Oriental Selection is no longer useful

This article conducts an in-depth analysis of the conflict between Douyin and Oriental Selection, using a large number of specific cases, not only the general rules of platforms and merchants, but also combines the brand attributes of Oriental Selection itself to look at the problem in a multi-dimensional and three-dimensional way. It is highly readable and has a high level of analysis.

Hello everyone, today I’m going to talk about the fight between Oriental Selection and Douyin, otherwise the hot topic will pass if it drags on.

A few days ago, a small account under Dongfang Zhenxuan said that it suddenly received a notice from Douyin, saying that it violated the traffic diversion regulations and asked to stop broadcasting for three days. Later, Dongfang Zhenxuan had no choice but to use its own APP to live broadcast and sell goods, and also announced a discount event.

Oriental Selection has been quite lively on the APP these days. Although there are not many people online, the user interaction is quite good, and there is a lot of cheering. In comparison, Oriental Selection's account on Douyin is a bit disappointing, and it seems a bit slack.

It is said that the Dongfang Selection APP once soared to the top of the APP Store free list, and experienced the taste of being number one. On July 30, with the general rise of Chinese concept stocks, Dongfang Selection’s stock rose by 28.8%. It has been falling since the beginning of this year. I believe that Mr. Yu’s followers must have shed long-lost tears.

According to my observation, New Oriental (Dongfangxuan) is a very popular company. Some partners and former employees basically speak well of it. Mr. Yu's image as a bookish rural entrepreneur is also well received by all parties. He does not look like the kind of person who would do bad things to cheat people. In contrast, a certain company that advocates wolfishness is not so good in this regard.

Perhaps it is Mr. Yu’s great and glorious image that has led some media people to portray Dongfangxuan as a rebel against the power of the platform. This is undoubtedly a narrative technique that conforms to the current repressed and distorted public psychology.

The world has suffered from TikTok for a long time, and finally some people have begun to resist TikTok's oppression, which makes the onlookers excited. Teacher Yu is going to teach the top executives of TikTok a lesson, and let the platform power have a taste of the power of us intellectuals.

I usually reject this kind of narrative because it does not conform to basic business logic.

In my opinion, the real situation is that the honeymoon period between Douyin and Oriental Selection has passed. Douyin decided to unilaterally abandon Oriental Selection and started to find fault everywhere. Fortunately, Oriental Selection was mentally prepared. Although its own APP has little traffic, it will force it to go online even if it cannot.

This is not about Oriental Selection running away, but Douyin wants to let Oriental Selection taste the power of the platform's iron fist.

In the eyes of Douyin, the former sweet girl of Oriental Selection has now become Mrs. Niu. I think Douyin dares to take action against Oriental Selection because it probably thinks that Mr. Yu is no longer of any use to the platform.

It’s still okay to make friends with a sweet girl on Douyin, but maybe Mr. Luo really can’t go the route of good looks, and his ceiling is obvious. In addition, Mr. Luo is really not interested in this and doesn’t want to just earn a few bucks for the rest of his life. Douyin can only reluctantly let go and let Mr. Luo go to change the world.

Of course, Mr. Yu also has big dreams, such as poverty alleviation and education, but even if he has dreams, he still has to make money to support his employees. This forces him to make friends with the platform. Otherwise, it would be a waste of time if the company owes money and then ends up in a "Zhen Huan Zhuan" situation.

Look, when Mr. Luo taught English at New Oriental, he was probably busy telling jokes and still didn't learn the essence of Mr. Yu. If Mr. Luo had followed Mr. Yu well, there would be no Dong Yuhui today. Mr. Luo would be the "No. 1 in Selection", wouldn't that be great?

01

The platform and the merchants seem to be cooperating and win-win, but in fact they have their own ulterior motives. They only pretend to be harmonious when the conflict has not yet erupted, but everyone knows everything behind the scenes. This atmosphere of seeing through but not saying it is the Chinese business philosophy.

Mr. Yu has long known the sinister nature of the platform, and Dongfang Zhenxuan is a listed company after all. Although he is in Cao Ying but his heart is with Han, he still has to warn investors of the risks in the name of conscience. Therefore, Mr. Yu has long said in an article that "the lively business model established based on the external platform is very fragile."

The incident with Dongfangzhenxuan and Douyin reminded me of Simba's call to Kuaishou officials, saying that Kuaishou should see Simba's value and make good use of him. As a result, Simba was constantly attacked by Kuaishou in the following days. I haven't heard from Simba for a long time.

But Simba was really a bit arrogant back then. He was born in the 90s and was a diaper seller in Japan. He never thought that he would become the top internet celebrity after returning to China. The last time I saw such an arrogant person was when Cheng Wei of Didi said "If you want to fight, then fight". Later, Didi was hit by an even bigger iron fist. It can be seen that it is better to be low-key and humble as a person and a company.

Douyin is much more powerful than Kuaishou. At least the power of traffic distribution within the site will never be easily shared with outsiders, no matter how many followers the account has. Similarly, Dongfangzhenxuan is several orders of magnitude smaller than Simba's influence back then, and has not reached the point where it can challenge the platform.

Therefore, Dongfang Zhenxuan’s idea is to use Douyin as long as possible. And Douyin’s idea is to use Dongfang Zhenxuan to create a benchmark case and polish and perfect the back-end link, and then look for a new love.

This kind of thing of abandoning after having sex with a business is very common in the game between platforms and businesses. An example that is constantly brought up is the Taobao brands of the past, which grew up hand in hand with Taobao through thick and thin, but as soon as Taobao became popular, it immediately began to divert traffic to international brands, and a large number of Taobao brands became the tears of the times.

After all, business cannot be about emotions but about interests, and a person who is in love will definitely not be able to build a good brand.

I saw some people analyzing that the reason why Douyin and Dongfangzhenxuan broke up was because Dongfangzhenxuan refused to advertise for Douyin. Mr. Yu once publicly stated that "Dongfangzhenxuan has never bought traffic!", which seems very tough. It was fine in the short term, but after a while, Douyin must have felt that Dongfangzhenxuan was taking free traffic every day, which made them very angry, so they broke up.

All I can say is that it’s too small and the pattern is too narrow.

Douyin has such a large scale of commercialization, how much does it need from your Dongfang Zhenxuan's advertising fee? Dongfang Zhenxuan is not our Kun Kun, how much can it invest in advertising? I don't think it's necessary.

The problem is that, as an e-commerce platform, Douyin e-commerce has a natural "scumbag mentality" towards merchants. The underlying reason behind this is that the key to the long-term development of e-commerce platforms lies not on the demand side, but on the supply side.

In other words, if an e-commerce platform wants to grow, it is useless to just attract new users. The platform must have products that can meet user needs, otherwise users will leave even if they come. The merchant side is more important than the user side, and it is also the key to breaking through.

Douyin naturally has no shortage of traffic, but if there is no abundant supply of goods, then the traffic directed to the e-commerce sector would be equivalent to a waste. Therefore, no matter from which perspective, the focus of Douyin e-commerce operation and expansion is on the merchant side.

This also determines that the importance of Oriental Selection to Douyin will never be too high, and Douyin will always have the motivation to introduce new merchants and new products to provide users with a richer selection of goods, otherwise Douyin e-commerce itself will be abandoned by users. No brand merchant can always be the top brother on the list, no.

So Oriental Selection is destined to only accompany TikTok for a short period of time. Oh, it makes me sad.

02

It is said that Oriental Selection has been very cautious. Although it has some plans for outside the site, it has not done anything particularly blatant in the private domain to generate trends. Mr. Yu also said that "the relationship between Oriental Selection and Douyin is very good and it is a mutually beneficial relationship."

I think all of this is done to avoid annoying Douyin. Historically, in the battle between merchants and platforms, the probability of merchants winning is too small, so Dongfangzhenxuan can't really do anything about Douyin. But the beginning of the story determines the ending. Even if the Douyin ban this time was an "accidental injury", it just exposed the problem that was bound to be exposed sooner or later.

I have actually written about my views on Oriental Selection a long time ago. I think the content-driven style of Oriental Selection is somewhat out of tune with the scene of Douyin. The live broadcast style of Dong Yuhui and others is a bit like a knowledge anchor and a bit like a live broadcaster, but it certainly cannot be simply said that he is an "online shopping guide."

Yesterday, I opened the Dongfangzhenxuan app and watched a live broadcast of Dong Yuhui. He actually talked about trivial matters in his hometown for a long time while selling a cotton tissue at a price of only 36 yuan per unit, with a lot of short pauses of three to five seconds. To be honest, I really don’t have much patience to listen to Dong Yuhui chatting about poetry and distant places. It makes me anxious and even embarrassed sometimes.

The rhythm of live streaming with goods on Oriental Selection is very different from the hawking style of Li Jiaqi and Viya. It has a bit of the temperament of "live streaming prose", which is in line with Mr. Yu's intellectual personality. Although this is a factor in Oriental Selection's attraction of target users, it also lowers the overall traffic conversion efficiency, which is something the platform is not willing to see.

Dongfang Zhenxuan will not change its live streaming style, after all, this is its differentiated advantage, but it is obviously difficult to survive in the ruthless algorithm of the platform by relying on this style of live streaming. It is said that Dong Yuhui once said that if you chat and talk nonsense for a long time in the Douyin live broadcast, you may be deducted points and warned.

Another bad experience of Douyin live streaming is that there are too many banned words in the live broadcast room, which causes the anchor to constantly break down words when introducing product features. For example, when introducing natural ingredients, one cannot just say “natural”, the anchor will say “Tian Mou Ran”, which makes the listeners very annoyed.

For merchants, this ubiquitous banned word mechanism will obviously restrict their hands during the live broadcast, resulting in them not being able to say this or that, which seriously reduces the efficiency of conveying product value.

In fact, these banned word mechanisms are only for preventing gentlemen but not villains. Although Oriental Selection also bypasses sensitive words through certain rhetoric, it is obvious that with its corporate temperament, it is difficult for it to stand out in this live broadcast content review mechanism. Oriental Selection still cherishes its own brand feathers.

The cold TikTok cannot contain the humanistic ideals of Oriental Selection, but its own APP is a good carrier. Dong Yuhui and others should be more relaxed when live-streaming on their own APP. At the same time, Oriental Selection can also have more room to carry out private domain conversion and deepen its categories and supply chain.

But then again, I still believe that the content style of Oriental Selection is only suitable for a small number of users, and in terms of products and supply chain, it does not have much advantages compared to large platforms. Therefore, at least in the 2C field, it is more likely to become a small and beautiful business.

Although it seems to be popular at the moment, the prospects of the Oriental Selection APP are not optimistic, and the greater future of Oriental Selection does not lie in this APP.

03

This friction is not a dispute between the public and private domains, but a matter of how two partners can say goodbye in a decent manner. The public relations responses of both Dongfangzhenxuan and Douyin were decent, but the relationship between the two companies has temporarily stopped here, and both sides understand the situation.

Next, Oriental Selection will not be unreasonably banned by Douyin, and Oriental Selection still has room to bargain with Douyin, but in the short term it will focus on appeasing the emotions of the Douyin platform, and this cannot change the strategic direction of Douyin's gradually narrowing traffic support for Oriental Selection.

The real challenge is how Oriental Selection can build its own diversified channel system, gradually break free from the traffic control of Douyin, and run a business model that truly belongs to it.

In addition to the brand, content lecturers, and agricultural supply chain layout, one of the core advantages of Oriental Selection is Mr. Yu’s reputation as an entrepreneur and his circle of friends in Jingjiu Shopping Mall. Although personal connections and brand reputation may seem empty, for Mr. Yu, who has been reborn from the ashes, they have greatly reduced the trust cost of corporate cooperation, and he can communicate directly with the top leaders of his partners, reducing a lot of back-and-forth consumption.

Therefore, Mr. Yu, who is reliable and has many friends, would not name his company "Make Friends". Only people who seem unreliable and lack friends would name their company "Make Friends". It's the same as showing off wealth in the circle of friends: show off what you lack.

My guess is that Dongfangxuan will actively enter many offline scenarios. Because the online traffic cost is already very high, but offline has a wider space and can form a stronger user stickiness.

The latest move is that Dongfang Zhenxuan has entered the offline cultural tourism industry and started to lead tour groups. The main focus is on a high-quality experience, with tour guides telling everyone about poetry, songs, mountains and rivers, etc., which is more suitable for Dong Yuhui's expertise.

In fact, we can regard this kind of cultural tourism activity as an offline version of 4D live broadcast, or as a mobile version of New Oriental’s cultural knowledge classroom. Cultural tourism itself can also be connected with live e-commerce, agricultural assistance and other fields. In addition, the next time may be a time for cultural tourism to explode, so the cultural tourism business does not seem too outrageous, and it is within the overall business logic of Oriental Selection.

In my opinion, the company Oriental Selection is unlikely to do business in the lower-tier cities. Mr. Yu hopes to do something with a sense of quality. Even the previous New Oriental School was actually targeting high-net-worth family customers.

But at the same time, Oriental Selection will not do anything too high-end. On the one hand, it is because high-end businesses are too high-end and usually cannot be expanded, and it is difficult to support the valuation of listed companies; on the other hand, Mr. Yu himself is a child from a poor family, and his character will not do things that are too detached from the masses.

Therefore, the user group that Oriental Selection targets has always been a relatively middle-class group that focuses on spiritual pursuits. To be honest, this group of people is difficult to serve. I am not very optimistic about the future of Oriental Selection, but I hope that Mr. Yu can succeed, so that the world may become a little better.

Author: Zheng Zhuoran

Source: WeChat public account "Spread Gymnastics (ID: chuanboticao)"