November, the search index of Subject 3 soared all the way, and now the data is about 40,000, which is about 10 times that of the previous one. The popularity of Subject 3 dance has even "polluted" the information source of Subject 3 of the driver's license test in disguise. Someone complained: "Please stop posting, I can't find the Subject 3 tutorial."

At the end of November, two Douyin influencers posted a video of themselves performing "Subject Three" in a Haidilao restaurant while wearing waiter's clothes, and received nearly 3 million likes for it.

This Internet carnival began to spread offline. Soon, the Internet meme "It's not that male models can't afford it, but Haidilao is more cost-effective" became popular, and it became a reality for Haidilao to make waiters perform "Subject 3". Even diners who were keen to follow the trend turned Haidilao stores that had Subject 3 performances into the most queuing restaurants that were hard to get a table.

It is impossible to verify whether the incident was an unintentional act or a deliberate hype by Haidilao. But what can be confirmed is that after the Internet fermented, Haidilao did corresponding marketing. On the one hand, it began to spread on the Internet that waiters who could skip the third subject would earn more than 12,000 yuan a month. On the other hand, Haidilao also publicly gave cash rewards to waiters who performed the third subject in the store, which was a happy ending for everyone.

Obviously, while content marketing has become the most popular Internet marketing concept, content marketing for local life businesses is also effective. Stores that seem to only serve a fixed flow of customers have a group of "natural traffic" that they can get as long as they open their doors, but they also need to "invest traffic" to exchange for customers.

This offline traffic method is to attract user groups by performing content in exchange for profits. Before the third subject, this method has been used countless times by countless offline stores in China. Haidilao's borrowing of the third subject only provides a more clever and easier to copy content format for the majority of brand merchants.

The first to learn was China Gold, located in Wuhan Yellow Crane Tower, which invited the "first generation of Yoko" Shadow Master, who once became popular with his silky dancing skills, to perform "Subject Three", which also successfully attracted attention. In the video of the audience, other brand gold shops next to China Gold were inviting "clowns" to perform traditional methods such as folding balloons to attract customers, which seemed particularly lonely.

Although it is difficult to calculate how much specific benefits the Subject 3 marketing of China Gold and Haidilao can bring to their offline stores, one thing is clear: the content marketing of a single store will ultimately not only affect the single store, but also increase the influence of the entire brand.

On the Internet, this is the online brand marketing empowering the offline. And offline, this is the marketing of a single store empowering the entire brand. In this carnival, the brands that leveraged the marketing gained popularity, the Internet celebrities gained traffic, and the spectators gained happiness. Everyone was happy.

3. Leverage and linkage, the key is persistence

"Shen Bu Zai Handan", who became popular by skipping the third subject, went from 0 fans to millions by doing two things. One was to find a fixed video template that was popular with the audience, and the other was to keep shooting this routine.

In fact, what many short video masters do are almost all copies of "The God is Not in Handan". However, some are refined and some are rough, but in essence, they all find a unique track and persevere. Short videos are not afraid of "repeating" themselves.

Of course, the tracks themselves vary in size, and their monetization capabilities vary in strength.

Just taking Subject 3 as an example, it may not be a big track. Roughly speaking, it may be the "social shake" subcategory under the "dance" category, and then subdivided into "Subject 3". This also means that in this wave of Subject 3 explosion, a large number of Subject 3 creators are not actually vertical creators, but mostly people from various circles who are trying to take advantage of the popularity, including celebrities who are working hard to operate Douyin, etc.

The small size of the subject three track is also reflected in the number of Douyin fans of the top Internet celebrities. "Shen Bu Zai Handan" has less than one million fans, "Xu Mou", who invented the sliding step, has less than 300,000 fans, and the once popular Shadow Master has become popular again, but his fans increased by 150,000 in just one month, and now his fans are less than 600,000.

In addition, the style positioning of Subject 3 is also "low". For the catering brand Haidilao, using the popularity of "Subject 3" for marketing can help it continue to establish a brand image that is friendly and service-oriented. But for the creators themselves, only skipping "Subject 3" means that their style is not high. If the style is not high, it will be difficult to get high-end brands, the customer unit price will be low, and the commercial conversion will be relatively poor. The income of such a popular talent may be limited to the growth advertising of e-commerce platforms and the income from live PK, etc.

As for whether the world dance champion's performance of Subject Three can change the public's inherent impression of "Subject Three" is another matter.

Brands want to use this to conduct offline marketing, but they should not be blind. First of all, we should know that China Gold and Haidilao are national chain brands with offline stores everywhere. As long as users want to join in the fun, they can contribute to the popularity of the brand. However, for brands with a limited number of stores, low consumption frequency or far from the public, whether this kind of marketing is useful remains to be considered.

In addition, it should be noted that Haidilao's marketing by leveraging momentum is not something that can be achieved overnight. Since its establishment, Haidilao has been good at creating topics, and has therefore established an image of "loving to make things happen" in the eyes of customers. Now it is not difficult to create marketing events by leveraging the popularity itself. However, for more inexperienced brands or brands that do not intend to cultivate marketing for a long time, the case of Subject 3 is not a suitable example to learn from.

Of course, compared with traditional methods that require a lot of effort and investment, such as hiring a clown to pop balloons at the store door, hiring a magician to perform magic, or inviting a dance troupe to perform songs and dances, "Subject Three" is already a cost-effective choice.

However, the popularity of Subject 3 will eventually pass, and local life businesses still need to find their own universal routines like short video experts.

Author: Chen Shoucheng; Editor: Director

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