Low-end internet celebrities, good looking but hard to make money?

Currently, a group of local Internet celebrities are popular on short video platforms, and they are all doing local business. How did this model come about? Are there any commercial difficulties? The author of this article gives localized and refined suggestions. Let's read it together.

Recently, a group of regional internet celebrities have been sweeping the information flow of TikTok users by "rapping" in their dialects.

At the north end of the map, four hosts from Shanxi are singing "What do people from Jincheng eat in the morning?" over and over again; at the southwest corner of the map, "Dinosaurs against Wolves" is spreading, becoming a must-have BGM for every Douyin influencer who wants to take advantage of the trend. As for "Gansu is not big, but it creates myths" in the northwest corner and "Henan people are all gods" in the Central Plains, they have long been a dialect "rap" craze that was popular in the previous "version."

In addition to rap or shouting, various forms of regional internet celebrities are also emerging. They take regional characteristics as the basic creative direction, or perform jokes in the form of plot numbers, or seriously popularize dialect knowledge or regional culture, or simply create distinctive local content for their hometowns, and thus become distinctive regional internet celebrities in their hometowns.

To some extent, this is an inevitable product after the development of short videos to a certain stage. In 2018, all Douyin users focused their attention on technical flow and garage shake, and gradually everyone can see the content they want to watch on Douyin. While Douyin itself has become a super application that embraces all, it has also labeled users and creators in both directions and matched them respectively.

Region or province is another direction of the tide.

1. When regional influencers become popular

"I don't have K, I don't have K, Bru biu Bru biu, dinosaurs resist wolves, resist wolves, resist, dinosaurs resist wolves, resist wolves." This confusing mixed Chinese and English rap has become a must-have content in the information flow of many Douyin users recently. If you search for "dinosaurs resist wolves" on Douyin, you can find that the video playback volume under this topic has exceeded 1.54 billion times, which shows its popularity.

In fact, this rap was derived from a clip from Sammi Cheng's song "Sha Ke". "Wanna make it" and "for your will" were transliterated as "I didn't K" and "Blue biu". Due to its overly abstract temperament, it was widely circulated on Tik Tok and even extended countless times by more imaginative experts and netizens, turning it into affectionate dialogues or dance costumes.

Dinosaur vs. dragon original video, source: TikTok

The original creator of this video is a Douyin influencer named "Yunnan Quanmei". In April 2023, Quanmei posted this video on her homepage, and since then, her followers have increased from more than 9,000 to 563,700. The collective Internet team building of Yunnan people caused by this video was called "Yunnan is going crazy this season" and "Yunnan people are getting big points" by Douyin users.

The short video myth of Yunnan people began from then on. Another Lisu guy who once set off a wave of imitation on the Internet inadvertently emerged in the memories of netizens. "I am from Yunnan" seemed to ring in their ears; then, one master of live performance after another appeared, first with "Ancestor Chen Chen" and a group of local all-stars, and then with Baozou Qing's Yunnan Rap Queen series of menu names.

Outside Yunnan, regional Internet celebrities in other regions are not to be outdone. In the north, a four-person trip from Jincheng, Shanxi, became popular as early as last year. Today, their slogan "the land and water nurture the people" is still being reproduced without any sign of stopping. Netizens in the comment area are keen to watch and discuss such videos repeatedly, saying "your videos are a sharp knife that I stab at my Shanxi roommates." As for "Gansu is not big, but it creates myths" and "Henan people are all gods", they have long been regional "trends" that were popular in the previous version.

This group of representative regional Internet celebrities have all been favored by traffic recently. According to the new Douyin data, the "Queen of Rap" Baozouqing from Yunnan has gained 410,000 fans in half a year, and 180,000 fans in the past month. "Yunnan Quanmei", who gained 540,000 fans with the song "Dinosaur Anti-Wolf", has gained 150,000 fans in the past month. "Sichuan Duoshi", who mainly creates Sichuan dialect rap, has gained 220,000 fans in half a year, and more than 200,000 fans in the past month. Zhao Feng, who has the highest number of fans among the four hosts, has gained 200,000 fans in half a year, and more than 130,000 fans in the past month.

This level of increase in followers is insignificant compared to the "top streamers" who easily gain millions or tens of millions of followers, but the rise of a large number of small and medium-sized internet celebrities vaguely points out the direction of the tide: the ultimate goal of the Tik Tok algorithm may be to match every type of information with every type of person. Compared with those "super internet celebrities" that everyone is watching, the characteristic internet celebrities in each region are one of the specific ways to present this ultimate goal.

2. Are there any commercialization problems?

Regional influencers are trapped in the limitations of subject matter and often find it difficult to become very large. Although the above creators have recently gained the favor of traffic and algorithms, even 1 million followers is a ceiling that is difficult for regional influencers to break through.

The reason is that, on the one hand, the content related to the region is indeed limited, and the content that creators can dig up is not much. Take "Daodao Fu", a talent whose main subject is Jiangsu, for example. Almost all of his videos are related to "internal fighting in Jiangsu". He keeps revising this old Internet meme over and over again, creating more than 300 videos.

On the other hand, the number of groups that the content refers to is also very limited. In terms of content verticals, region is definitely not a particularly large category, especially when the content is divided by various places, the attention that a single internet celebrity can get is even more limited.

It is for these reasons that an MCN practitioner confessed to Hedgehog Community that he would not sign such Internet celebrities or talents. Mature MCN companies tend to look for vertical Internet celebrities with higher ceilings or more stable commercialization that can be replicated in batches. The regions are too complex, and each place has its own unique cultural attributes, which are not suitable for survival under MCN. In fact, the Internet celebrities mentioned in this article are almost all amateurs, and few institutions have signed talents.

A brand merchant also told Hedgehog Commune that due to the regional existence of these Internet celebrities, they will not advertise to them because they do not have enough fans and it is difficult to bring about corresponding brand promotion effects.

However, does this mean that regional influencers are similar to some vertical categories and also face commercialization difficulties?

In fact, this is not the case. The last time the "Shanxi Four" among the regional Internet celebrities entered the hot news was because of a slightly negative incident: the four used their usual "routine" to create a promotional song for a local cemetery, which was considered by netizens as "advertising the cemetery with a smile." The incident ended with the advertisement being removed and the host's account that posted the work hidden for a period of time.

Four people from Shanxi successfully promoted "Meatball instant noodles with fried eggs"

This not-so-appropriate advertising incident implicitly points to another way for regional influencers to survive. Because their content is very focused on the region, it is very easy to attract local fans, and thus can bring about corresponding regional conversions.

We also analyzed the fan portraits of the above-mentioned internet celebrities. According to Xin Dou data, Zhao Feng (a four-person group from Shanxi) has 18.18% fans from Shanxi and 7.18% from Jincheng; Sichuan Duoshi has 54.95% fans from Sichuan and 33.99% from Chengdu; Baozou Qing has 30.82% fans from Yunnan and 10.72% from Kunming; Daodao Fu has 50.45% fans from Jiangsu; G Sengdong has 36.06% fans from Shanghai, and so on.

But such clear local fans give regional Internet celebrities a good choice when it comes to commercialization: cooperate with regional industries or businesses to provide exposure and conversion services under the traffic economy.

Take Sichuan Duoshi as an example. After his fans increased by 200,000 with the song "I Love Drinking Shuyi", he quickly received advertisements from more than ten local restaurants, including "Dalongyi Hotpot", "Weizhijuemei Frog and Fish", "He Dajiu Chuanchuan" and "Chef Going Down the Mountain Twice-cooked Pork", etc. His popularity among advertisers may be far greater than that of some drama masters or anchors with millions of fans.

Chengdu catering advertisement of Sichuan's winning team, source: screenshot of Douyin

As for other regional anchors, they often receive regional advertising because of their close connection with the local area, such as Baozouqing and "Dali Beer" and "Jiao Tongxue" (a Yunnan liquor brand), Shanxi Four People and Jincheng diamond brand Kimberly, and other advertisers.

3. Localization and refinement

Of course, not all regional influencers can receive regional advertising. Whether they can earn regional income also depends on whether the city where the local influencer is located has a corresponding business foundation. For example, Sichuan Duoshi, whose main fans are gathered in Sichuan and Chengdu, can receive so many local catering advertisements, largely relying on Chengdu's developed catering market.

According to the "2022 Sichuan and Chongqing Catering Industry Data Report", in terms of the number of catering stores, Chongqing and Sichuan have a total of about 700,000 stores, among which Chengdu ranks first in the number of urban catering in the country. In 2021, the national catering industry grew by 18.6% year-on-year, and Sichuan's catering revenue was 334.96 billion yuan, an increase of 34.9%, far exceeding the national average.

The huge number of catering stores and catering brands as well as the market foundation of Chengdu have given local Internet celebrities such as Sichuan Duoshi room to realize their business. If Chengdu is replaced by other cities, Internet celebrities will hardly get corresponding advertising no matter how many times they shout "xx is not big, creating myths" and "xx people are gods". They can only rely on traffic incentives and live broadcast PK to earn some "hard-earned money". What's more, these contents themselves are not very "lively" and the style is relatively low, so it is difficult to win the favor of advertisers.

A Douyin influencer who is based in a small county also told Hedgehog Commune that their content will not be too closely related to small counties, because the county has a small population and almost no characteristic industries, which makes it difficult for them to generate advertising revenue. Although they occasionally cooperate with the government to do some public welfare projects, it is difficult for them to have any connection with the local area. "There are 300,000 people in our county, and I have 6 million fans."

This corresponds to Douyin's local life strategy to some extent: using refined algorithms to label each person, using content as the basis for attracting traffic, matching people and information, and ultimately improving the efficiency of the local life industry, and biting off a piece of meat from it. From this perspective, the influencers who focus on regional characteristics are not much different from the influencers who visited stores everywhere a few months ago. They are all manifestations of Douyin's increasingly refined algorithms.

Back in 2018, internet celebrities with millions of fans were frequently created, and videos with millions of likes also appeared frequently, but at that time, Douyin's daily active users were only in the hundreds of millions, which means that all Douyin users were paying attention to and liking such videos. However, with the development of time and the iteration of Douyin, videos with millions of likes have become less and less, and new super internet celebrities have become less and less common.

The reason behind this is that Douyin is increasingly moving towards a platform with more sophisticated algorithms. Every person in it is tagged with hundreds of tags by sophisticated algorithms, and is therefore matched to corresponding videos, and then becomes one of the contributors to the entire Internet + offline industry.

At this point, whether to promote someone to become a national "Internet celebrity" is not so important. In the traditional video community classification, each hobby has a corresponding label. In Douyin, each label has a group of people. This relies not only on a huge user base, but also on the power of algorithms.

Author: Chen Shoucheng

Source: WeChat public account "Hedgehog Commune"