Luckin Coffee "catwalk", Coconut Tree "fitness": male sex is everywhere in the live broadcast room

Coco Tree Live Room has changed from live broadcasting of "beauties" to live broadcasting of "strong men". What kind of transformation does this represent? Today, the "male beauty" business of Coco Tree Coconut Juice has been open for more than 20 days. The brand has started male beauty marketing, which makes us wonder: Have we entered the era of male beauty economy?

The "male beauty" business of Coco Tree Coconut Juice has been open for more than 20 days.

Coconut Tree Coconut Juice, known for its "borderline" operations, changed its previous marketing routine of using beautiful women and began to sell male sex in March this year. One by one, "sunny and cheerful big boys" wearing black vests landed in the Coconut Tree Douyin live broadcast room. Because it hit a special marketing node and catered to the current "female gaze" to a certain extent, Coconut Tree quickly became a hot search and ushered in a sharp increase in traffic in the live broadcast room.

Obviously, male models are not "one-time". Since then, Yeshu has been conscientiously implementing its "macho man" strategy, and the high popularity of the live broadcast room has been maintained. In fact, in a live broadcast on March 18, the number of viewers reached 2.56 million.

Internet consumption of appearance is not new. In addition to beautiful ladies, "male beauty" has gradually become an important carrier to attract the attention of Internet users. Offline, macho hot pot restaurants and macho coffee shops have once been popular, while online, the Internet has become popular with a type of "male bodhisattva" under the gaze of women.

Today, brands have started marketing to male beauty, which makes us wonder, is it time to "run" into the era of male beauty economy?

01 Live broadcast room "male bodhisattva" crossing the river

When it comes to marketing that borders on earthy, Coco Tree Coconut Juice is undoubtedly an expert.

In October last year, without any preheating of traffic, Coco Tree officially launched its first live broadcast selling products on Douyin. Four female anchors wore high-necked tights and hot pants, dancing and displaying various brand products, which attracted many people to comment and sigh that "times are changing, but Coco Tree will never change."

In March this year, after a piece of news about "recruiting male models" confirmed by the official Coco Tree went viral, Coco Tree's ingenious marketing was back. But this time, the beautiful young lady who appeared in the "hot dance" became a "sunny and cheerful big boy" with a muscular body, which seemed to mean that Coco Tree had turned to targeting women as its target consumer group and started a business of male sex.

Image source: Coconut Tree Live Studio

From a formal perspective, this "macho" strategy seems a bit simple and crude. When applied to female anchors, it simply changes their genders and moves them into the live broadcast room in their original form.

Various male models with muscular bodies held products of the Coconut Tree Group in their hands and posed in various postures to show off their muscular lines. Their shy expressions carried a bit of a desperate attitude, as if “there is no one on this planet who cares about us anymore”.

However, the vivid sense of physical impact on the screen apparently failed to please all viewers, with some users questioning its "earthy" and "vulgar" nature, while others wondered whether "Coco Tree" was beating men or women.

On the surface, this seems to be another stereotype of the brand's judgment of the audience's aesthetic orientation. After all, the meaning of "macho" in the context of contemporary Internet has undergone considerable changes.

But it turns out that Yeshu knows how to attract traffic. Whether it is due to the pleasure of "female gaze" or the aesthetic preference for "male Bodhisattva", Yeshu's live broadcast room soon became popular as expected.

According to Chan Mama data, since March 8, the account @Coconut Tree Group Hainan Coconut Juice Beverage Co., Ltd. has broadcast a total of 10 live broadcasts, with an average of about 920,000 viewers per broadcast, an average of 1.533 million viewers per day, and a total of 9.2 million viewers. In a live broadcast on March 18, the Coconut Tree live broadcast room received a total of 2.56 million viewers in about an hour of live broadcast, with a maximum of 85,000 people watching online at the same time.

In the subsequent live broadcasts, the Coconut Tree official also showed good "advisability" quality, and launched a "masculine dress-up game", such as a suit for four people to wear, live shaving legs and other "new activities", intending to carry out the "objectification of men" to the end. The performance of the macho men also changed from the initial immaturity to enjoying it and being at ease, and they have gained their own fans in content communities such as Xiaohongshu.

And because Coco Tree broadcasts at irregular intervals, users will even spread the word on social platforms and make screen recordings and edits.

Image source: Coconut Tree Live Studio

Of course, Coco Tree Coconut Juice is not the only company that has worked hard on "male beauty" to attract the attention of female consumers. After the rise of the "her economy", women's consumption power has been increasingly noticed, and the "male beauty economy" has been promoted as the corresponding term of the "face value economy", attracting businesses to test the waters.

The first batch of live broadcast rooms that clearly targeted their audiences at women took the abdominal muscle route, with "sweet talk" added as an added value, such as @川哥哥的果园 and @农哥哥农侧產品. The hosts were good at selling fruit while showing their muscles and calling "baby". They even moved the content scene to a swimming pool and used muscles to squeeze juice, which was greasy but also had a bit of wildness that made people dizzy.

Because of the similar marketing methods, users also spontaneously created NTR literature: "Tell Apple in Tianshui that I won't be coming over today."

Image source: Accounts @农哥哥农侧產品, @川哥哥的果園

In the brand world, Luckin Coffee, which is known as the "Dragon and Phoenix" in marketing together with Coco Tree, teamed up with male students from Zhejiang Sci-Tech University to build a coffee catwalk show during the Double Eleven period last year. Male models dressed in various fashions walked leisurely in the live broadcast room holding Luckin coffee, and there was another anchor speaking on the side to attract users to place orders.

Since the male models selected by Luckin Coffee almost cover all the most popular aesthetic types at the moment, this live broadcast was jokingly called the "Princess Selection Scene" by users.

Just like Coco Tree, there may also be the Douyin distribution store of the paper towel brand Vinda @Vinda Online Paper Wet Wipes Store Live Broadcast Room, which blatantly displays "selling male sex" in the live broadcast room.

Compared with the physical impact of Coconut Tree Coconut Juice, the "male beauty" strategy of Vinda's live broadcast room presents two characteristics: early layout and milk dog faction. It created the "Treasure Boy Group" anchor group very early and launched a fierce offensive against the "sisters". In terms of style, the anchors active in the live broadcast room have a slightly more subtle "dog style", which is more in line with the popular "milk dog" image on the Internet.

As the sweet background music resounded throughout the live broadcast room, the male anchor held Vinda tissues in his arms and showed a perfect smile to the audience. In the live broadcast room, the anchor hardly spoke, but just acted like a spoiled child to urge users to place orders.

This "girl-fawning" strategy is aimed at a more explicit consumption of appearance. In response to the anchor's request of "Sister, place an order, sister" and "9.9 yuan for free shipping, sister, please support me", Douyin users finally responded with a firm tone - "Call me baby" and "Call me again after it's placed".

Image source: @Vida.com Paper Wet Wipes Store Live Room

Because both are in the business of "selling male sex", netizens also dragged Vida's "milk dog" anchor to compete with the muscular man of Coco Tree Coconut Juice in all aspects. The enthusiastic response from users seems to indicate that the next stage of the male sex economy is about to come.

02 Singing a different tune from the “male sex economy”

The 2021 "Informal Talks" talked about the male sex economy, summarizing it as a manifestation of the "she economy", which is the continuous expansion of women's dominance in the consumer market.

In the early days, the "male beauty economy" was often associated with idol talent shows and celebrity endorsements, targeting the purchasing power of female fans. Today, the traffic of the appearance track has been distributed to more male Internet bloggers. On social platforms, high-looking male bloggers have flooded in, and users have begun to give them the "female gaze" in retaliation.

Last year, there was a fitness and word memorization trend in TikTok short videos, and the "muscle memory method" was once very popular; when Igawa Ryo's pure desire dance was all over TikTok, many male bloggers twisted their waists to join the "fenyu" challenge.

On Xiaohongshu, some male bloggers who are happy to show off their "eight-pack abs" on social platforms are called "male Bodhisattvas", and "male temptation" seems to be everywhere.

Unfortunately, in Kas’ opinion, in the field of live streaming e-commerce, the male sex economy is more like a false proposition. Coconut Tree Coconut Juice’s “male sex business” did not work: “Sunny and cheerful big boys” ran into the live streaming room, and while the traffic was booming, the sales were also very bleak.

According to Chan Mama data, the average sales volume of Coco Tree's live broadcast room is between 250 and 500, and the average sales volume is only 25,000 to 50,000 yuan. In its most popular live broadcast, Coco Tree created sales of 100,000 to 250,000 yuan. The best-selling product was a box of Hainan coconut water, with a customer unit price of 132 yuan. But even so, the UV value of Coco Tree in this live broadcast was only 0.04, forming a sharp contrast between high popularity and low conversion rate.

"Male beauty" may be the current traffic trend, but it may still be some distance away from live streaming e-commerce.

Coco Tree was not the only one to suffer an unexpected defeat in sales. Luckin Coffee’s fashion show, which was like a “concubine selection scene”, had sales of 250,000-500,000, which was not much different from the GMV of daily live broadcasts. Vinda’s distribution live broadcast sales were even worse. In the past 30 days, 178 live broadcasts were broadcast, with an average of 43,000 viewers per show, and only an average sales of 5,000-7,500 per show. Douyin’s live broadcast room seemed to have become a large brothel, where users just came in to take a look, “whore” and leave.

Image source: @Vida.com Paper Wet Wipes Store Live Room

In the field of short videos and live broadcasts, the "male sex economy" seems to be struggling, but there are actually signs of it.

In terms of short videos, although Douyin is recognized as a place that produces many beautiful women and handsome men, the traffic code of the appearance track is always firmly controlled by the young ladies.

When talking about Douyin beauties, people may think of @刀小刀sama who changed her outfit by shaking her head, @井川里予 who became famous with one jump, etc. Compared with the rapid iteration of top beauties, male beauty experts do not have such a situation of "every generation has its own talent", and they are much inferior. It is not easy to "cash in" by relying on appearance without content packaging.

In the field of e-commerce live broadcast, the "male beauty" live broadcast room has gone astray. We can clearly feel that the current "male beauty marketing" is still based on appearance consumption and emotional consumption, and the underlying logic is actually show live broadcast.

For example, the live broadcast room of Coco Tree Coconut Juice only broadcasts for about an hour each time, and pays much more attention to male beauty than product introduction; Vinda’s anchors have their own Douyin accounts, and when users offer rewards, they will even direct traffic to their personal accounts.

However, the logic of live e-commerce and live show broadcasts is not compatible.

On the one hand, in the past, the main audience of show live broadcasts was men, and most women have not yet formed the mentality and habit of giving rewards. In the live broadcast room, the consumption of men's appearance and body may not be attractive;

On the other hand, live streaming e-commerce has come up with new tricks, but the final focus is still "people, goods and places", among which the importance of "goods" is self-evident. In the live broadcast of the show, the audience's focus is on the anchor, and the lack of oral broadcast - that is, the explanation of the goods - makes it difficult to attract people's attention to the pallets.

There are many people watching the fun, but few placing orders. This is undoubtedly fatal for live streaming e-commerce.

It is worth mentioning that although the target audience is set as female, men account for as high as 65% of the fan portrait of Coco Tree. The phrase "Coco Tree will attract men or women" seems to be meaningful.

Paying for male sex may not be enough. Another phenomenon is that the consumption power of women in other fields does not seem to be transferred to male sex consumption. Strong men walk into the live broadcast room, but the "female donors" only "stare" and like.

We can clearly see that the much-questioned "edge ball" style of painting quickly aroused a strong sense of freshness among users in a short period of time, and the "never tired of it" shown in the comment area also confirmed the feasibility of this model in attracting traffic. However, although users who came with "impure" purposes were excited when watching videos or live broadcasts, when it came to the level of interests, most people's minds quickly calmed down.

After all, why pay if you can get it for free?

Of course, the meaning of the brand's "male beauty" may not be "sales" but "marketing". When fierce discussions were launched on all platforms, Coco Tree may have already won.

Source of title image: Luckin Coffee, Coco Tree, and Vinda live broadcast room

Author: Chu Cheng

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