The young man "selling" in the live broadcast room: some people watch but no one buys

In the increasingly competitive live broadcast room, in order to gain traffic and expand sales, anchors are becoming more and more creative. Recently, many handsome young men have appeared in the live broadcast room. Can their appearance bring sales? The author of this article analyzes this and shares it with you.

Unexpectedly, Mengniu used a group of "little brothers" to catch the traffic "falling from the sky".

Recently, some netizens discovered that the official account of Mengniu Ice Cream Flagship Store started live streaming on Douyin to sell goods. In five days and seven live broadcasts, the number of followers increased by more than 30,000, with an average of more than 4,000 followers per live broadcast. The number of likes on the account’s videos also increased from single digits to over 10,000.

Although Mengniu’s data is not considered top-notch, for a self-broadcasting brand, it is indeed "out of the circle".

It is noteworthy that when opening the live broadcast room of the Mengniu Ice Cream flagship store, it is found that, unlike the clear-cut comments such as “Already photographed”, “Can’t get it”, and “Add to order”, a large number of emotionally charged words such as “Little brother”, “Baby”, and “Good-looking” have “occupied” the comment area.

In the live broadcast room, two handsome boys with baby voices briefly introduced Mengniu's ice cream. The lively comment area actively discussed topics unrelated to the product. The number of likes in the live broadcast room quickly exceeded 500,000. It should be noted that before April 16, the account had not yet broadcast live.

The live broadcast on this account was "accidental". Previously, a blogger shot a video about Yili ice cream, in which the anthropomorphic sentence "I am covered in cream" made Yili Little Pudding popular. Some netizens joked that Yili needed "money". However, in Yili's live broadcast room, the anchor said "We are being used to gain popularity, why should we pay him advertising fees?" Then, the blogger deleted the relevant video and released a new video with Mengniu Little Pudding instead of Yili, which accidentally "made" Mengniu popular.

Mengniu’s way of taking on “traffic” is to quickly launch brand live broadcasts, select “little brother” as the anchor, and keep the live broadcast room hot.

From Yeshu using "strong men" to promote products, Vinda using "little milk dogs" to sell products, Luckin using "fresh meat" to sell coffee in live broadcasts, to Mengniu using "little brothers" to promote products, people can't help but ask, why are brands using "little brothers" to broadcast themselves? In an environment where traffic has peaked and the cost of attracting customers has increased, will the "little brother style" become a new trend? For brands, is this a "shortcut" to make their own broadcasts popular?

01 The live broadcast room started selling “little brothers”?

Mengniu’s popularity may be “accidental”, but its continued popularity cannot be separated from human factors.

Since they were noticed, the two "little brothers" have appeared frequently in the Douyin account of Mengniu Ice Cream Flagship Store, posting 12 related videos in four days, and the male anchor has replaced the ice cream as the protagonist. In the live broadcast room, the "little brothers" also follow the "fan circle route", using CP formation, talent show, chat interaction and other forms to continuously guide the audience to place orders and pay attention.

In addition, many fans have also started uploading screen recordings and edited clips of the "little brother" live broadcast room on platforms such as Douyin and Weibo. As of now, the data from Xinbang shows that the Mengniu Ice Cream Flagship Store has a total of 7 live broadcasts, with a total of 1.9583 million viewers, an average of more than 280,000 viewers per broadcast, and a peak popularity of 2,405 viewers per broadcast.

It should be noted that this is the data growth based on the fact that the account had not yet broadcast live before April 16.

Related anchor videos uploaded by users in Tik Tok

The reason behind Mengniu's use of "young brothers" to maintain popularity is the traffic value released by "male beauty consumption" in live e-commerce. Many brands are trying to use this to open the door to live streaming sales.

What is undoubtedly impressive is the live streaming sales of goods by the "macho" man of Coco Tree.

In March this year, after being accused of using beautiful women for marketing, Coco Tree began to turn its live broadcast room camera to male anchors who bring goods. In the live broadcast room, a group of "sunshine boys" who focus on fitness, while holding Coco Tree products, show their bodies, interact with the comment area from time to time, and guide purchases. Although many people questioned that these "boys" were too "greasy", it did not prevent Coco Tree from quickly becoming a hot search on major platforms, and the traffic in the live broadcast room soared. Data shows that in a live broadcast on March 18, the number of viewers in the Coco Tree live broadcast room reached 2.56 million, exceeding the popularity of the previous "beauty live broadcast" bringing goods.

Later, Coco Tree launched the "Men in Suit" to sell goods, continuing to use the "little brothers" to attract attention and earn traffic.

In fact, as early as last year, during the Double Eleven shopping festival, Luckin Coffee officially teamed up with Zhejiang University of Technology to transform the live broadcast room into a catwalk, organizing a number of "young and handsome" people dressed in fashionable show clothes to sell coffee on the catwalk. Under the guidance of the "young brothers" with different appearances and characteristics, the 9.9 yuan redemption voucher link on Luckin Coffee was sold out in an instant.

In addition, Vinda, the "originator" brand of the live broadcast of "selling little brother", can be said to be "experienced".

Last year, Vinda began to use all "little brothers" to live broadcast and sell goods in the live broadcast room of its sub-account Vinda Online Paper Wet Wipes Store. After more than a year of development, its "little brothers" live broadcast and selling goods model has now formed a systematic, scenario-based, and personalized live broadcast style . In Vinda's live broadcast room, the "little brothers" do not have complicated oral broadcasts, and do not need to introduce products. Occasionally, they can say "9.9 free shipping, sister supports it."

At the same time, Vida also specially created the "Treasure Boy Group" account for several male anchors who sell goods. The "little brothers" with different styles have different personalities. They are not only actively "operating" in their own exclusive accounts, but also interacting and attracting traffic in the official accounts, which is quite similar to the "star-making" style of the entertainment industry.

Brands have to grab traffic in the fiercely competitive live broadcast rooms, and eye-catching "little brothers" have become the code for traffic.

02 In the brand live broadcast room, instead of curly beauties, curly guys?

The young men needed in the brand live broadcast room cannot do without the law of "appearance first". Some netizens have noticed that the Coconut Tree Group has started to launch a recruitment plan for anchors, recruiting sunny and healthy boys over 1.8 meters tall with abdominal muscles and muscles to cooperate with live broadcast shooting to show products, work about 6 hours a day, and the salary is about 500 to 800 yuan a day.

Even though it is "ridiculed by the public", Coco Tree continues to carry out the "little brother" live broadcast style to the end. Behind this is the "anxiety" that the brand has to deal with.

This year, traffic portals on major platforms have adjusted their distribution mechanisms. For merchants, the cost of investing in traffic has increased, and it has become more difficult to obtain natural traffic. Brands that turn to self-broadcasting face more problems. At present, many small and medium-sized brand live broadcast rooms even have only single-digit viewers, and the transaction volume is very small . However, as an important sales and exposure method, brand live broadcast rooms are a channel that cannot be abandoned.

"After TikTok changed its traffic policy, the cost of paying for traffic increased and the revenue decreased for merchants. At present, direct traffic from brand live broadcast rooms only accounts for a small part of the operation mode, and most of the time, the goal is to leverage natural traffic as much as possible." Jiang Jiang, director of e-commerce live broadcast operations at a certain platform, told Kaibo Finance.

Using "male appearance" to leverage natural traffic has become an unspoken consensus among many brands.

According to the data from the Forward-looking Industry Research Institute in 2021, women accounted for 53.8% of the users who placed orders on live e-commerce in China, making them the main consumer group. Among the users who placed orders on Taobao and Douyin, women accounted for more than 60%. In addition, from the perspective of age structure, young and middle-aged groups are the main consumer groups of live e-commerce products, among which nearly 30% of the viewing users are born after 1995 and 2000. Young women have a clear advantage in the consumption of live streaming products.

"At the beginning, people were not optimistic about men being anchors, and male anchors mostly existed in the field of game live streaming. Brands tended to recruit and train female anchors. But in the past two years, with the rise of female consumer groups, brands began to consider the type of anchor from the user's perspective when choosing anchors." Wangwang, who is engaged in live streaming, introduced to Kaiboli Finance.

Especially for some beauty products, skin care products, and household items, women are the main purchasing group. Although male anchors are not highly associated with products, they can induce consumers' curiosity and sense of participation, and increase their attention to the brand.

Of course, when recruiting male anchors, appearance is an indispensable factor. Talent and high emotional intelligence are also factors that merchants consider . They must be either good-looking or interesting. Wangwang added that unlike the fierce internal competition environment for female anchors, the current male anchor market is still in a blue ocean state. Male anchors with unique characteristics may help small and medium-sized brands find new ways to bring goods.

Content on the homepage of Vinda Paper Wet Tissue Store's Douyin account

In addition to the fact that women are the main force of live streaming consumption, the emotional value behind the "appearance economy" is also the reason why brands "sell" male anchors.

Unlike most anchors who focus on introducing product features, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness in their live broadcast rooms, the sales attributes of the "young brothers" in the live broadcast rooms of Mengniu, Coco Tree, etc. are not strong. They simply talk about the number of products and the location of the factory, and spend more time interacting with the comment area. Jiang Jiang pointed out that now brand self-broadcasting pays more attention to private domain traffic, and through emotional interaction, it can convert traffic into user precipitation, which can bring more "purchasing power" to the brand .

He said that "male beauty consumption" is ultimately a marketing method used by brands to activate potential users. Consumers do not have high trust in anchors, and the probability of placing orders in these live broadcast rooms is very low. However, factors such as "high appearance", "strong interaction" and "strong social interaction" can form emotional linkages, coupled with the guidance of "pay attention" and "join the fan group", "live broadcast + emotion" can increase the stickiness of private fans and help brands achieve natural growth in traffic.

03 There is traffic but no sales?

"Little brothers" can attract attention in a short period of time, but that does not mean they can increase brand sales.

According to the data from New Douyin, during the 10-hour live broadcast at the Mengniu Ice Cream flagship store, the average sales volume was only 500-750, and the average sales revenue was only 25,000-50,000. Similarly, although the "Macho Man Live Broadcast" of Coco Tree had 120,000 viewers, the sales volume was less than 1,000. The sales of Luckin Coffee's "fashion show" that attracted the attention of the entire network did not increase much compared to usual days.

With the help of "little brothers" to get out of the circle, brands still have a long way to go in self-broadcasting.

First of all, from the perspective of the anchor, relying solely on "face" is completely incapable of meeting the requirements of live streaming and bringing goods . At present, in the live streaming room of the Mengniu Ice Cream Flagship Store, the business capabilities of several "young brothers" are very different from those of the other two "young ladies". Their oral broadcasting skills and brand familiarity are not as good as the latter. When asked simple questions such as "Can xx be shipped?" and "Can pregnant women eat it?", the "young brothers" even threw the questions to the customer service, and mostly "read from the script" when introducing the products.

Secondly, from the perspective of the products being promoted, selling goods is the core of brand-owned live broadcasts. However, in the live broadcast rooms of the “little brothers,” the audience’s enthusiasm for discussing the anchors far exceeds that of the “goods” themselves.

Vida's live broadcast room was turned into a "listening room". Since many young men cultivated by the brand opened private accounts, the traffic in the live broadcast room gradually flowed to the individual anchors, causing the popularity of some anchors to continue to rise, and the attention far exceeded that of the brand.

At the same time, whether it is ice cream, coffee, or paper towels, the correlation between male anchors and the products is not high, and their persuasiveness is not strong, resulting in the anchors and the products being in a "separated state" and unable to produce a complementary effect, causing the embarrassing situation where live streaming has traffic but no sales.

"The comment section is more like a carnival party, where everyone discusses gossip and eats melons together." A new fan of the Mengniu Ice Cream Flagship Store said that he did not follow it, did not light up the light board, and did not place an order, mainly because he did not need these products and the price-performance ratio was not high. He stayed in the live broadcast room purely because the comment section was fun and it was interesting to watch the host interact with fans.

Image source: Mengniu Ice Cream Flagship Store Live Room

Finally, whether brands can effectively utilize the traffic brought by the "little brothers" is also a big problem.

For brands such as Luckin Coffee, Mengniu, and Vinda, the sales brought by the live broadcasts of the "little brothers" are negligible. They can increase the popularity of the brand's live broadcast room to a certain extent in a short period of time, but whether the brand can retain this wave of traffic and use it effectively remains to be seen.

The rise of the "little brother style" has been involved in live broadcasts from short videos, looking for gimmicks, taking advantage of hot spots, and playing tricks, reflecting the traffic anxiety of brands in live broadcast sales. Appearance can attract attention, and "little brothers" are a shortcut for brands to "cold start" their own broadcasts, but it is not a long-term solution for brands to continue to develop on the road of live broadcast sales.

As the consumption power of women rises, their judgment of product quality and price is also improving. If the product is not competitive enough and the anchor is not persuasive, the live broadcast of "little brothers" will only be a passing fad. At present, there are many controversial live broadcasts of "little brothers". Problems such as "no nutrition", "borderline", and false propaganda are also constantly eroding the goodwill of consumers.

After all, the effective combination of excellent anchors, powerful products, and matching platforms is the way forward for brand self-broadcasting.

At the request of the interviewees, Jiang Jiang and Wang Wang are pseudonyms in this article.

Author: Ji Xiaoling, Editor: Jin Yufan

Source public account: Kaiboluo Finance (ID: kaiboluocaijing), focusing on live streaming e-commerce, new consumption, and focusing on in-depth content.