Durex live broadcast, 3 million people just watched but didn't buy

According to relevant data, the cumulative number of viewers of Durex's live broadcast room exceeded one million, but the average sales per broadcast was only one thousand yuan. What is the reason? What measures should Durex take to save itself? The author of this article interprets and analyzes them one by one. Let's take a look.

“There is still a long way to go before popularity increases and sales conversions occur.”

"Durex is live streaming and isn't selling condoms," "Durex's live streaming room is 'driving' like crazy, it's dirty and tacky but you want to buy it," "Durex's live streaming is so borderline, even Coco Tree would blush when it sees it." Various comments are pouring in, and Durex really does have its own traffic.

In this small traffic carnival, the "protagonist" is Durex's Douyin account "DuDuGoods", which recently started live streaming to sell goods.

As mentioned in the above comments, Dudu Haowu does not sell condoms directly. The anchors use mouse pads, socks, mobile phone cases, mahjong poker and other so-called peripheral products to promote their products.

Even so, the familiar Durex style is still irresistible, and the words of tigers and wolves are frequently used. For example, for mobile phone cases, Chen Yingjie, the director of "A String of Life", called it "the poor man's mink", and Durex Good Things emphasized in the copy that "it's great at night, but it can't get up in the morning", which has a special "connotation".

Image source: Dudu Haowu Douyin Live Room

Durex entered the live streaming industry naturally to sell products. The problem is, with sales continuing to decline, can Durex open up new markets by sticking to short videos?

New Retail Business Review believes that under the guise of trying to boost sales, Durex’s self-rescue action is essentially to start a new game with consumers, which is unlikely to be achieved by just “talking big” and playing tricks.

1. Accurate prediction is difficult to resist the general trend

Many people's first impression of Durex is its suggestive or straightforward copywriting. Don't underestimate these copywritings. To some extent, they have reshaped Durex's brand influence.

The "2022-2023 China Sex Toys Industry and Consumer Behavior Survey and Analysis Report" released by iMedia Research shows that the types of sex toys most preferred by Chinese consumers include condoms and sexy underwear, accounting for 55.9% and 53.8% respectively. The report also shows that singles, unmarried couples, and married couples with children are more inclined to use condoms, involving a wide range of people.

Image source: iiMedia Research

The key point is that in China's sex toy market, which is worth 168.53 billion yuan, the brand with the highest consumer recognition is Durex, with a brand awareness rate of 70.4%, 16 percentage points higher than the second-ranked Jissbon.

In fact, Durex's success in attracting attention and inspiring comments and purchases from netizens in the live broadcast room is still based on Durex's previously accumulated brand awareness. A very convincing scenario is that after waiting for a long time in the live broadcast room, the condoms did not "appear", and netizens were anxious: "You are not selling what you should be selling, can't you afford it, Durex?"

Of course Durex wanted to "play", but the situation changed suddenly, and the sales of condoms declined rapidly.

Durex accurately predicted the downward trend in condom sales, and analysts pointed out that it was "the first condom brand to notice that something was 'wrong'."

Specifically, as early as April 2020, Durex's parent company, Reckitt Benckiser Group of the United Kingdom, publicly stated that condom purchases were declining due to fewer "hooks", increased anxiety levels, and fewer "occasions for intimacy."

Not only Durex's parent company, but also Zhao Chuan, co-founder and CEO of China's "Elephant" condoms, believed at the beginning of the epidemic that condom sales would most likely decline.

The result is indeed so. According to the Daily Economic News, from 2020 to 2021, the annual sales of the top five condom brands on the Tmall platform, Durex, Celebrity, Jissbon, 6th Sense, and Okamoto, all showed a significant decline compared with before the epidemic. Among them, Durex's sales in 2019-2021 were 3.722 million, 1.886 million, and 842,000 respectively. The decline in sales was so great that even industry insiders in Dalian were amazed.

Corresponding to this is the sharp decline in the number of public sexual activities. According to the report "The Impact of COVID-19 on Sexual Life" released by Sexologies, before the epidemic, the frequency of sexual activities was 4.4 times higher than during the epidemic. Conversely, under the influence of the epidemic, the occurrence of intimate relationships has been greatly reduced.

Although the epidemic is now fading away, its impact cannot be underestimated. As financial writer Huang Hancheng analyzed, black swans are flying around the world, and workers need to "try their best" to resist the risks of the outside world.

"People who used to oppose 996 seem to be silent now. People who used to leave work on time now take the initiative to write reports on weekends to show their bosses that they are creating value all the time."

From this perspective, Durex and Durex Goods can continue to play the "driving" style of "old drivers" as always, and can also use peripheral products and peripheral content to attract traffic for condom marketing, but they cannot change the embarrassing situation that most young people today have neither the will nor the ability, so condom sales will be difficult to recover in the short term.

2. Try to save yourself but don’t try too hard

The reason why Durex’s live streaming sales will not be able to boost condom sales in the short term is that in addition to the external environment and consumer demand, there is also a layer of “tightening curse” that constrains sales.

The so-called "tight ring" refers to condoms and other related products, which , as family planning supplies, are explicitly "shut out" by live streaming e-commerce platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou.

It is worth noting that this only means that condoms cannot be promoted and sold through live broadcasts or short videos, but it does not prevent them from being sold on shelves in product windows, shopping malls and other sections.

For example, the anchor of Dudu Haowu cannot sell condoms live, but can sell products from the Durex official flagship store through the product display window, most of which are Durex condom products.

In other words, Durex is trying to save itself under the "curse" by trying to attract traffic through peripheral products and peripheral content, and to "save the country in a roundabout way" by addressing the decline in condom sales.

It has to be said that Durex's high brand awareness has brought a certain amount of popularity to the Dudu Goods Live. Moreover, the prices of the goods in the Dudu Goods Live broadcast room are mainly low. After the anchor "drives" and explains for a while, he will sell peripheral products such as socks or poker at a price of 0.01 yuan. SF Express also provides free delivery to your home, which is equivalent to "free delivery", which further increases the popularity.

Image source: Dudu Haowu Douyin Live Room

Unfortunately, there is still a long way to go from increasing popularity to converting into sales.

According to an analysis by DataEye Research Institute in early March, in the nearly 30 days that Dudu Haowu has been focusing on live streaming, the number of fans has increased by about 6,000. Although the cumulative number of viewers has exceeded 3 million, sales are relatively low. The sales of the last 15 live broadcasts are around 30,000 yuan, and the average sales per live broadcast remains at 1,000 yuan.

In this regard, the self-media "Uncle Qiuye" lamented: "3 million people just watch the fun but don't buy the bill!"

If we trace the source, we will find that Durex’s previous copywriting that has repeatedly sparked public opinion also has similar "suspicions."

In an article exploring how brands can truly integrate into consumers’ lives, marketer Yang Buhuai once bluntly stated: “In the past few years, when something became popular, everyone went to see how Durex was following up. Everyone was talking about Durex’s marketing, but no one was talking about Durex itself. Whether these could lead to sales growth is questionable.”

As for this live broadcast of sales, New Retail Business Review believes that Durex and Durex Goods have not broken away from the inherent pattern of using marginal copywriting or gimmicks to attract attention.

DataEye Research Institute also pointed out: "Durex's live broadcast content creativity and strategy do not seem to have created any new routines. It uses consumers' natural curiosity about 'sexual' content to gain popularity and interaction, but we have to question how long the popularity can last just by relying on this."

Obviously, under the platform's "tight control", Durex followed suit. Dudu Haowu, which shoulders the heavy responsibility of self-rescue, does not even have a Blue V certification, and there is no official publicity on Weibo and WeChat. It only displays slogans such as "Enjoy Durex" and "Official direct sales" in the background of the live broadcast room.

It seems that Durex wants to sell products in a low-key manner, but in the increasingly fierce competition for traffic, especially when Durex started to sell products through live streaming so late, the lower the profile, the greater the possibility of being drowned out.

If you become high-profile, you will of course be restrained by the "tight ring", but being high-profile does not necessarily mean opening up the scale and increasing the "driving" efforts. The differentiated creation of peripheral products, the promotion of product consultants by anchors, and the marketing linkage of multiple accounts and platforms are all areas that can be further explored.

The reality is that Durex tried to save itself but not too hard, giving people the impression that it is using an inherent model to attract attention. Can this attract consumers to pay for it?

3. Urgent need for a new game

If Durex wants to truly attract consumers to buy its products, it must rely on the brand awareness it has previously established, while also bringing more fresh experiences to netizens and consumers.

Regarding this aspect, DataEye Research Institute believes: "From the perspective of the anchor, the 'edge' of speech is interesting, but this is a routine action of Durex. Durex's edge-of-the-edge activities are not new. Users have become accustomed to them over the years and it has become a psychological stereotype. For users, the anchor is more like a clown performing than a consultant recommending products, and it is difficult for the anchor to build a relationship with users through live broadcasting."

It may be an exaggeration to call the host of Dudu Good Things a "performing clown", but the logic behind it cannot be denied: in the field of live streaming, Durex needs to bring fresh and novel experiences to consumers.

This logic is consistent with what was said at the beginning of the New Retail Business Review: "Durex's self-rescue is essentially to start a new game with consumers."

This is not difficult to understand. Only with new games can there be new content, new methods, and new strategies to attract, expand, and retain more consumers, and can it truly help Durex to develop in depth in the field of short videos and live streaming.

In fact, some signs of new gaming have emerged in the sex toy market.

The most prominent signal is that condom sales have continued to decline, while sex toys such as men's masturbation cups and women's vibrators have seen a surge in sales on e-commerce platforms. Among them, in 2021, sales of female sex toys on Tmall soared 11 times.

This is because about 50% of condoms are used outside the home, including for extramarital affairs, one-night stands, and the service industry. Compared with these scenarios, in the social context where many young people are single, live alone, and marry late, personal use scenarios such as masturbators and vibrators are safer and more in line with consumers' growing demand for "self-pleasure."

After all, the public's need to release their desires will always exist, but the way of releasing them is constantly changing. To accommodate new changes and new demands, it is obviously not enough to just use the existing model to do things in a peripheral way.

Durex is probably well aware of these changes and demands, and focusing on live streaming to accelerate the connection with consumers is a coping strategy. However, Durex needs to do more and go deeper, and the new game is just in time.

References:

1. "Durex starts live broadcasting, what does the "old driver" live broadcast room sell?", E-commerce Online

2. "Durex's first live show on Douyin, 3 million viewers, 3,000 yuan of sales? Even the "experienced driver" can't bring it up?", DataEye Research Institute

3. "Kangle's sales fell by 40%, Durex's sales dropped by more than 840,000 units, why are condoms not selling well?", China Business News

4. "A generation that cannot sell condoms and cannot love", Yuanchuan Research Institute

Author: Xiangma; Editor: Ge Weiwei

Source: WeChat public account "New Retail Business Review" (ID: xinlingshou1001)