Douyin Double Eleven, anchors "share" Li Jiaqi

It’s the Double Eleven Festival on Douyin again. How will the anchors show off their skills this time? Let’s take a look~

On the fifteenth Double Eleven, Li Jiaqi also became "anxious".

In this Double Eleven when the whole network is competing for low prices, even though he had just experienced the controversy of "bottom price agreement" and "suspected choose one of two", Li Jiaqi had to publicly respond to the low-price battle in the live broadcast room.

Li Jiaqi said: Price is an important factor, but not the only factor. What is important is whether useful content can be output for users.

But compared with the promotion of Li Jiaqi’s official account and live broadcast room during the entire Double Eleven period, it is somewhat ironic.

Since the "domestic brands are difficult" incident, Li Jiaqi has rarely accepted exclusive interviews except for the official responses in the live broadcast room and program recordings. Even when the Hua Xizi incident was at the height of the controversy, Li Jiaqi did not say a word.

Making this statement at this time may not only be to show presence, but also more like an explanation for the failure of sticking to the "lowest price on the entire network".

On October 24, the data of Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room was released. The GMV on the first day after the broadcast was 9.5 billion yuan, a decrease of nearly 56% compared with 21.5 billion yuan last year. It was lower than 10.653 billion yuan in 2021, becoming the lowest level in the past three years.

The truth behind the shrinking GMV is often hidden in the details of the product.

According to calculations by many online bloggers, this year's Li Jiaqi Double 11 mechanism is more expensive than 618 and last year's Double 11. Even users who deeply participated in this year's Double 11 will find that Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room is no longer the only choice for many categories. The mechanism of some mid-level anchors on Douyin is also close to Li Jiaqi's low price.

An employee close to the brand revealed: "In order to ensure the lowest price in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, the mechanism for other anchors is often to make changes in gifts, but if you put aside the gifts, the prices are actually the same."

To give a few examples, the price of Collagen Sticks in the Douyin live broadcast room of "DaDa" is 864 yuan for 120 pieces, an average of 7.2 yuan per piece. The price in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room is 699 yuan for 100 pieces, an average of 6.9 yuan per piece, only 3 cents difference. Winona, who has always been on good terms with Li Jiaqi, is 299 yuan for 36 pieces in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, and 329 yuan for 36 pieces in the live broadcast room of Douyin big anchor "Duoyu and Maomaojie", with a free trial pack of the same model, and a full refund can be made if you are not satisfied after the trial.

In comparison, Li Jiaqi does not have an absolute price advantage.

It is visible to the naked eye that Douyin anchors are "sharing" Li Jiaqi.

1. The anchor "plays tricks"

“This is the first time that a fashion blogger I follow is selling products, but Fumei’s mechanism is worse than many big Taobao anchors. Although the gifts are not as good as Li Jiaqi’s, they are almost the same.” Fashion expert Malaysia stockpiles goods in large quantities every year on Singles’ Day. Last year, she was still shopping on Taobao, but this year she has shifted her main shopping platform to Douyin.

The fashion blogger she mentioned is "Chen Yili" who has 15.62 million fans on Douyin. In her live broadcast room, two boxes of Kefumei collagen patches are sold for 276 yuan, and three pieces of the same product, two boxes of large water masks and two bottles of Tonton Cream are given away; and in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, two boxes of Kefumei collagen patches are sold for 276 yuan, and eight pieces of the same product and two boxes of large water masks are given away. In comparison, the value of the gifts is similar. Compared with the live broadcast room of the same type of Taobao anchor "Xianggu Lai Le", two boxes of collagen patches are sold for 276 yuan, and the gifts are only two pieces of water masks.
What is regrettable is that this is Chen Yili’s first time participating in Double Eleven, and the brand does not even have past Double Eleven performance to refer to, but has offered a massive discount mechanism.

So the question is, in the fifth year of the popularity of live e-commerce, Li Jiaqi has already stood at the top of the value chain. How did the mid-level anchors of Douyin get such high bargaining power during this year's Double Eleven?

On the one hand, due to the characteristics of Douyin’s own traffic field and recommendation mechanism, some mid-level anchors have a higher cost-effectiveness and can even achieve the effect of “a little effort to achieve a great result”.

According to the third-party data platform Chan Mofang, during this year's Double Eleven, there were a large number of cases where "the number of fans and sales were not completely linked" on Douyin. Users with fewer fans could still make the list and even rush to the top 1.

A former operator of Zhou Yangqing's live broadcast room told "Zi Quadrant": "The content broadcast in the live broadcast room is actually the same. 30% of the content is based on watching and 70% of the content is based on investment. Especially during the big promotion period, investment plays a greater role in determining success or failure."

On the other hand, Douyin has the most fancy marketing methods compared to other live e-commerce platforms.

An e-commerce practitioner told "Self-Quadrant": "Breaking prices", "Peak moments" and "Challenging Guinness" are the marketing slogans used by Douyin's mid-level anchors on Double Eleven this year. Some live broadcast rooms "challenge the lowest price in Xinjiang" and some live broadcast rooms "challenge the floor price in Douyin". The purpose is the same: to attract users' attention and create gimmicks.

Challenging the Guinness record has become a very representative "marketing landscape" on Douyin.

"This time, I will bring the Collagen Bar to challenge the Guinness World Record for the second-largest sales volume!" Under the big words "Challenge the Guinness World Record for Sales Volume" in the background of the live broadcast room, the delicate girl said a "domineering" slogan. She claimed that during the Double Eleven shopping festival this year, she will bring the two brands, Proya and Collagen, to challenge the Guinness World Record in the live broadcast room, and has invited the Guinness certification officer to enter the live broadcast room for real-time monitoring and assessment.

The referees, contestants, spectators and world records were all in place, and the lively atmosphere seemed to have arrived at the competition site.

This Douyin anchor, Dada, who frequently breaks world records, has a total of 10.809w Douyin fans and an average GMV of around 10 million to 25 million yuan. Compared with Xiao Yangge, who has 121 million fans and the Guangdong couple, who has 59.99 million fans, he can only be regarded as a mid-level anchor on Douyin.

"Guinness has nothing to do with me. The main thing is that it is cheaper to set up a live broadcast room after comparing prices." Malaysia said.

For this reason, we simply do some calculations. Taking the Collagen Stick as an example, excluding the gifts, the price of 120 sticks in the DaDa live broadcast room is 864 yuan, 7.2 yuan per stick, the price of 89 sticks in the Collagen Stick official Douyin live broadcast room is 738 yuan, 8.3 yuan per stick, and the price of 53 sticks in the Oriental Selection Douyin live broadcast room is 399 yuan, 7.5 yuan per stick. This price is indeed the "most cost-effective" in Douyin, even close to the price of 7 yuan per stick by Li Jiaqi.

In Xiao Yangge's live broadcast room, historic moments of "breaking the Guinness World Record" appear from time to time. In February this year, Xiao Yangge launched the challenge of "breaking 1 billion likes in the live broadcast room", and the big and small Yangge in front of the screen liked so many times that their hands cramped; in July, Xiao Yangge promoted movie tickets, and 150,000 tickets were sold out in 20 seconds. In order to celebrate, Xiao Yangge took out the so-called "welfare products" to give out to everyone.

The success of the challenge + the distribution of benefits are like a "combo", which quickly harvests the users' wallets.

Facts have proved that low price + marketing, although the routine is old, it does work. According to Chanmama data, on October 29, DaDa squeezed into the top ten of the expert sales list, even surpassing the "Make Friends Live Room".

But no one can say how long this routine can last.

2. Brand "casts a wide net"

Of course, the reason why the mid-level anchors can benefit from this is because the key lies in the tug-of-war between the big anchors and the brands.

Before Double 11, big anchors frequently launched their campaigns: First, Jingdong’s purchasing and sales circle called out Li Jiaqi, Li Jiaqi was accused of “choosing one of two” and “signing a reserve price agreement”, and Xiao Yangge’s live broadcast room was warned for vulgarly promoting YSL products. Later, Wang Hai, a counterfeiter, said that Li Jiaqi and Xiao Yangge sold fake Hetian jade.

Amid such turmoil, Brother Yang also began to reduce the number of live broadcasts. From the start of Douyin's Double Eleven on October 23 to the present, he has only broadcast two live shows. Other anchors participating in the Double Eleven event broadcast almost every day.

The era of big anchors bringing traffic to control the supply chain is over, and brands also know that there is no permanent solution. According to an e-commerce practitioner, "Brands who enter the live broadcast room of big anchors are expected to lose money by default. The pit fee ranges from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of thousands. This is not only the cost of bringing goods, but also the purchase of the big anchor's portrait rights, which is equivalent to the logic of endorsement, relying on subsequent live broadcast slices to bring goods."

But now that the big anchors are unreliable, brands will naturally cultivate more alternatives and find other ways out.

As for the platform, with the rapid growth of Douyin e-commerce, brands will naturally not miss this "tailwind boat". According to third-party data platforms such as Xingtu, Dianshubao, and Yongtai Securities, the GMV of Douyin live e-commerce will exceed one trillion in 2022 and is expected to double again in 2023.

At the same time, Douyin is also working hard to improve the anchor ecosystem. From June last year to this year, the Douyin platform has planned many programs to cultivate anchors. Last year, it launched the new anchor discovery column "Anchors Please Take Your Place", and this year, it launched "Nice to Meet You" in conjunction with a number of celebrity anchors. A person close to Douyin told us: "Douyin regularly discovers some anchors with a target. For example, Che Che, who was originally a director, was strongly invited by the Douyin operation team to live broadcast and sell goods."

Judging from the results, the types of anchors in Douyin are currently the most diverse. There are celebrities represented by Jia Nailiang, Huang Shengyi, and Calvin Chen, as well as full-time anchors selling goods under MCN companies such as Guangdong Couple and Brother Yang (Three Sheep), and there are also institutions such as Oriental Selection and Make Friends. They are also supporting some local KOCs to become new stars. For brands, a variety of choices are also quite cost-effective.

Data from a third-party observation platform show that most of the Douyin anchors with tens of millions of fans have no pit fee or charge around 50,000 yuan, and the commission ratio ranges from 15% to 25%. More importantly, through the creation of short videos + personal settings, most KOCs have a relatively fixed fan base. This leads to a situation where even if the volume of goods brought in is not as good as that of the top anchors, the fan loyalty is high and the repurchase rate will naturally be high.

This also alleviates the high return rate problem that Douyin e-commerce has been criticized for. Data shows that the return rate of Douyin e-commerce is as high as 40%, the highest among all e-commerce platforms, but the return rate of expert live broadcast rooms can be controlled at around 15%-20%, which greatly reduces the return rate of transactions based on interest e-commerce.

"Zi Quadrant" asked several users who frequently shop on Douyin, and all of them said that they "recognize the person rather than the product". "I have problematic skin, and after following the skincare blogger "Hua Mei" to regulate it, I often buy whatever he recommends. Sometimes I have never even heard of the brand name, but I have hardly made any mistakes." Malaysia said.

Of course, in addition to live streaming e-commerce, brands are also casting a wider net.

After the "Huaxizi incident" this year, Winona was questioned by investors because it was too closely tied to Li Jiaqi. A person claiming to be an internal employee of Winona once told "Zi Quadrant": "Winona originally had a department dedicated to connecting with Li Jiaqi, but now it has been merged into the live e-commerce department."

Regardless of whether the source of the information is true or not, it is obvious that Winona began to appear in large quantities on WeChat business channels. The WeChat merchant told us: "Previously, Winona's price was always very high and it was not selling well, but this time the price is much lower than the official flagship, there is room for profit, and they are all star products."

Another downstream person in Winona's supply chain said: "Starting from September every year, Winona will prepare a large amount of goods for Double Eleven, giving priority to Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room. This year's goods have been prepared, but they are worried that Li Jiaqi will not be able to sell so much. The flow of goods into WeChat merchants may be channel point testing."

In fact, with the successive "demotions" of several big anchors, Li Jiaqi seemed to have no rivals for a long time, and brands were scrambling to "get in", but in fact, no one had an easy time during this period. Changes in the macro situation, user preferences, and brand tug-of-war have all brought one storm after another.

Without the "number one sister", the "number one brother" also felt very uncomfortable.

Li Jiaqi needs new opponents, brands need new ways out, and live streaming platforms need to cultivate their backbone forces. These three forces intertwine to form this year's Double Eleven.

Author: Cheng Xin WeChat public account: Self-quadrant