The Paradox Of Xiao Hong'S Book: High Quality Content And Difficult Business Mode Coexist

In most cases, it is difficult for a person to prove a thing that he has never done. But if you want to be a KOL of little red book, you must have this skill. When a normal shopping note is judged by the little red book as an advertisement, you must start the skill immediately and prove it is not.

Xiao Hong's book did not directly indicate this rule in any statement or announcement, but the new brand co operative rule issued in May 10th has caused a huge discussion in the marketing and advertising industry. The judgment of ordinary notes and advertisements is one of the focuses of discussion.

In the new regulation, Xiao Hong has greatly increased the entry requirements for the number of fans and the average exposure of the brand, as well as the penalties for violating the rules.

The violation is private advertising.

The brand collaborator is the name of Xiao Hong's users who publish branded paid advertisements on their platform by writing shopping notes.

Similarly, micro-blog is called micro-blog red man, and its voice is called DA / star.

After the new rules are upgraded, the brand partners must also sign the real name system with the MCN institution (content co operative body) before they can publish the brand advertisements in a normal manner. In private, they will face a penalty of deducting the total score of 12 points and losing the brand partner's qualification throughout the year.

In short, no advertising can be made within one year after the violation is confirmed.

MCN agencies were asked to sign up to 10 eligible brand partners to enter the list of official certification bodies.

At present, there are 59 MCN institutions in the list, of which 48 fail to reach the standard of signing the contract.

"Before May 10th, no MCN institution knew whether or not it was included in the list, or even we didn't know that Xiao Hong had to do it."

Yoyo, founder of a growing MCN institution, told YiMagazine.

With the development of Xiaohong book as a famous shopping and sharing community in China, it has formed a business ecosystem with multiple roles. A large number of advertisers have released the "grass planting" notes which are recommended by advertisements through MCN agencies or directly through KOL. They have received the exposure of brands and products; KOL has collected advertising fees; MCN has charged intermediate service fees.

Now, the new rules have touched the interests of all the participants in this chain: the standard KOL has shrunk to more than 17 thousand people from the previous time to about 5000, and they and MCN are facing more stringent regulation and more likely advertising in the future, while the brand side will have to accept the growth of marketing costs.

Before Xiaohong Book charges these advertising pactions, the new rules seem to bring no direct benefits to all of the above parties, but Qu Fang, founder of Xiaohong book, thinks this is something that must be done.

In the past few years, Xiao Hong has constantly adjusted the positioning of the platform. After weakening the label of cross-border electricity providers, he defined himself as "Lifestyle Community". Slogan also changed from "finding good things in the world" to "marking my life".

Data released by Xiao Hong in January of this year also showed that the number of registered users has exceeded 200 million. Qu Fang also declared that the number of active users of Xiaohong book has increased by 4 to 5 times in the past year, and tens of millions of live users have been registered.

In the past year, there are indeed some brands mentioned in the first finance and economics YiMagazine interview that Xiao Hong book and some plans to try KOL advertising on top.

"We find that many young consumers like to take a little red book to search for a real picture of their products, share their experience, and even evaluate their brands in the same way when they know something new."

JoanNg, executive vice president of SWAROVSKI global crystal boutique business, said in an interview with YiMagazine in March this year.

When interviewed by the media, Qu Fang described the current little red book as "gold mine", and said, "a lot of people want to dig."

This year's CCTV 3.15 party criticized the small red book platform on behalf of the "grey grass industry", which can be regarded as a kind of mining method.

From the company level, it is very important to strictly manage community content, especially for Xiao Hong's sharing of community products, although it is a "Amway" community, but no one wants to see a pile of advertisements.

Word of mouth is very important.

If the small red book hopes that the active users who have increased four or five times in the near future can survive for a long time, they must strengthen their ability to continuously provide stable and high-quality content.

But a lot of uncontrolled or even false advertisements are increasingly affecting the core user experience of the little red book -- content value, which is one of the main reasons why Xiao Hong's decision has been "tough".

But the little red book model, at least from the current product design, has a natural paradox.

It relies on user production and quality related content related to brands and commodities to maintain the activity of "grass community", and can not let it be controlled by the platform.

As a "grass planting community", the content ecology of Xiao Hong's book naturally comes closer to the brand and the commodity itself. The platform distribution mechanism has thousands of faces, which directly leads to an opaque zone.

For example, you can guess the amount of content based on the number of fans in a micro-blog account, but in a small red book, an account with 1 million fans may have only 10 thousand browsing volume for a note, while a 10 thousand note with only 10 thousand fans may have 1 million views.

This opaque part that can not be accurately calculated is the premium source of KOL and MCN institutions.

The one size fits all approach can help the platform clean up junk advertisements quickly and purify content ecology.

But in a grass planting community, how to judge a note and a picture is a violation of advertising behavior. So far, little red book has not given a clear answer to this question.

This is also the contradiction between the new rules and the collective discontent of KOL and MCN institutions.

In fact, micro-blog and jitter also exist in the balance of advertising and user experience, but on these platforms, at least, advertisements are basically discernible.

Although Qu Fang said that the most important thing in content ecology management is product technology and manual audit, there are still many small red book users who have indicated to the first finance and economics YiMagazine that their regular notes are prompted to violate the content, which requires two editors and can be re issued after examination.

This kind of "miscarriage of justice" means not only a large number of central and tail KOL can hardly produce normal production, but also for users who read notes, their user experience is actually hurt, because after all, some of the high-quality content is lost.

Even in the future, they may see more advertisements than advertisements that have been written to Xiao Hong Shu Bao.

Qu Fang once revealed that the content of Xiao Hong Shu 97% was generated by UGC, and 70% of the daily exposure accounted for UGC. The proportion of KOL production content was not high.

But yoyo, based on her own work experience, thinks this data is not reasonable. She told the first finance and economics YiMagazine, "we have been observing for a long time. The quality content of Xiaohong book Shanghai is mainly produced by KOL.

The serious users of Xiao Hong's book have one thing in common, that is, they can only watch without hair.

They like to get valuable content by constantly refreshing the page, and output is just an occasional occurrence.

Compared with jitter, a short video platform that produces only one content by recording and ending recording, the content production of Xiao Hong is indeed more complex and more demanding. It requires users to have the ability to edit pictures and texts, while taking pictures, selecting pictures, repairing pictures and writing text requires more time and energy.

There is bound to be a reasonable motivation behind the continuous production of quality content.

The power source of KOL is very clear, increasing fans and setting up a clear set of people, winning the favor of advertisers, and advertising revenue.

In order to get more attention and fans, they are naturally willing to export some high-quality content through high-frequency to absorb powder.

Therefore, when more than 12 thousand KOL who have lost their brand partners have been completely passive, it is difficult for them to have the power to continuously output high-quality content.

For Xiao Hong's book, this is not necessarily a good thing.

Going through some barbaric growth and purging the ecosystem seems to be a more consistent development path of several major content platforms.

When micro-blog launched the "micro mission" in 2013, it also made clear that it was a part of the commercialization plan. The purpose of the launch was mainly to standardize the order of the platform, but it would finish the "advertising task" by 30%.

In July last year, the "star map" platform was also used to regulate the content of the platform. However, in a three month period, the proportion of the "star map" was reduced from 60% to 30%.

According to Qu Fang's recent statement, Xiao Hong's book does not consider pumping money to the brand partners. "The future business model must not be a simple Commission."

However, according to the answer information issued by Hongwen's official MCN agency, Hongwen, after the official trading platform of Xiao Hong's book in the future, Hongwen will withdraw 10% from the single paction volume, but the commission fee will be reduced for the first two months.

MCN agencies prefer the little red book to set a clear percentage of the maid, rather than a large-scale restriction of KOL.

Because the KOL and MCN institutions, which are excluded, want to reach the standard in the short term, they can only "spend money to find people to open KOL notes, and let the little red book be pushed to other users according to the algorithm, but because the clicks are not really interested in this note, so even if the amount of browsing is higher, the algorithm will only distribute the notes to other users who are not interested."

Yoyo said.

Zhang Hao, the head of another newly established MCN agency last year, is also picking up the right target candidates from the remaining 5000 plus brand partners and looking for potential KOL in the near future.

"I don't ask for anything, do not smoke, do not restrict you to take other advertising, the most you pay a tax."

He said to "first finance" YiMagazine.

Some advertisers have begun to take a wait-and-see attitude.

"Now that two lists have been suspended, the client intends to see what new changes will follow."

Zhang Hao said.

Many brands originally chose KOL to pick up some head, middle and tail KOL to advertise: the KOL of the head participated in the brand activity, the KOL in the middle of the county published the lateral evaluation, and the tail KOL released trial product to reproduce the real user experience content.

But now, all the releases are limited to brand information such as new products, exhibitions, marketing activities and so on.

"Advertisers often ask me what I can bring in 100 notes on Xiao Hong's book, which is unanswerable."

Yoyo points out.

Because it is not allowed to set up links such as external chains and two-dimensional codes, all advertising notes on brand can not be directly drained into Taobao, Jingdong or even the official website of the brand. This means that the advertising effect of Xiao Hong can not be accurately evaluated, and the pformation of sales here is also an invalid indicator.

In addition to the amount of fans and exposure, some MCN agencies can only put some other users in the report to evaluate the positive and negative semantic analysis of the content of the notes.

Analysts in the industry pointed out that the long chain closure of Xiao Hong's book is to strive for time for itself. The aim is to enable users to form a closed loop from grass planting to weeding, and all behaviors are completed in the same App.

In the restructuring of the company in February this year, Xiao Hong upgraded the original e-commerce department to the "brand number" department, which is to introduce the brand from the official level, so that the latter can complete the production process to the electricity supplier's sales process.

As one of the core categories of Xiao Hong's distribution, the beauty brand has released a positive signal.

At present, most brands of L'OREAL group have opened brand names, among which L'OREAL, Maybelline, Saint Laurent and other brands have opened official flagship stores.

Estee Lauder group's high-end makeup brand TomFord and LabSeries, the men's skin care brand, have opened the official flagship store, but the rest of the brands have also opened their official brand accounts.

Shiseido group has launched the brand number for the three brands of Shiseido, NARS and CPB, but there is no plan to disclose the store.

The head of Shiseido group said to the first finance and economics YiMagazine that the brand number was opened because "Xiao Hong has accumulated for a long time the young users of a second tier city, and the expansion of the platform recently to other cities, so that the customers of different brands of Shiseido are gathered in the community." however, Shiseido defines the "red book" as the "beauty vertical class sharing platform" and pursues "accurate brand and product promotion effect".

Beauty alone is not enough to support the ambition of Xiao Hong's book.

Before that, Xiao Hong's own e-commerce platform was criticized by consumers for a long time because of counterfeit goods. Few fashion and luxury brands were willing to put Xiao Hong book on the list of official electronic business platforms.

According to the first finance and economics YiMagazine, Xiao Hong once imitated Tmall's products such as "Burberry super brand day".

Burberry related responsible person said to "first finance" YiMagazine, "it is impossible to set up shop on Xiaohong book".

In May 13th, LV (LouisVuitton) became the first luxury brand to open its brand name on Xiao Hong book, but the account was mainly used to distribute stickers and video content, but it did not involve e-commerce business.

At present, only a handful of light luxury brands such as Coach and JimmyChoo have opened the official flagship store, but opening the shop is more of a trial run than a clear long-term behavior.

As long as the brand is not large enough to enter, the closed-loop will be difficult to form.

Xiao Hong's current valuation is more than 3 billion US dollars. Last year's financing from Alibaba has reached the D stage. It is urgent to find a reasonable way to cash in the business.

In February this year, Mao Wenchao and Qu Fang, the founder of Xiaohong book, emphasized in the company's internal letter that "2019 is the key year for user growth and commercialization of Xiaohong book".

So far, Xiao Hong has mainly done two things: one is to launch and upgrade the brand cooperation platform, the other is to start testing a social business product "Xiaohong store" which relies on WeChat's small program from March this year, trying to achieve the split by changing the way of sharing profits, so as to improve the conversion rate of community content.

But a few days ago, Qu Fang, in an interview with the media, said he could not answer the development plan of Xiaohong store, and pointed out that this is a very elementary "internal incubation project".

In other words, it is still difficult to achieve a closed loop in the short term.

The whole process of user behavior will still be mainly in the small red book grass, and then to Taobao, Jingdong, WeChat boutiques and other third party business channel.

This is back to the issue of content ecology.

Because the reaction of KOL and MCN was fierce, Xiao Hong book made a supplementary statement on the second day of issuing the new regulation, that is, May 11th, and extended the time limit for upgrading for one month.

The brand partners who meet the threshold of the new standard, whether or not they have completed the contract, can normally report the products according to the original route before June 10th. The notes will be released and distributed in the form of "a small advertisement", and it will no longer be able to use the report function after June 10th.

"It seems to be a pacifying strategy, but how many advertisers are willing to say that they are a small advertisement?"

Yoyo said.