Live broadcast rooms are frequently cracked down on, and anchors have difficulty finding a balance between product selection and making money

Double 12 has just passed, and there are also news about anti-counterfeiting and consumer rights protection in the live broadcast room of the year-end shopping festival. So what should we do to avoid the phenomenon of product "rollover"? This article may give you the answer.

The just-concluded Double 12 shopping festival was not full of tension, as major e-commerce platforms ended the year-end shopping festival in a "low-key" manner. In the dull atmosphere, it seems that only the Internet celebrity "Crazy Little Yang Ge" with hundreds of millions of fans is still attracting the attention of netizens because he was "hard-hit" by a well-known counterfeiter to find that the power of the wall-breaking machine was false.

Although he and the blender manufacturer quickly provided an inspection report from a third-party testing agency stating that "the inspected items met the standard requirements", Wang Hai's side raised new questions. It was reported that "Brother Xiao Yang" began to accept returns from fans and added an additional compensation of 100 yuan.

The problem of mismatched goods and counterfeit goods has always been a nightmare for the live broadcast industry, especially for top influencers. According to incomplete statistics from "New Broadcast Field", there have been nine cases of counterfeit goods in the live broadcast rooms of celebrities and well-known anchors in the past three months.

The quality of products in live broadcast rooms has been frequently criticized, and the credibility of well-known anchors has been declining. In order to avoid the phenomenon of "failure" of products, many anchors' product selection teams have also begun to "change"...

1. MCN avoids pitfalls and returns to its original intention in product selection?

"In the past year or so, the product selection team has also started to be rigorous."

Talking about the downfall of top internet celebrities and the crisis of trust among consumers in live streaming, Jim, the product selection manager of an MCN agency in Guangzhou, said that many MCNs and anchor teams have begun to realize that live streaming product selection is the key to survival.

After all, both MCN and anchor teams are well aware of the high costs and efforts involved in cultivating influencers, maintaining traffic, and building influence. Once the selection of products is not strict, and the products in the live broadcast room are counterfeited by consumers, the anchor's reputation will inevitably be damaged, and it may even be difficult for them to make a comeback. Internet celebrity Simba may be a typical example.

"Some people say that many anchors knowingly sell counterfeit goods. But anchors with a certain degree of fame understand that it is really not necessary." Jim said helplessly. As early as the beginning of the development of live e-commerce, the nature of the anchor's product selection team was more like business personnel to attract cooperation from anchors, and naturally paid more attention to quantity than quality.

As long as small businesses can afford the slot fees and are willing to give profits to the live broadcast room, all kinds of products without quality assurance, high-quality imitations, and fakes will be moved to the live broadcast room. As for the anchors, they will always believe that they are only recommending rather than directly selling. Once the product fails, an apology will be enough.

However, as the industry develops, relevant laws and regulations are improved, and users become more savvy, it seems that the anchor's "apology" to avoid responsibility when the live broadcast product fails is just wishful thinking. Therefore, in order to prevent the anchor from being caught in public opinion storms such as selling fakes and false propaganda, which will cause losses to the team and organization, the product selection team can only strictly control the product selection process.

"Now, in addition to assigning a product selection specialist to each contracted anchor, the company also has a product selection laboratory with dedicated personnel responsible for quality control of live broadcast products. For example, for some stainless steel products, we will first test them with a drop of medicine. In the field of small household appliances, false power labels are very common, so we use power instruments to test them."

Jim said that when it comes to beauty and skin care products, the product selection team will personally try them out. Regardless of their efficacy, they will at least ensure that they will not cause skin allergies before putting them on the shelves. "Once we encounter high-value jewelry or wine, we even have to send them to a third party for testing to avoid a failure."

In fact, as live broadcast teams and MCNs gradually pay more attention to product selection, the salaries of related positions have also risen. Currently, on mainstream recruitment platforms, the monthly salary for live broadcast product selection positions is around 10,000 yuan, and talents with experience in supply chain and testing can even earn up to 30,000 yuan per month.

"Of course, strict product selection is not enough. In recent years, live broadcast cooperation brands have also been very good at the 'AB set'." Jim explained that the so-called "AB set" means that the samples given by the cooperation brands to the anchors and institutions are compliant, but when the goods are finally shipped, they are not the same as described.

In order to prevent the above routines, the anchor team and MCN will even sign strict and huge compensation agreements with the companies when cooperating. If it is found that the goods are not as described, the company will not only bear full responsibility, but also compensate the losses of the anchor team, so as to restrain the behavior of the cooperating companies.

Of course, Jim also admitted that: after a series of combined efforts, the anchor team and MCN agencies have avoided the risk of quality failure of live broadcast products to the greatest extent, but it has also led to the loss of a large number of business opportunities. This can also be understood as raising the threshold for live broadcast product selection will directly affect business expansion.

2. Are you forced to choose products during live streaming?

"If we are very strict in product selection, I believe many small and medium-sized anchors will starve to death."

When talking about the topic of product selection for live streaming, "Da Yu", who was once the head of a live streaming team in Hangzhou, said that since there are many precedents in the industry where anchors have failed due to lax product selection, many live streaming organizations also know the importance of strict product selection. However, the ideal is beautiful, but the reality is very bleak.

If the product selection threshold is too high, the anchor will lose a lot of cooperation opportunities. I believe many people understand the reasons behind this.

“I dare say that more than 80% of the products sold in cooperation with internet celebrities are produced by small brands and small workshops.” As for the reason, Dayu explained that because well-known brands themselves have a certain market reputation and influence, in addition to live streaming, their offline and online sales channels are relatively mature, and there is a certain guarantee on sales.

What’s more, e-commerce anchors compete for traffic and product prices, so it’s hard for big brands to just “make friends.” Even when participating in big sales and shopping festivals, they rarely consider working with influencers, and most of them build their own teams and do their own live broadcasts. “In other words, most of those who want to work with influencer teams are small workshops that want to take the opportunity to make a name for themselves.”

Many products of small brands have not been "tested" by the consumer market, so the quality of products is naturally uneven. As early as January this year, the Shanghai Market Supervision Bureau conducted random inspections on six categories of goods sold on nine e-commerce live streaming platforms, and the results were exactly the same.

Among the 113 batches of samples, 22 batches failed, with a failure rate of 19.5%. In addition to being inferior and posing safety hazards, some products were not labeled with the name of the manufacturer, and were "three-no" products. It can be seen that the live broadcast field is indeed complicated, and this is also the biggest headache for the product selection team.

"Industry insiders know that only top streamers and head anchors are qualified to select products and talk about quality control, while small and medium-sized anchors can only accept all. As for top streamers and head anchors, false propaganda and rollover incidents often occur. What does this mean? Many of the products that have cooperation needs and can be selected by the team have hidden risks."

Dayu admits that even if well-known brands are looking for anchors to cooperate with, in order to comply with the industry's "low-price competition" rule, while giving benefits to users, in order to protect the company's profit margins, they will also consider launching "limited" products for live broadcasts - the quality is slightly inferior to that of official stores and offline channels.

Therefore, once the anchor team and MCN raise the threshold for selecting products for live broadcast, it will undoubtedly shut out a large number of cooperation opportunities. In addition, as brands and factories with certain strength have begun to set up their own live broadcasts in recent years, the anchors naturally have fewer cooperation opportunities to choose from.

"Sometimes, even though we know that the quality of products from small workshops is average, the anchors still have to push them anyway." Dayu stressed that many online celebrity teams attach importance to the selection of products for live broadcasts, naturally in order to find unqualified products without any quality assurance as early as possible and reduce the possibility of failure. But the main purpose is to find hidden dangers of products in advance, and avoid being guided by the cooperating companies in the extraction and promotion of selling points, so as to avoid falling into the trap of "false propaganda".

The move is to strike a difficult balance between risk and making money.

3. Don’t say too much in the live broadcast room

So, does a balance point between risk and survival for live streaming teams really exist?

Can internet celebrities who rely heavily on selling goods to earn sales commissions and slot fees really make money "safely" by taking risks?

"Nowadays, as long as they know that the products are three-no, counterfeit or shoddy, even a fledgling anchor would not dare to touch them. After all, a failure is a small matter, but the subsequent compensation of three times the amount for fake products and violation of relevant laws and regulations are a big deal." Dayu said with a wry smile that in order to reduce the risks of live streaming, the internet celebrity team will inevitably have to "game" with the cooperating companies.

As a rule, before starting a live broadcast with a company, the influencer team will first receive product samples and a series of product information from the company. In the past, as long as the team verified that the product had relevant qualifications and production batch numbers, they would generally arrange for it to be put on the shelves for live broadcast. As for the product selling points, they usually follow the product information and promotional materials provided by the company and read them verbatim.

For example, they will tell you everything about the power of a wall-breaking machine, the quality of a pearl necklace, and the effects of skin care products without reservation. "But now MCN has discovered that some companies have exaggerated the information they provide to the team. Once they recommend it in the live broadcast room, if the anchor is caught, the worst case scenario is false advertising. After suffering so many losses, the team will naturally be cautious." This also explains why more and more MCNs are currently keen on building their own product selection laboratories.

Even if there is no choice, the team will eventually put falsely labeled and inferior products on the shelves for the opportunity of live broadcast cooperation. However, they can know in advance what parameters of the products are falsely labeled and what aspects of the quality are lacking. As long as the anchor does not speak too confidently when mentioning the selling points, the risk will naturally be reduced.

"In other words, use more adjectives in live broadcasts and talk less about specific functions and parameters. That's it." Dayu took the small household appliances that often cause anchors to fail as an example, a wall-breaking machine product - the company advertises the power of 300W, but the nominal power is only 150W. If the nominal power of 300W comes from the anchor's mouth, once consumers fight against it, the responsibility for false advertising will obviously fall on the Internet celebrity team. But if the so-called power parameters are not mentioned throughout the whole process, and only "powerful" is advertised, there is no way to talk about false advertising.

"After all, the word "strong" is difficult to define, and your feelings may be completely different from mine." Dayu admitted that companies pay slot fees and sales commissions to let anchors sell goods. If the selling points are not "scripted", the companies will inevitably complain.

At this point, the importance of strict selection of products for live broadcasts is highlighted, and institutions use actual measured data to negotiate with companies: Are your parameters false, are the products mismatched, or are you exaggerating your advertising?

The ultimate result is that the partner companies have to compromise and give up their exaggerated demands for product promotion.

"At the same time, you have to give people a reassurance: rest assured, the anchor has traffic, and sales are guaranteed." Dayu said with a smile that there are always people who say that the support for the development of live e-commerce business is mostly some unknown small businesses and small products. This is precisely the main reason why consumers and industry insiders call for live broadcasts to strengthen product selection, while top live broadcasts keep failing.

For a long time in the future, no matter how much anchors, MCNs, and teams emphasize on raising the threshold for live product selection, news of anti-counterfeiting and consumer rights protection in the live broadcast rooms may continue to be heard.

After all, the crux here is not product selection (quality control), but the ecosystem.

Author: Kagura, Editor: Qin Yan, WeChat public account: Dongdong Notes (ID: dongdong_note)