The beauty track has lost its top star, can the temptation of beauty still work?

The eyes of users are changing rapidly. Whether it is a beauty expert or beauty marketing, if you want to stand out in this era, you must pay attention to boundaries and avoid homogenization.

In September 2021, the "Pure Desire Ceiling" @井川里郁 became an overnight sensation with a dance that was both pure and passionate, achieving a brilliant record of gaining 821W followers in a single month, leaving a significant mark in the development of short videos.

Looking back, it is not uncommon for people with good looks to create miracles in increasing their following.

From the early @代古拉K, @溫婉 to @刘思瑶nice, @刀小刀sama, and then to @一栗小莎子, @iiiis孙音宁...we have witnessed all kinds of beauty experts making the big leap from 0 to 1 and then to 100 with their outstanding appearance and distinctive style. The beauties' powerful ability to attract attention and fans has been verified time and time again.

But if we look back, we can clearly perceive that in the past one or two years, there have been very few phenomenal beauty celebrities who have become popular at the speed of light, such as @井川里予 and @刘思瑶nice. Moreover, it is difficult to stand out with just a good-looking face and conventional routines such as dancing and cross-dressing . How are the once-popular beauty celebrities doing now? What buffs have the newly emerging beauty celebrities added to themselves? Is the temptation of beauty still effective?

1. The “silent” top-tier celebrities

On February 28, 2020, @刀小刀sama, a beauty celebrity, posted a cool and smooth head-shaking transformation video on TikTok. In the video, she was wearing black-framed glasses and swayed gently to the rhythmic BGM, and then shook her head to the music. In an instant, she transformed from an ordinary girl next door into a mature and beautiful lady. The whole process was done in one go, and the external contrast created in the "smooth" brought a strong visual impact to users.

@刀小刀sama Tik Tok video screenshot

This "hair-shaking and cross-dressing" video not only received 675.1W likes, but also had nearly 200 million views, becoming the most popular creator content on Douyin at the time, except for current affairs and celebrity accounts.

After that, Dao Xiaodao produced dozens of videos with millions of likes. In just half a year, his number of fans increased to over 10 million, and he successfully became one of the top influencers at that time.

Also in 2020, another top-tier celebrity @刘思瑶nice also rose overnight. In March 2020, Liu Siyao quickly became popular with a funny and cute "Octopus Brother Lip Sync" video. Afterwards, with a series of lip syncing and cross-dressing videos, the account ushered in a period of rapid fan growth, and even gained a million fans in one day.

@刘思瑶nice Tik Tok video screenshot

"Three years ago, it was the era of Liu Siyao and Dao Xiaodao." Nowadays, in the comment section of every video of Liu Siyao and Dao Xiaodao, you can always see such a highly praised comment, which speaks for itself how glorious the two had been. Unfortunately, such a glorious moment did not last too long.

With their outstanding looks, graceful figures and unique style, it seems "easy" for beauty experts to quickly join the ranks of tens of millions of internet celebrities, but at the same time, they are subject to more stringent scrutiny.

Soon after becoming famous, Liu Siyao and Dao Xiaodao were embroiled in different controversies, some of which were caused by the discrepancy between their appearance in the camera and reality, and some of which were caused by inappropriate words and deeds. While being embroiled in controversy, the homogeneity of content and the emergence of endless new stars made them gradually " quiet " after a short period of rapid rise.

According to Kass, the fan growth of Liu Siyao and Dao Xiaodao has slowed down significantly since 2021, and the video data performance has also declined significantly. In the past 90 days, both of them have lost fans to varying degrees, especially @刀小刀sama, which has lost 259,000 fans in 90 days.

Screenshot of @刀小刀sama's TikTok homepage

The same situation also occurred to other people with good looks.

In April 2021, @一栗小莎子, who has a pure face and a good figure, danced gracefully in a tight blue dress, attracting countless netizens to fall in love with her at first sight. In just three months, her number of fans increased to nearly 7 million.

Although she also gained a lot of attention in a short period of time, @一栗小莎子 has been plagued by comments about being a "mother of two children" since she became famous. Even though she has clarified it many times, similar comments are still common under her videos. When she participated in offline activities after becoming famous, she was also criticized by harsh fans for her appearance in person and in the video.

Soon after becoming popular, many netizens questioned the pure desire style of Igawa Ryo as borderline and soft pornography. Coupled with the pressure of public opinion caused by other events, Igawa Ryo has been silent for a long time. In July this year, Igawa Ryo posted a group of bold home photos on the social platform, which instantly caused an uproar. The clothing liberals support her freedom of clothing, but there are also quite a few users who directly point out that she is "borderline" and "vulgar". In the past 90 days, Igawa Ryo, who changed her name to @痱子苦泣泣, has also lost 173,000 fans.

@藱子泣泣TikTok video screenshot

2. Find a new way out for beauty experts?

With the silence of the top-tier celebrities, the beauty track has also entered a quiet period. In the past year or two, there have been few cases of people with good looks becoming famous overnight, and conventional dancing and cross-dressing no longer seem to work. Most of the accounts that have been able to break through the slump have added more creativity to their accounts, or have targeted more precise groups of people.

On March 13 this year, the account @好端端的猪 posted its first work on Douyin. Then, in April, the account topped the list of followers with 1.123 million followers. The biggest feature of this account is that it combines beautiful women's cross-dressing with pig farming, which seems to be unrelated, to create a different sense of contrast.

Young and beautiful girls dressed in fashionable and gorgeous clothes leisurely shuttle among the pigs, and skillfully do various tasks related to pig farming: feeding pigs, daily disinfection of pig farms, castration of pigs, vaccination, everything. With the sophisticated camera movement, editing, music, composition and card-point cross-dressing effects, pig farming becomes noble and elegant, and the whole picture is full of a strong sense of atmosphere and blockbuster. At the same time, the micro-expressions of the pigs that are captured from time to time not only make the whole picture more vivid and funny, but also make the interaction between people and pigs more interesting.

@好端端的猪TikTok video screenshot

The combination of a pig farm and professional beauties itself breaks the user's conventional perception and creates an extreme sense of contrast. On the other hand, the heroine's decisiveness contrasts sharply with the frightened and helpless expressions of the piglets in the pigpen. The sense of contrast in the video is further enhanced, and the user's interest is also increased accordingly.

@好端端的猪TikTok video screenshot

When the beauty started to find her way without walking, and mastered new skills that surprised people, the sparks that collided were naturally warm . Although it was impossible to reproduce the glorious moments of the previous top-tier appearance, @好端端的猪 did become a phenomenal traffic account at the time with this wonderful combination, and was reported by many media.

It is worth noting that since July this year, @好端端的猪, which has undergone a team change, the quality of its videos has declined significantly, and then the change of the female lead has further caused dissatisfaction among fans. As a result, the account has lost 35,000 followers in the past 30 days.

Another beauty expert, @傻小刘, who has emerged in the Douyin fan growth list since September, has a beautiful appearance, fashionable clothes, and good dancing skills. Before that, her content route was no different from that of most beauty experts: wearing exquisite makeup, various styles of clothing, and dancing to the BGM in front of the camera. Although @傻小刘 also accumulated a group of beauty fans during this period, her overall performance was not impressive.

@傻小刘TikTok video screenshot

The account's turning point came in September this year. Xiao Liu can speak fluent Korean because she studied in South Korea. On September 17, she posted two videos of reading the popular copywriting in Korean. Her beautiful Korean face and pure Korean make her videos full of the atmosphere of Korean dramas. Although users don't understand, they feel it . The number of likes for both videos exceeded 4 million, and Xiao Liu was recognized by more people.

@傻小刘TikTok video screenshot

Since then, she began to often use Korean in her videos to introduce her daily life or read some touching texts with deep emotion. Compared with the previous content model with serious homogeneity, after adding the current content elements, @傻小刘 gradually formed her own differentiated advantages among a group of appearance experts, and the number of fans also increased accordingly.

@一笑倾城, a top star supported by middle-aged and elderly users, is an unavoidable existence in the content ecology of Douyin this year. The core reason why she has gained nearly 20 million fans on Douyin is that she "took a different approach" and tapped into the preferences of middle-aged and elderly users.

The content format of @一笑倾城 is actually very simple, just singing and following some popular songs in front of the camera, but during the singing, she, who already looks sweet, always has her signature sweet smile on her face, looking friendly and down-to-earth, without any sense of distance. In addition, during the live broadcast, the expert also used the personality in the video, gentle, polite, and actively performing talents, which made it hard for middle-aged and elderly fans not to feel at home and be "served" clearly.

@一笑倾城TikTok video screenshot

3. Female beauty “fails”, and male beauty comes in?

On the one hand, the appeal of beautiful women is not as strong as before, while on the other hand, the influence of handsome men seems to be increasing.

"It's not that male models can't afford it, but Haidilao is more cost-effective." Recently, the performance of the third subject in Haidilao's offline stores has become popular all over the country. As long as a customer asks to watch the third subject, the handsome employees in the store will bravely go on stage and perform a set of silky little combos. Various videos related to it have been widely circulated on short videos and received many likes.

So far, the total number of video views on Douyin under topics related to Haidilao's third test has exceeded 3 billion. As Haidilao's customer flow and popularity increased, some male employees with outstanding looks and dancing skills also became popular. Among them, a shop assistant from Dalian, @一只明, gained more than 200,000 followers on his Douyin account in two days, and as of press time, his number of followers has reached 517,000.

Before Haidilao’s third subject, male sex marketing had already become the highlight of 2023.

In March this year, Coconut Tree changed its previous marketing strategy of using beautiful women and began to sell men's beauty, inviting a group of muscular men in vests and shorts to dance passionately in the live broadcast room. This operation of "equally objectifying each gender" not only made Coconut Tree a hot topic and traffic, but also brought a big turnaround in its reputation.

Image source: Coconut Tree Live Studio

Four months later, Hope Water took over the lead from Coco Tree in marketing handsome men. Unlike Coco Tree, which directly invited strong men to appear in the live broadcast room, Hope Water first invited singer Gong Linna to create the brainwashing song "Gong Lin Spicy" for its product Wang Shanzha, and designed a 10-15 second BGM card and easy-to-imitate dance moves in advance. Then, it launched a challenge on Douyin #吃辣就喝王山楂, invited a group of handsome people, and held an exciting cross-dressing competition.

Under this topic, which has been viewed 820 million times, you can see all kinds of handsome men holding Wang Shanzha products and performing a series of cross-dressing shows that make people blush, heartbeat, and dry their mouths. The hot scenes are so addictive that people can't stop watching, and Wang Shanzha's brand awareness has been further enhanced.

Image source: Tik Tok video

Obviously, the temptation of beauty has not failed. But similar to the dilemma faced by beauty experts, while beauty marketing accumulates traffic, it also has the risk of being involved in various controversies. For example, after the initial excitement of Haidilao's third test subject, it has recently begun to be frequently involved in vulgar and noisy negative news.

In Kas's opinion, the card of beauty will never go out of style, but the eyes of users are changing rapidly. Whether it is a beauty expert or beauty marketing, in order to stand out in this era, in addition to adding more buffs to yourself, playing new tricks, and avoiding homogeneity, you must also always be vigilant about reasonable boundaries. Only in this way can the power of beauty be maximized.

Author: Qiu Yao, WeChat public account: Kas Data