Messi's live broadcast on Taobao, no goods, just ads

Messi appeared as a guest in Li Xuanzhuo's live broadcast room under Yaowang Technology on the 14th. Under such circumstances, all parties are looking forward to obtaining more and newer traffic. In Messi's live broadcast room, there are no products sold, but only advertisements, which is more obvious. Let's take a look at the situation.

On June 15, Messi's Argentina football team will play a friendly match with the Australian team at the Workers' Stadium in Beijing. This is also the first stop of Argentina's 2023 Asian tour.

Before Messi even arrived in Beijing, various traffic sources had already set their sights on him. "300,000 yuan to buy a chance to toast Messi" and "1 million yuan charity sponsorship to promote the brand" were all rumors.

Until June 12, Taobao Live officially announced that Messi will appear as a guest in Li Xuanzhuo's live studio under Yaowang Technology on the 14th. This is also the only event for Messi to interact with fans during his China tour, except for the game.

Obviously, under the current circumstances, almost all parties are looking forward to obtaining more and newer traffic, and this is even more obvious in Messi's live broadcast room.

1. No product, but all advertisements

At around 2:30 p.m. on the 14th, Li Xuanzhuo's live broadcast room started broadcasting ahead of schedule. At around 3 o'clock, Messi himself appeared in the live broadcast room in response to the expectations of fans and had some interactions with the anchor.

The reason why the commercial intention of this live broadcast is quite obvious is very simple. If you carefully look back at the various related news starting from the 12th, it is not difficult to find that many news reports have more or less used words such as "bringing goods" when mentioning this live broadcast. Obviously, Yaowang Technology probably also had plans to invite Messi to bring goods in its initial plan, but for some unknown reason, the plan failed to proceed as scheduled.

Secondly, in the live broadcast room, although the anchor Li Xuanzhuo repeatedly emphasized that the commercial elements in this live broadcast had nothing to do with Messi himself, there were a lot of advertisements of various brands above the live broadcast room, on the background wall, and other places. In addition to the live broadcast party Yaowang Technology, there were still many brand names rolling, including the liquor brand Tantai, the car brand Avita, and the home appliance brand Zhuimi.

When the news was announced, the share price of MCN agency Yaowang Technology rose, and at one point it rose by more than 6% during the session.

According to many sources and industry insiders, the reason why Messi appeared in Yaowang Technology's live broadcast room this time was largely because Taobao played a role in the cooperation between the two. After careful investigation, it is not difficult to find that Yaowang Technology was originally the top MCN agency of Douyin. It officially joined Taobao Live on Double 11 last year and established the Taobao Live Division in March this year.

2. Taobao may do more to attract more traffic

This may also lead to a problem, that is, Yaowang Technology is obviously not familiar enough with Taobao live streaming, or the overall live streaming has not been run-in to a very high level.

On the one hand, the live broadcast environment on the 14th was obviously not very good. The clarity and sound quality of the overall live broadcast room were not very good. Messi's voice on the scene was very low, and the simultaneous interpretation directly covered Messi's original voice, making people even wonder if they had traveled back to the last era.

On the other hand, the host's overall preparation was obviously not sufficient. The host even asked the Argentine Messi: "What Brazilian food do you like?" Fortunately, the simultaneous interpreter quickly corrected this mistake, making the scene less embarrassing.

In general, the live broadcast seemed a little rushed from the beginning to the end. After Messi said "Happy Dragon Boat Festival", the live broadcast ended. The live broadcast room did not mention the ending remarks, but directly jumped to the Messi poster.

In addition, at noon on June 14, there was news that Messi's appearance on Taobao Live was moved up to around 2 pm, and that Messi was not selling goods, but just chatting. This move caused many netizens and fans to miss the live broadcast because they did not know the time was changed. During Messi's presence, the highest number of views in the live broadcast room was only 2.927 million. However, some of the previous live broadcasts of Li Xuanzhuo selling alcoholic beverages had more than 3 million views.

After Messi left the field, when the anchor returned to the live broadcast room to sell goods, the number of viewers in the live broadcast room continued to rise, reaching more than 4 million. Later, due to too many people, the live broadcast room was stuck several times. But when netizens learned that Messi had ended the live broadcast activity, the number of viewers in the live broadcast room began to decline.

Obviously, the organizers were not well prepared for this live broadcast.

Well, to a certain extent, this is almost another manifestation of traffic anxiety. After all, with the increasing number of live broadcast content and top-tier streamers appearing recently on Xiaohongshu and Douyin, and the urgent need for more excellent content to attract user stickiness during 618, it is not difficult to understand why they invited Messi to the live broadcast room even if it was in a hurry.

In fact, as internal traffic, especially the gradual disappearance of top anchors, Taobao seems to have realized that it is time for change. In addition to internal pressure, external TikTok is striving to reach 1 billion GMV, and Xiaohongshu has also produced two top anchors, Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui.

It is not difficult to understand that Taobao Live is accelerating its efforts on the content side, both internally and externally. So we can see that in August 2021, Taobao changed its slogan. The new version is "It's so fun to shop!" Compared with the original "Go to Taobao, find something you like", the content + social attributes are obviously more important.

On the live streaming side, Taobao is also visibly increasing the variety of anchors on the platform. Luo Yonghao and Yu Minhong both appeared in Taobao's live streaming room on October 31. Before that, Douyin bloggers such as Yili Xiaoshazi and Zhu Yici also joined Taobao live streaming.

Last September, Xu Luo, head of Taobao Live's new ecological business line, said that Taobao Live was negotiating with more anchors, "We have basically talked about everything you can think of."

This time, Messi is probably part of the changes in the content ecology of Taobao Live, which also explains why many rumors point out that the cooperation between Messi and Yaowang Technology was matchmade by Taobao.

In fact, whether it was the invitation of TVB to join Taobao Live and the topic queen Zhang Lan in March this year, or the recent invitation of Coco Tree to join Taobao Live, Coco Tree Group launched a special product on Taobao Live - the right to dance in the live broadcast room for 30 seconds. The starting price of the "disco ticket" is 50 yuan. The netizen who won the bid can dance in the live broadcast room with the model group for 30 seconds. In the end, someone bought the right to dance for 80,930 yuan.

It is not difficult to find that Taobao Live has also become more focused on content, diversity and entertainment.

3. Content is becoming the core of platform survival

Overall, it is not difficult to find that more and more platforms are paying more and more attention to content output. Perhaps to put it more bluntly, content is becoming the core point of competition among major platforms.

We can also get some clues about this from the top anchors of live-streaming e-commerce. For example, Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui, who are the top anchors on Xiaohongshu, one is more about sharing her understanding of aesthetics and dressing than selling goods, while the other is constantly creating scenes with a strong sense of life. Everything in front of the camera is no longer a cold product, but a moment in real life.

Whether it is Dong Yuhui, Luo Yonghao or Xiao Yangge on Douyin, whether they are impressing consumers with their rich knowledge, or attracting attention with their talk show-like comedy, or their live comedy that can be called a collection of "Internet live shows".

From the above cases, it is not difficult to find one thing - although product selection is still the core of live streaming sales, in addition to product selection, whether it is possible to attract users who originally do not have a shopping mentality through sufficiently interesting content and ultimately convert them into consumers is becoming an increasingly important ability in the current context of traffic shortage.

The core and logic of becoming the leader in live streaming e-commerce has never changed, and the person is still the one making choices on behalf of consumers.

But before making choices for consumers, perhaps the anchors also need a reason to keep consumers in the live broadcast room - high-quality live content.

Author: Innocent Roland

Source: WeChat public account "Morketing (ID: Morketing)"