Fighting against counterfeiting has become the secret to traffic, and "Mrs. B" have gained both fame and fortune

01 Food blogger switched career to fight against counterfeiting

Although @B太’s “anti-counterfeiting career” is now in full swing, when he first entered Douyin, he started out with funny plot-oriented works.

Looking through the account, we can find that his early works are very different from the current ones in terms of style and theme. Take a few videos with relatively good data as examples: a "tutorial" teaching singles how to pretend to have a girlfriend received 1.33 million likes; a short drama about revenge for his pets "Dongci" and "Daci" received 1.16 million likes.

These works have strong "platform hit" characteristics, featuring fast pace and strong reversals, and therefore have achieved very good results.

However, due to the lack of its own differentiated style, the themes of his early works were messy, and the plots and characters were a bit dry, making it difficult to attract loyal fans. Therefore, @B太 also began to innovate continuously and try multiple content directions.

@B太TikTok video screenshot

Subsequently, relying on the content format of "office drama + food", Mrs. B's work data continued to rise, and the account's work format was gradually determined.

For a long time after that, @B太 was active in the public eye as a food blogger. In addition to integrating with the plot, he also shot food reviews, cooking tutorials and other related works.

As the account took shape, traffic and popularity inevitably declined. Before becoming popular again for "anti-counterfeiting", @B太's account had 15 million followers, but the average number of likes for his works was only around 200,000.

The turning point came in December last year. After buying durian from a roadside mobile truck and being "weirded", Mrs. B officially began her journey for justice .

In this less than two-minute video, the whole process of Mrs. B's "battle of wits and courage" with the boss was truly restored. At the beginning, the boss picked a huge durian. The blogger said it was too big and only wanted to buy a medium-sized one, but the boss insisted and recommended a few super-large durians. The blogger had no choice but to pick one himself, and the scale showed that it weighed 5.05 kilograms.

After taking it off the scale, the boss "couldn't wait" to cut it and pack it in a box. After the blogger clearly asked to pack it directly, he still recommended cutting it several times, but his eyes were vague and he said that if it was broken, he could get a new one immediately without any guarantee.

After taking it home, the blogger weighed it again with his own scale and found it was only 3.3 kilograms, which was 1.7 kilograms less than the store's scale, which translates to a price of about 100 yuan.

After discovering the weight was wrong, Mrs. B immediately rushed back to the place to ask Tao for an explanation, but the durian owner had already fled. Unwilling to give up, he live-streamed the entire process the next day, officially starting the "durian anti-counterfeiting" campaign, which also triggered a series of anti-counterfeiting videos in the future.

@B太TikTok video screenshot

After many encounters with opportunistic vendors, the blogger has also mastered more secret industry insider information: for example, although the scales in a seafood market are fine, the ropes used to tie crabs and the bags used to hold crabs are surprisingly heavy; for example, a cake shop uses inferior vegetable cream as good quality and sells it at a high price as animal cream; for example, a seafood processing restaurant in a tourist attraction secretly replaced the blogger's ingredients, and the crabs sent to the kitchen were not the same as the crabs served on the table...

As the anti-counterfeiting campaign deepened, the blogger's fame grew. On the one hand, @B太 was praised by official media such as CCTV, and on the other hand, there were rumors that criminal forces offered money to "bounty" B太.

Screenshot of @superB's Weibo

On March 15, @B太 shared a video on his account, saying that a fan told him that he seemed to have been offered a bounty.

The reason was that a netizen shared a post on a social platform with the caption "This person seems to have been selected", and the picture was exactly the video content of @B太. According to other netizens, "selected" is a homophone for "reward", which is very likely a warning post.

Image source network

In addition, some media reported that when @B太 was broadcasting live, there were many threatening and intimidating messages in the comment section.

02 Anti-counterfeiting blogger, gaining both fame and fortune?

@B太 is already the sixth “anti-counterfeiting blogger” to enter the public eye in the past six months.

Looking ahead, in April this year, @临期也狗 gained 1.45 million followers in a single month for sharing the inside story of the near-expiry food industry; @尖商胖丁 also gained 1.24 million followers in a single month by exposing the "black operations" in the food industry, such as unknown costs, false prices, and packaging reshaping.

Screenshots of @临期也狗&@尖商胖丁's Douyin homepage

In March, @老九好茶, which mainly spreads scientific knowledge about tea and reveals the inside story of the tea industry, gained 168.7W followers in a single month. It ranked TOP5 on the Douyin follower growth list that month, which is undoubtedly a bright spot in the Douyin content ecosystem that has been slightly sluggish recently.

Screenshot of @老九好茶's Douyin homepage

Last September, "Breaking Bad" @辛吉飞 emerged out of nowhere and gained 7.96 million followers in one month, topping the Douyin follower growth list that month.

The video focuses on the issue of food additives, and popularizes the "technology and hard work" in food to netizens. It has triggered a trend of searching for "0 additives" across the Internet, and has also awakened ordinary people's attention to pre-prepared food additives, food safety issues, etc.

Image source: @辛吉飞 (account has been cancelled) TikTok video screenshot

During the same period, food blogger @刘愫 used a series of alternative "food science popularization" to reproduce the "high-tech" methods of common dishes such as "fried sugar color", "sesame paste", "grilled squid", and "grilled chicken rack" to the public. His popularity continued to rise, with 2.97 million followers added in a single month.

Image source: @刘譯TikTok video screenshot

As more and more people pay attention to "industry insider information", " leaking industry insider information" has also become the traffic code in the hands of more and more creators.

The reason is not difficult to understand. Firstly, this "inside" knowledge is something that ordinary people cannot easily obtain but is closely related to themselves. If someone is willing to spread the knowledge selflessly, it will naturally get everyone's response.

Secondly, with the continuous development of short videos, the topics and content of common tracks have long been saturated, and ordinary videos can no longer arouse the curiosity of the audience, and there must be more "explosive points" to support them.

In addition, as people's living standards continue to improve, everyone is willing to devote more energy to their physical health. Especially as society has just recovered from the epidemic, the public will inevitably pay more attention to food safety issues.

These changes in the environment have helped boost the popularity of anti-counterfeiting bloggers’ content. On top of that, these outstanding bloggers often put a lot of effort into the presentation of their videos.

For example, @辛吉飞’s anti-counterfeiting is based on science and theory, and his crooked mouth and slanted eyes make him very recognizable; @老九好茶 became popular as a “swindler”, and his sharing is supported by his actual business experience, and the platform’s “aging special effects” also make his image more memorable; @B太 emphasizes on field investigations, rushing ahead of fans and striving to be the first “lamb to be slaughtered” by unscrupulous merchants...

Image source: @B太TikTok video screenshot

What is more noteworthy is that in addition to traffic, these accounts seem to have found their own ways to monetize.

For example, @老九好茶 originally established himself as a "swindler". As his account became popular, the number of users who visited his live broadcast room to consume increased day by day. Many fans said that they would rather be cheated openly by him than suffer losses secretly in other places.

According to third-party data, @老九好茶 has conducted 9 live broadcasts in the past 30 days, with a cumulative GMV of 1000-2500W, with amazing monetization capabilities.

@辛吉飞 also started a series of commercial monetization of his account as early as last year.

At the end of 2022, @辛吉飞 published a video titled "Matsutake, MSG, and Chicken Essence are all delicious!" to promote a brand of fresh matsutake condiments.

According to Kas's incomplete statistics, he also promoted products such as Gaga Soy Sauce, Bobcat Superman Durian, and Fuxing Island Sea Cucumber through videos. In addition, he has been trying to sell products through live streaming since October last year, but due to the constraints of his early personality, the response to his live streaming was mediocre.

In April this year, he also followed the trend and started authorizing "slicing and selling goods".

According to media reports, when searching for "Xin Jifei" on Douyin, in addition to his own account, many related accounts will appear, such as "Xin Jifei's Selection", "Xin Jifei's Live Recommendation", and "Xin Jifei (Good Things Sharing)". Most of these accounts are authorized accounts for "Xin Jifei's IP" slices, and some are marked with the word "authorized". The works published are all slices of goods made from Xin Jifei's live broadcast content.

Image source: Xin Jifei’s screenshot of Douyin’s related search

It seems that unveiling and fighting against counterfeits has become a good business that brings both fame and fortune.

But as mentioned above, in addition to facing the same difficulties as ordinary short video bloggers, this type of blogger may also face threats to their personal safety because they have disturbed the interests of some businesses.

@B太 was offered a reward, and @辛吉飞 was also suspected of being retaliated by a "man-made car accident." (Before Xin Jifei cancelled his Douyin account, he was hospitalized due to a car accident. According to Xin Jifei, he was driving normally at the time, but encountered a truck that was driving in the opposite direction and crashed into the guardrail, so netizens suspected that it was a man-made threat.)

It is certainly a good thing that creators can use their own knowledge and influence to popularize science, expose secrets, and fight counterfeiting for ordinary users. However, for this type of creators, on the one hand, they need to pay more attention to content and monetization issues. After all, they are in the business of trust. Any slight mistake may lead to a decline in reputation and a collapse of their personal image. On the other hand, how to balance the risks that may arise in the process also requires their own caution and the efforts of the platform.

Author: Jiangbei

Source: WeChat public account: "CaasData (ID:caasdata6)"