Another "grandma" celebrity has appeared. How many top "grandmas" are there in short videos?

Grandma x who cooks, Grandma x who makes clothes, Grandma x's daily life... "Grandma" has become one of the most popular accounts on Douyin. If you search for the keyword "grandma" on Douyin, you can see 11 family accounts with more than one million followers, covering the fields of food, comedy, handicrafts, and science. Why do family accounts frequently go viral? Let's take a look at the analysis in this article.

@八零徐老佬 has gained 4.43 million followers in the last 60 days, making her one of the most popular "grandma" bloggers this year.

In the video, Cheng Cheng, the grandson who rarely appears on camera, records the various Northeastern delicacies made by his 80-year-old grandmother and her life in the countryside. Sometimes it is braised pork, and sometimes it is canned peaches made by his grandmother herself. The grandmother is humorous and witty, her language is full of life wisdom, and the food she makes is also ornamental, which made many netizens call her addicted, leaving a message: "I have watched it all the way from the canned peaches to here."

@八零徐老佬 is not the first "grandma" blogger to become popular. In fact, in addition to @八零徐老佬, there are also "grandma" bloggers such as Pan Grandma, Tian Grandma, etc. who have become popular on the Internet. The elderly are being seen by more and more netizens.

Another blogger has become popular with her "grandma" persona. What's so special about @八零徐老佬? Why do family-related accounts get so much traffic?

1. The ordinary and warm family atmosphere is irreplaceable

The representative video of @八零徐老佬’s account is the video of grandma making canned peaches. This video has received 2.14 million likes and 380,000 reposts so far, and has become a "pilot" video for many netizens.

Image source: Tik Tok screenshot

In the video, it starts with grandson Chengcheng eating the canned peaches made by his grandmother last time, and the main plot is his grandmother making canned yellow peaches and pears. The filming content includes everyone going up the mountain to pick pears, his grandmother being on guard against Chengcheng eating pears secretly, the whole process of his grandmother making canned food, and his grandmother and mother sitting together and sighing in unison why Chengcheng is so greedy, "Oh my god! I have to eat another one", etc.

The humorous and lifelike plots in the video attracted most netizens , such as Cheng Cheng's greedy "routine" to his grandmother to kill a goose to eat, and his mother complained that Cheng Cheng was too greedy, and the ducks and geese raised by his grandmother would suffer as soon as he returned home. The grandmother was humorous and sharp, and sometimes said surprising things. For example, Cheng Cheng made a pizza that was too hard, and his mother said to feed it to the pigs. The grandmother said: "You have to soak it before feeding it to the pigs, don't break the pig legs", and "If it's not cooked, then fry it again in your mouth." The grandmother in @八零徐的老佬's video said many such unexpected golden sentences.

Image source: Tik Tok screenshot

The family atmosphere in @八零徐老佬's video is quite harmonious. Grandma will almost always satisfy Chengcheng's desire to eat something. When Chengcheng cooks on a whim, his family will also support him. Many netizens left messages in the comment area, saying that they thought of their own grandmas or their own homes after seeing the video.

In short, @八零徐老佬 uses food as a clue to show the real and lovely characters and the life of farmers, and the ordinary, warm and humorous atmosphere is the biggest feature of @八零徐老佬's videos. Many netizens said that after watching Xu's videos, they no longer watch other grandma videos.

The account @八零徐老佬 started posting videos in January this year. The early videos were mainly daily records of Chengcheng's return to his hometown to visit his grandparents. In May, the account had its first video hit, titled "I didn't tell grandma that I was going back to my hometown", which received 1.81 million views at the time.

Starting from mid-June, the account @八零徐老佬 started making a series of videos on food. The series of videos has a unified cover and a similar beginning, "Let me show you (taste) what my grandma made..." After a period of operation, the number of likes for each video gradually increased from hundreds of thousands to millions.

Image source: Tik Tok screenshot

Grandma Xu's grandson Chengcheng is the operator of the account. He is proficient in traditional Chinese medicine. This year, after returning home and seeing that his grandmother was in poor health, he quit his job in Shanxi with an annual salary of 200,000 yuan and decided to stay at home to take care of the elderly. He also filmed his grandmother cooking and her daily life in his hometown.

Now @八零徐老佬 has gained 6.18 million followers on the Douyin platform. Recently, not only has the account gained followers rapidly, but its influence has also been expanding. Grandma was also invited by CCTV to appear on the "Sunset Red" program.

2. Why are family-related accounts so popular?

In recent years, many videos featuring the character of "grandma" have gone viral.

In addition to the new top-tier grandma @八零徐老佬, there is also @我是田老佬 who has more than 30 million fans and is known as the "national grandma", and @潘老佬 who has 30 million fans. Both of these grandmas had more than 10 million fans as early as 2020.

If you search for the keyword "grandma" on Douyin, you will find 11 family-related accounts with over one million followers. The content of the accounts is mainly food, and there are also vertical categories such as comedy, handicrafts, and science.

The rise of these family-related accounts is mostly due to the content that meets the emotional needs of netizens in terms of family affection. The warm family atmosphere and healthy parent-child relationship, as well as the daily records of life and fireworks, are to some extent a kind of video version of "chicken soup for the soul", comforting the hearts of many young people who have no time to be filial to their parents due to work and regret not being able to fulfill their filial piety to the elderly at home.

The most common comments under @八零徐老佬's videos are "Grandma speaks a lot like my grandma", "Reminded me of my grandma", "Wishing grandma a long life/Wishing all parents a long life", and many netizens also posted photos of their own elders and the delicious food they made, and shared their experiences and daily lives with the elderly at home.

Image source: Tik Tok screenshot

On top of that, most family accounts differentiate themselves from other influencers in the same field in terms of personality and scenes.

Accounts such as @八零徐姑娘啦@凯凯的幸福生活@王大师娘农村家人 and others are all accounts focusing on family, food and agriculture, rural areas and farmers.

In the food track, the personalized personality of "Grandma" + the rural life background have become the key to the differentiation of this type of family-related accounts.

Grandma Kaikai of @凯凯的幸福生活 has created her own personalized persona with the "art" of speaking. She is known as the "pioneer of PUA" and can manipulate her spouse to help her with work with just a few words, which has attracted many netizens to come and learn from her.

@王大师妈妈农村一家人’s videos focus more on family atmosphere and the process of making delicious food, because the video content is similar to @八零徐老佬’s, and the audiences of the two overlap. @潘老佬’s videos expand from the content of handmade intangible cultural heritage to the food track, and the content of the videos is richer.

Image source: Tik Tok screenshot

Next are the accounts of family love + drama and comedy. This type of account requires a higher sense of the Internet from the operator, and young people will appear more often, such as @我是田老佬, @末那大叔, @暴躁小张 and other accounts.

Image source: Tik Tok screenshot

There are also some vertical accounts in other subdivided fields, such as the account combining fashion + mother and baby @Grandma's Craftsmanship, the account combining language and culture + mother and baby @Enen Grandma, and the account combining life + knowledge and popular science @Wu Grandma.

Image source: Tik Tok screenshot

In terms of commercialization model, this type of blogger mainly focuses on advertising placement, and some bloggers have opened product showcases and live streaming to sell goods. However, because the elderly have limited energy, the frequency of live streaming to sell goods is not high, and the goods sold are mostly food and beverage categories that are consistent with the video content.

@八零徐老的老's commercial income mainly comes from advertising placement + netizens' rewards. The placement ads undertaken by the account are mainly daily chemical products, such as KONO, Dr. Ling, etc., as well as some decoration platform and APP ads. Live streaming and product showcases have not yet been opened.

According to the data from Relang, @我是田老佬 conducted 6 live broadcasts within 180 days, with an average broadcast time of 1 hour and 34 minutes. The categories of goods sold were mainly food and beverage, and personal care brands, and the brands that were frequently sold were priced at 10-50 yuan.

@潘老佬 has opened a product display window, with only two products on the shelves, both of which are food brands. The average price is below 50 yuan. The best-selling mushroom package shows that 66,000 packages have been sold so far.

In summary, the commercialization model of this type of bloggers as a whole relies more on advertising placement for monetization, and currently it seems that the potential for commercialization through live streaming is limited.

3. Final Thoughts

In the past two years, many influencers in the family-related field have become popular, mainly because they meet the emotional needs of netizens. This type of account is different from other influencers in terms of language, personality, scenes and overall emotional atmosphere. The traffic support for rural content on the Douyin platform in recent years is also one of the reasons why @八零徐老佬 was able to quickly gain followers.

For the platform, the emergence of accounts related to agriculture, rural areas and farmers, family and food is undoubtedly one of the results of the platform's support for agriculture, rural areas and farmers content. This type of account has added to the richness of the content of the agriculture, rural areas and farmers track and also brought a special emotional experience to netizens. We look forward to more silver-haired celebrities emerging in the future, bringing high-quality and interesting content, and promoting the sustainable development of the family track.

Author: Laisheng, WeChat public account: KOL User Manual (ID: KOL-TOPKLOUT)