Three years later, how is "making friends" doing?

How is the "Make Friends" team, once the top live streamer on Douyin, doing now? How is the Douyin super celebrity list updated? How do the top anchors deal with it? Let's take a look at the author's interpretation and analysis, I hope it will be helpful to you.

Recently, the Make Friends company celebrated its third anniversary.

On April 1, Luo Yonghao led the "Make Friends" anchor team to hold a wishing ceremony for netizens in Douyin's "Make Friends Live Room", and the wishes of many netizens were fulfilled. As of 2 a.m. on April 3, the third anniversary celebration of Douyin's "Make Friends Live Room" had accumulated sales of more than 210 million yuan and more than 12 million viewers.

By hitting the trend of live streaming e-commerce, Jiao Ge Pengyou was able to expand rapidly within three years.

On April 1, 2020, "Luo Yonghao's Live Broadcast Room" launched its first Douyin live broadcast to sell goods, with nearly 3 million people online at the same time and a GMV of over 110 million.

By 2023, Jiao Ge Pengyou has become a commercial complex, achieving institutional operation of both Douyin and Taobao platforms, and has expanded into multiple fields including brand agency operation, private brands, e-commerce training, and overseas business.

These three years are also the time when Douyin e-commerce started, grew, and took off rapidly. With the massive traffic, Douyin attracted many grassroots manufacturers and brand merchants to settle in, and Douyin e-commerce has gradually grown into a behemoth. According to the technology media The Information, citing people familiar with the matter, the total e-commerce transaction volume (GMV) of the Douyin platform in 2022 reached US$208 billion (approximately RMB 1.41 trillion), an increase of 76% from 2021.

So, after passing the honeymoon period and completing its historical mission, is Douyin still needed by Jiaogeyouyou?

1. The transformation of the first generation of Douyin sales leader

On April 1, 2020, Luo Yonghao launched his first live streaming show on Douyin, with a cumulative transaction volume of over 120 million yuan and a cumulative number of viewers exceeding 48 million. In terms of popularity and GMV data, Luo Yonghao was regarded as the "number one" in Douyin's live streaming at the time, and was also a benchmark for e-commerce brands that the platform strongly supported.

In the following months, Luo Yonghao conducted about 30 live broadcasts to sell goods, with a total transaction volume of over 1 billion, further moving closer to becoming the "number one" live broadcaster on Douyin.

Luo Yonghao’s rise to the top is inseparable from the platform’s promotion, in addition to his personal IP charm and previous entrepreneurial experience.

On July 30, 2020, Suning.com and Douyin reached an in-depth cooperation, linking Douyin's huge traffic with Suning's supply chain resources. All products of the former are available in Douyin stores, which means that users can purchase Suning products on Douyin without jumping to other channels and directly complete the payment process to enjoy Suning's logistics and after-sales services.

In August 2020, Luo Yonghao collaborated with Suning on a live streaming event to sell goods. The total GMV in 4 hours exceeded 200 million, which swept away the gloom of declining sales performance in the previous two months and established his position as the "number one" on Douyin.

By creating the representative IP "live streaming host Luo Yonghao", Douyin e-commerce has successfully attracted the attention of the industry and brands. In order to attract influencers on the site to transform and sell goods, Douyin has also created popular live streaming influencers such as Beibeitu and Korean daughter-in-law Dalulu through a series of activities.

In summary, the interaction of personal IP accumulation, strong supply chain, e-commerce live streaming, and the advantages of the Douyin platform has made Luo Yonghao a top streamer on Douyin, and has also allowed Jiao Ge Pengyou to firmly sit in the position of "number one" in the early stages of Douyin's e-commerce development. According to Feigua data, in 2021, "Jiao Ge Pengyou Live Room" ranked first on the Douyin live streaming sales list with an actual paid sales volume of 5 billion.

At the same time, Jiaogepengyou also followed the trend of the platform and seized the opportunity to expand its business. Perhaps in order to cope with the possibility that "Luo Yonghao will leave after paying off his debts", Jiaogepengyou started the "de-Luo Yonghao" layout early, and gradually transformed from a live broadcast company into a group with seven businesses, developing MCN agencies, agency operations, anchor training, private brands, SaaS systems, multi-brand integrated marketing and multi-platform marketing businesses. At present, Jiaogepengyou has built a live broadcast matrix, including 10 vertical live broadcast rooms such as wine, beauty and clothing, and operates more than 15 e-commerce live broadcast rooms.

Make friends with Douyin live broadcast matrix

2. The “Big Brother” takes turns

However, the number one is not constant. Judging from the monthly sales rankings, Douyin's top sales leader has been in a state of rotation, and no one can always be at the top of the traffic.

By 2022, although the live broadcast data of Jiao Ge Pengyou has not declined and the business has become wider and wider, with live broadcast e-commerce becoming a national trend and more and more competitors, its position in the Douyin market has become increasingly backward.

According to rough statistics from Kas, the actual total GMV of Jiaogepengyou in 2021-2022 was about 10 billion, accounting for less than 1% of the GMV of Douyin e-commerce in 2020 and 2021. In the past year, the growth rate of the number of fans of Jiaogepengyou's live broadcast room on Douyin has slowed down, currently reaching about 21 million, and occasionally showing signs of losing fans.

Among the numerous competitors, the most unexpected competitor for the position of "number one" on Douyin is Oriental Selection.

In June 2022, Luo Yonghao announced his entry into high-tech entrepreneurship and officially withdrew from his Douyin live broadcast room. The original account "Luo Yonghao" was renamed "Make Friends", and his Weibo was also taken over by the Make Friends company.

It was also in this month that Dongfang Zhenxuan and Dong Yuhui became popular overnight, and Douyin traffic began to focus on Dongfang Zhenxuan. Judging from GMV, number of fans and attention, Dongfang Zhenxuan's popularity at that time clearly overshadowed the live broadcast room of Jiao Ge Pengyou, becoming the new number one seller on Douyin. (Single show brings tens of millions of goods, three days to increase fans to over one million: Can New Oriental's live broadcast legend continue?)

As Luo Yonghao faded out of the "Make Friends" live broadcast room and Oriental Selection emerged as a dark horse, "Make Friends" fell out of the top of the platform's sales list.

FeiGua data shows that in the sales ranking from July to September 2022, Oriental Selection has topped the list for three consecutive times; Xin Dou data shows that from July to September 2022, "Make Friends Live Room" did not enter the top 5 of Douyin's monthly sales list.

According to data disclosed in the earnings call of Oriental Selection, the GMV of Oriental Selection reached 2 billion yuan from June to the end of August 2022. According to Doujiao TMT, this figure is almost twice the GMV of Jiao Ge Pengyou in the same period.

3. There is no real “number one” on TikTok

“Douyin is permanent, but celebrities come and go.” Since its launch in 2016, the top celebrities active in front of users have changed one after another. Before 2020, the life cycle of a top celebrity might exceed half a year or even a year. Typical examples include @多余和毛毛姐, who have been at the top of Douyin’s fan growth list for 10 consecutive months.

But since 2020, it has become an indisputable fact that the life cycle of influencers has shortened. Even if they have gained traffic and are favored by algorithms, more than half of the influencers are still popular for no more than three months . Liu Fei, CEO of Beike Video, once said bluntly: "The life cycle of most Douyin influencers is only half a year, or even only two or three months. This is very cruel."

The survival status of top influencers has also extended to e-commerce anchors and agencies who are also content creators. In the three years of rapid development of interest e-commerce, the pattern of top anchors has never shown signs of being finalized.

This is also determined by the underlying traffic distribution logic of Douyin. Dongwu Securities pointed out that Douyin live broadcast is a decentralized live broadcast platform, and its bargaining power for discounts from upstream brands is not that strong, and there is no real "super anchor". For a long time, the number of fans obtained by Douyin creators does not determine their actual traffic. Users passively recommend watching, and anchors do not have stable private traffic.

Of course, this is also a result that Douyin, as a platform, would like to see.

First, it will attract more individuals/institutions who are impressed by the "wealth-making myth" to come to Douyin in the hope of becoming the top 5% in the gold rush.

Secondly, it will make more practitioners in the industry feel "uneasy". This lack of security will urge them to constantly iterate, and upgrading content, supply chain, and service capabilities will become a routine operation.

Third, the lack of a fixed leader allows the platform to always have absolute control over traffic distribution, giving it a greater sense of "security".

As regulatory policies become stricter, there are constant incidents of anchors overturning and selling fake products. Merchants are increasingly unwilling to bear the burden of slot fees, and are also trying to regain bargaining power. Since 2021, weakening anchors’ sales and strengthening brand self-broadcasting has been the direction of Douyin e-commerce, and it is also the overall trend of the live broadcast e-commerce industry. Starting from the second half of 2022, Douyin e-commerce has begun to promote the "mall", which is also supporting brands and core merchants, rather than top anchors.

The big anchors have long been aware of the changing direction of the platform.

The fickleness of platform rules and the uncertainty of traffic inevitably pushed the top anchors and institutions to "shake up". They do not want to tie themselves to the chariot of a single platform. Therefore, on the eve of Double Eleven in 2022, Jiao Ge Pengyou, New Oriental, and Yaowang Technology all chose to join Taobao.

Taking "Jiao Ge Pengyou" as an example, on October 20, 2022, "Jiao Ge Pengyou" conducted a Taobao pre-heating live broadcast, and Luo Yonghao himself made his Taobao live broadcast debut at 8 pm on October 24. The cumulative number of viewers exceeded 10 million, and the number of fans increased by more than 1 million in a single live broadcast. The current cumulative number of fans has reached 2.534 million, and the estimated sales of a single broadcast has reached 210 million.

But this does not seem to make Douyin nervous. A senior practitioner in the live e-commerce industry told Kas, "We are not nervous, but it is inevitable to be embarrassed at the time of Double 11. After all, entering Taobao does not mean leaving Douyin completely. I believe that these institutions that made their fortunes on the Douyin platform will still focus on Douyin this year. Moreover, the situation where Douyin is reaping the benefits of the flood of live broadcasters will not be broken." (Douyin's top live broadcasters are entering Taobao in large numbers. Is Douyin panicking?)

By 2023, Jiaogepengyou is still actively operating on both platforms. On March 31 this year, Luo Yonghao and Li Dan teamed up to explain satellite products in the Taobao live broadcast room and sold a 1U cubic satellite for 1 million yuan, which was a large-scale promotional event for the platform.

What we are increasingly certain of is that the history of top anchors being monopolized by platforms has been rewritten, and it has become a trend for anchors to jump back and forth between multiple platforms to achieve overall growth.

More than 100 days have passed since 2023, and Douyin's current top anchors are still Dongfang Zhenxuan, Make Friends, and Crazy Xiao Yangge. So will the rankings change in the future? Will Dongfang Zhenxuan follow the same development trajectory as Make Friends? We will wait and see.

Author: Lou Xingchui

Original title: Making friends, you can’t escape the “three-year itch”

Source: Caas Data (ID: caasdata6), data empowers short video content creation, operation, marketing and e-commerce sales.