Xiaohongshu's "virtual bloggers" are in a "surge" phase

Is the trend of digital people the future or a crazy internal competition? Virtual bloggers on Xiaohongshu emerge in endlessly. What kind of operation methods are behind their glory? This article uses several well-known virtual bloggers as cases to deeply interpret the marketing methodology of skyrocketing followers. Recommended for those who are interested in virtual people, Internet celebrity marketing, Xiaohongshu operation, etc.

As the entrance to the metaverse, the development of digital humans is faster than many people imagine, and has even been integrated into life to a certain extent, blurring the boundary between reality and fiction. AYAYI is just a microcosm of this, but it allows people to get a glimpse of the opportunities and difficulties faced by the hyper-realistic digital humans it represents.

01 AYAYI’s “surge” to 40,000 followers overnight

AYAYI proves to us that traffic stories can also happen to digital people.

Back in May 2021, the hyper-realistic digital person "AYAYI" made his debut on Xiaohongshu. His first post received nearly 3 million views and 100,000 likes, and his followers increased by 40,000 overnight. His first photo was even called the "most beautiful ID photo" and swept the Internet.

AYAYI's first photo

As of press time, AYAYI, who is positioned as a "fashion blogger", has 126,000 followers on Xiaohongshu, 881,000 followers on Weibo, and 78,000 followers on Douyin. Her content mainly focuses on visiting exhibitions and outfits.

According to 36Kr, AYAYI has 83% female fans, with fans mainly concentrated in the 19-22 age group, accounting for nearly 40%, followed by the 16-18 age group and the 23-27 age group, each accounting for about 23%. Fans' secondary creation and thick painting of AYAYI further help its geometric path of communication.

If we only look at the number of fans, AYAYI may be just a small internet celebrity. But with the identity of a digital person, AYAYI has been favored by all parties.

Take L'Oréal for example. On January 12, it officially announced that AYAYI was the young digital assistant for this year's BRANDSTORM Innovation Planning Competition. L'Oréal guided users to participate through AYAYI and let him share cases as a native of the Metaverse.

This is not the first collaboration between L'Oréal and AYAYI. As early as December 2021, L'Oréal Hair invited AYAYI to serve as the Color Renewal Officer and defined it as a "Metaverse Digital Human".

AYAYI is highly compatible with hair dye advertisements. It does not need to stick to irrelevant conditions that are difficult for real people to change, and can better convey product concepts. For example, the "Mars color" that L'Oreal vigorously promotes, digital people can visualize the cosmic feeling in it.

It can be seen that in marketing activities, AYAYI plays a more important role in connecting digital human identities. Digital humans linked to the metaverse naturally have stronger market mental education persuasiveness and have genetic settings that are closer to the metaverse than real people.

Therefore, many brands regard the launch or cooperation of digital humans as the only way to enter the metaverse.

In September 2021, Amul posted on Weibo that it had collaborated with AYAYI to develop the world's first digital yogurt. It is worth noting that during the marketing process, Amul's official blog also updated AYAYI's daily work as the AMX digital trend art recommendation officer, which is no different from the cooperation process of inviting celebrities to endorse.

This reflects another characteristic of AYAYI - hyper-realism, which is an important factor in her integration into reality. The previous generation of digital humans were limited to 2D planes, and there was a thicker dimensional wall between their interactions with real people, while hyper-realistic digital humans can alleviate the sense of disharmony to a certain extent.

The hyper-realistic digital person AYAYI is essentially a fashion blogger, and also has multiple identities such as brand recommendation officer and curator. Since her launch, she has clocked in at offline exhibitions of brands such as Guerlain and Porsche, appeared in top magazines, taken close photos with William Chan at fashion events, and appeared in the live broadcast room of her good friend Zhou Yangqing. Her activity level is no less than that of a star.

Every move of AYAYI can spark discussion, precisely because of his identity as a "hyper-realistic digital human".

In 2021, photos of AYAYI and real people still sparked heated discussions, with many netizens confused about the real and the fake. In 2022, hyper-realistic digital people even appeared on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala, performing on the same stage with real people.

From static to dynamic, the development of digital human technology is changing with each passing day, the boundary between virtual and real is becoming increasingly blurred, and the public is gradually becoming accustomed to and accepting the existence and application of hyper-realistic digital humans.

02 How much business imagination does AYAYI have?

When AYAYI first appeared in the public eye, there was a heated discussion about whether she was a real person.

In the past, digital people were still paper figures online in the minds of the public, far from real life. The birth of hyper-realistic digital people has further broken the boundary between reality and virtuality. It can be seen that in the comment area of ​​AYAYI's social platform, some people asked about lipstick colors and some asked for hair care methods.

AYAYI's 3D appearance is close to a real person, especially the skin, which has been highly restored. The digital engine it uses has a more specific simulation and rendering of different environments and light and shadow conditions, in order to present the agility in different photos. This is also the reason why its first ID photo can amaze everyone.

This feature makes hyper-realistic digital humans more likely to become portals into the metaverse, to a certain extent. Let’s take a look at the cooperation between AYAYI and Alibaba.

On September 8, 2021, AYAYI officially announced that he had joined Alibaba as a "digital employee". The original Weibo post stated that they will work together to "open the METAVERSE belonging to Tmall... breaking the boundaries between reality and virtuality."

It is not difficult to see that Tmall hopes to use the identity of AYAYI to naturally lay out its own metaverse.

Online, the two parties jointly launched an NFT, defined as "the first AYAYI Mid-Autumn Festival customized digital mooncake." Based on the popularity of AYAYI, this mooncake has a name on the Internet.

Subsequently, the two parties collaborated again on the Metaverse Art Exhibition and shot a promotional video for AYAYI. The gimmick was the digital collections designed by the digital person AYAYI himself, guiding users to search and view them on Taobao mobile phones.

This wave of operations has increased the public opinion intimacy between Taobao and NFT, and let more people know that Taobao has also been involved in the NFT business. Taobao is closely related to our daily life, and AYAYI has also been recognized by more people.

Offline, AYAYI made its debut as a curator in cooperation with Alimama's Double 11 Ace New Product Plan, and launched the first immersive digital art exhibition "Digital Garden Club" in Shanghai, exhibiting 14 brand-limited series digital collections brought by Alimama. They were transformed into digital virtual plants in the metaverse in the holographic box, and were open to the audience for online lottery collection.

The exhibition is an offline exhibition, the audience is a real audience, the curator is a virtual digital person, the exhibits are metaverse plant NFTs, and the collection method is online lottery by the audience on site. It does show a new stage of virtual-real integration, making it difficult to simply define the nature of virtual and real.

From the cooperation between AYAYI and Alibaba, we feel the blurring of the boundaries between the virtual and the real, as well as the connecting function mentioned above.

The "realism" of hyper-realistic digital people allows them to shorten the distance between themselves and real people, while the nature of "digital people" makes them more malleable. When cooperating with brands, they can go east and never west, can be salty or sweet, have no black history, have their own "sense of the future", are not restricted by time and place, and only require programmers to provide corresponding code updates to meet the required style. They can also avoid certain "collapse" risks and better ensure the brand promotion effect and external image.

But even a hyper-realistic digital person has its limitations - she is, after all, a digital person and it is difficult for her to possess the five senses of a real person, which means limited persuasiveness and independent creativity.

The team behind the digital people supports the survival of digital people. Whether it is the NFT designed by digital people or the exhibition planned by digital people, it ultimately points to the team behind them, which is the result of real people. However, when using real people's thinking to make digital people, there will occasionally be a chance of failure.

Ling Ling, another hyper-realistic digital person, described the brand's lipstick as "moisturizing and non-drying" in a note on Xiaohongshu. This was originally a common phrasing in lipstick promotional slogans, but when it was said by a digital person, many netizens felt "fooled" because the virtual digital person could not feel the texture of the lipstick at all.

This "failure" is not an isolated case. Some people attribute it to the immaturity of technology, and the hyper-realistic digital human has not been able to gain originality with the help of AI. Others believe that the development of hyper-realistic digital human has taken too big a step, and the rapid realization has brought backlash.

The reason is certainly not one-sided. What is more important is the current situation of hyper-realistic digital humans that it reflects.

03 The grouping and involution of hyper-realistic digital humans behind AYAYI

AYAYI became an overnight sensation, not only because of his good looks in his first ID photo, but also because he was the first Metahuman in China. In the 18 months before that, 51 Metahumans were born in the world.

In March 2021, the American Unreal Engine platform Unreal Engine released a 3D high-fidelity digital human generator MetaHuman Creator, which can create photo-realistic digital humans in minutes. It has complete facial and body binding functions, making it easy to build realistic movements and human interaction scenes.

AYAYI was born based on this technology. It is called Metahuman abroad, and the commonly used term in China is "hyper-realistic digital human".

It is precisely because of the realistic effect brought by this technology that hyper-realistic digital humans have a stronger ability to break through the dimensional wall and are more suitable to become connectors between the virtual and the real.

In order for hyper-realistic digital people to integrate into people’s real lives, in addition to technical support, they also need massive amounts of content, or even a “digital life”.

AYAYI's operator, Shanghai Ranmai Network Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Ranmai Company"), once revealed in an interview that a 1,000-word biography was written at the beginning of development, including AYAYI's basic information, personality preferences, etc., and referenced real-life portraits and a large number of market surveys, and iterated more than 40 versions in half a year. Subsequent operations revolve around the positioning of "Metaverse Messenger", extending to various content sharing.

In order to create such a "digital life", the team of Ranmai Company includes "BD group, creative group (including content, design, photography), and technical group. The members include screenwriters, designers, and senior practitioners from 4A advertising companies and MCN agencies with complex experience."

Therefore, the high technical and human costs behind hyper-realistic digital humans are the threshold for the hyper-realistic digital human race and also the core competitiveness of each company.

After AYAYI's success, Ranmai Company ushered in two rounds of large-scale financing in 2022, receiving tens of millions of yuan in Pre-A round financing from Haina Asia Venture Capital Fund and 10 million US dollars in A round financing from BAI Capital in January and December respectively, demonstrating the capital market's optimism about the hyper-realistic digital human track.

Founded in October 2020, Ranmai Company is focused on developing metaverse content IP and digital asset operation management, and has built its own digital human IP matrix. It has currently developed and operated multiple hyper-realistic digital humans such as AYAYI, Noah, Ro1yi, Ayo and LUCY.

At the current stage, the profit model of hyper-realistic digital people is still focused on the monetization of traffic on various platform accounts, such as taking on product advertising and brand cooperation, that is, it is still concentrated on the fan economy. The approach of Ranmai Company is to apply the methodology of real-life Internet celebrities. After tasting the sweetness of AYAYI, it used the same approach to create a new batch of virtual idols.

They are: Noah, Ro1yi, Ayo and LUCY, but this also leads to the problem of homogenization coming particularly quickly.

Ranmai Technology's hyper-realistic digital people, apart from slightly different character designs, have similar appearances, development paths, and monetization methods upon closer inspection, and cannot play the role of matrix supplement.

So, apart from AYAYI who became an overnight sensation, the second person on Weibo with the most fans is Noah, with 434,000. The remaining few have only around 100,000 fans. Ayo, who was launched in the second half of last year, has as few as 8,147 fans.

Even though they often interact in the comment section of AYAYI's social accounts, take photos together, and arrange CP hype, the growth in traffic is not obvious and is basically not able to drive growth.

In addition to ineffective internal cooperation, fierce external competition also forces people in hyper-realistic digital art to roll inward.

For example, Ling Ling mentioned above, debuted in 2020 as a digital human predecessor. She has collaborated with major brands such as Tesla, Nayuki, and Bulgari. Her reputation as a national-style virtual KOL is loud and recognizable. She even appeared on the stage of this year's Internet Spring Festival Gala, and her dynamic performance was smooth.

Ling

In addition, Liu Yexi, the top virtual beauty blogger in short videos, gained a million followers in 24 hours after her first work; Li Weike, who focuses on technology, endorsed the Dali metaverse version of the city blockbuster; the healing girl A Xi cooperated with brands such as Zhong Xuegao and Givenchy; Vince, a frequent visitor to the fashion circle, participated in a technology fashion show as soon as he debuted...

Axi

Some big companies have launched their own hyper-realistic digital people, such as Xijiajia from Baidu and Guan Xiaofang from Kuaishou. Media platforms are also not far behind, such as Xiao C from CCTV, Xiao Yang from Hunan Satellite TV, and Gu Xiaoyu from Zhejiang Satellite TV.

Higaga

As each field has its own representative hyper-realistic digital human with more vertical functions, the competition in this field has become increasingly fierce. Hyper-realistic digital humans represented by AYAYI have begun to face the dilemma of insufficient functionality, lack of stage, and single monetization.

It is worth mentioning that it was less than two years since the birth of AYAYI, and the elimination round came much faster than expected, which also proved that this was the eve of iteration, some people made money, and some people ended up falling.

According to relevant data from iMedia Consulting and the "Virtual Digital Human In-depth Industry Report", the market size of China's virtual human-driven industry was 107.49 billion yuan in 2021, and the core market size was 6.22 billion yuan. It is estimated that the market sizes will reach 640.27 billion yuan and 48.06 billion yuan respectively in 2025. By 2030, the overall market size of virtual digital humans in my country will reach 270 billion yuan.

Therefore, as the technology level gradually becomes more average and open, the internal competition of hyper-realistic digital people has once again focused on content. Whether it is character design or operation, rich content is the long-term competitiveness. Only in this way can we continue to break the circle and grab a steady stream of traffic.

We can imagine that with the further integration of hyper-realistic digital humans and technologies such as AI and VR, the sense of immersion will continue to increase, and there will be new breakthroughs in monetization.

I have seen such a prediction:

The metaverse contains everything that exists in the physical world. In the future, every C-end user will use his or her own digital identity to live and socialize in the metaverse. In other words, if the B-end embraces digital humans now, it is equivalent to embracing the future. Although the current hyper-realistic digital humans have reached a bottleneck ahead of time, there is no doubt that the early layout of digital humans may become an effective measure for the B-end to take a position in the future metaverse competition.

Author: Chen Chumu

Source public account: Weiguojiang (ID: wjam123456), focusing on the forefront of new media and insights into new consumer fields.