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@new entropy original

author丨yixin editor丨sai ke

in recent days, public dissatisfaction with the top douyin influencer "crazy little yang" and the company behind him, three sheep, has intensified. after simba, the other party in the dispute, withdrew, little yang continued to be on the hot search list, and many quality issues such as fake meicheng mooncakes, trough meat, beef rolls, hair dryers, and meat grinders urgently need to be responded to.

even the people's daily commented: "compared with various 'black materials' and personal grudges, what deserves more attention is the product quality issues that are closely related to the vital interests of consumers and how to rectify the chaos in the live streaming industry."

china national radio directly pointed out that the "three sheep" were calling "family members" affectionately while calculating how to play word games and take advantage of loopholes to mislead their "family members". they relied on "dragging" and "hiding" to get out of several crisis events almost "unscathed".

over the past few days, the public opinion has focused on the "three sheep", mooncake merchants and even hefei, while douyin, as the platform, has remained invisible. in fact, the frequent problems of xiao yangge are also related to douyin's traffic algorithm and connivance.

when the public began to liquidate the influencers who brought goods, douyin's business model also entered a dead end. when the public began to liquidate the influencers who brought goods, douyin's business model also obviously entered a dead end.

01

crazy little yang brother, crazy car overturn

the "meicheng mooncakes" claimed that "each one was made by a michelin chef" and that their appearance was similar to that of maxim's mooncakes. the suspected false advertising made netizens lose their defense and also triggered the relevant departments in hefei to launch an investigation into the three sheep.

in china, a society where relationships are important, fake high-end mooncakes hit the pain points of many people. one boss said online that he bought 15 mooncakes to give to his employees, but when the news came out, he had to give them all to his relatives.

third-party data shows that as of september 18, meicheng ranked fourth on douyin’s 30-day mooncake sales list, with sales exceeding 80 million, while the “main brand” maxim’s mooncakes ranked only ninth, with sales of more than 50 million.

on douyin, private label mooncakes actually outperform the genuine ones.some netizens even revealed that meicheng mooncakes and the "fendi casa" mooncakes that had previously failed in a live broadcast room were both products recommended by douyin's waiter.

xiao yangge's frequent appearance on the hot search this time was initially due to a dispute with simba over the price of hairy crabs. after several verbal battles, simba said he would compensate some of the products of three sheep consumers.

the product promised to be compensated is the "caotou meat" meicaikourou that was exposed on march 15. the manufacturer of this meat product used inferior "caotou meat" containing a large number of lymph nodes. according to statistics, xiao yangge's meicaikourou sold a total of 1.09 million servings, with sales of 65.29 million yuan. the manufacturer of this product has been fined more than 5 million yuan.

however, what is surprising is that the local staff said that "three sheep" did not "sell" meicaikourou, and did not have to bear any responsibility, let alone pay compensation. hubei xiaocheng youxuan, which collected the payment, was the seller of the product, the manufacturer anhui donghui food technology co., ltd. was the producer, and "three sheep" was just the publisher of the advertisement.

whether it is meicaikourou or other products with quality issues,"three sheep" has never given any compensation to consumers. professional counterfeiter wang hai once revealed that according to the contract, if the product fails, the merchant has to compensate xiao yangge, and xiao yangge can get 30% of the total sales as compensation, which makes him earn more.

recently, some people have discovered that many of the pictures of the products it sells have an extra line of small words: "the seller of this product is the store operator to which the shopping link belongs, not this live broadcast room."

on september 11, simba announced that he would pay compensation for the losses caused by meicai kourou that night, with a total value of 100 million. subsequently, simba's live broadcast room was blocked.

next,the public opinion's "liquidation" of xiao yangge was completely spontaneous. crazy xiao yangge's account lost 1.29 million followers in a week. someone sorted out the problematic products of "three sheep" in recent years, the number was as high as 25, including many baby products.

netizens discovered that xiao yangge sold 180,000 pairs of dou xiaoyi children's shoes, and the plasticizer exceeded the standard by more than 200 times, and a case has been filed for investigation. another pair of xiaomibu children's shoes was fined as early as 2021 for unqualified plasticizers. later, it was found that the plasticizer exceeded the standard by more than 100 times, but more than 30,000 orders were sold in xiao yangge's live broadcast room.

in march last year, the baby cream promoted by xiao yangge was punished for false advertising. the cream claimed: "it is rich in 5 billion probiotics, 4,000+ ingredients that are not added, and natural bisabolol, which is 100% natural and has twice the soothing effect of synthetic ones..."

the "xian duo yu" beef rolls, which claimed to be australian original cut beef, were found by the relevant authorities in july this year to be not original cut beef, but spliced ​​meat, and were fined 500,000 yuan. at the time of the incident, xiao yangge even said righteously: "no splicing, no water injection, no pickling, no additives, no synthesis."

consumers are losing patience.

02

douyin "internet celebrity promotion", the entertainment and amateur aspects of e-commerce

almost every e-commerce platform has anchors who sell products, so why is it that brother yang has the most failures?

the viewpoint of "factory manager in the wind", an e-commerce blogger on weibo, is quite representative: "everyone is scolding the anchors, but have you ever thought that the platform has a greater responsibility? the platform uses big data collection and algorithms to package the easy-to-cheat people to the scammers. regardless of whether it is intentional or not, don't they have no responsibility?"

the xiao yangge model is the product of douyin’s traffic algorithm.

the traffic distribution of e-commerce platforms such as taobao and jd.com is almost entirely based on e-commerce logic, and the better the sales, the higher the weight. as an entertainment platform, douyin can obtain both e-commerce traffic and content traffic in the same live broadcast.

so there is a famous saying in the industry, "bring a cow into the live broadcast room, and the traffic will explode."

most of the top anchors who have grown up from douyin should be called “internet celebrities selling goods” rather than “anchors selling goods”.

brother yang and the guangdong couple started out by shooting funny videos, while jia nailiang is an entertainment star. even pure content celebrities, such as dongbei yujie, guo youcai, and "wa ya wa" huang lao shi, can't escape the need to bring goods. they are responsible for attracting traffic in front of the camera, while supply chain management and product selection are either entrusted to mcn agencies or formed by themselves.

brother xiao yang's live broadcast room is always full of people jumping up and down, playing and fighting. the introduction of the products is very brief, and the fancy tricks using the products take up most of the time.this is because when performing funny shows in the live broadcast room, brother yang is able to cut into larger content traffic from the douyin public domain and direct it to the products at the right time.

douyin covers most of the sinking market. the more unlimited it is, the easier it is to achieve the greatest common divisor of traffic. last year, taking advantage of the incident of his apprentice "the yellow of the traffic light", some netizens dug out that xiao yangge had made vulgar remarks such as "take out the sanitary napkin" and "brush your teeth with a toilet brush" when promoting products.

this style obviously has its own specific audience. in addition to entertainment, this audience also wants cheap prices, and "three sheep" must make consumers think they have picked up a bargain.

in the past 30 days, the products with the highest sales in crazy brother yang’s live broadcast room are two types of feitian moutai, ranking first, with a 500 ml bottle costing only 2,300 yuan, and total sales reaching 86 million.

however, in june this year, a man claimed that he bought a total of 24 bottles of moutai liquor in the live broadcast room. after testing and identification by a third-party agency, guangzhou zhongjiu, 14 bottles were found to be fake.

after the incident was exposed, zhongjiu testing began to provide free identification for moutai purchased in crazy xiao yangge's live broadcast room. according to the video it released, from september 12 to 15, 72 bottles of "zodiac moutai" purchased from the three sheep team's live broadcast room were detected to be non-authentic.

then, the douyin account of zhongjiu testing was blocked.

all of this makes the amateurism of the "three sheep" in supply chain management particularly glaring. no one has ever given a definite conclusion on whether those moutai are real or fake, and only moutai officials have come out meaningfully and said: "the probability of consumers buying fake wine is not that high."

in any case, the entertainment value and low price of "three sheep" have been deeply rooted in people's hearts.on september 17, the latest core strategy proposed by douyin e-commerce is almost based on xiao yangge’s model.

first of all, c stands for good prices and a wide range of products. "three sheep" not only has a wide range of products, but also has built a number of its own brands, and the prices are also "good". as for whether the products are "good", it doesn't seem to be very important.

secondly, o stands for global content. in other words, it means that we hope that all the influencers and anchors will become more "internet celebrities". "three sheep" has always been the benchmark for good traffic-type content on douyin. it not only has xiao yangge himself, vertical influencers and store broadcast matrix, but also has established a huge slice matrix, cutting the most essential parts of the live broadcast room into short videos for secondary distribution to bring goods.

r and e stand for marketing amplification and experience enhancement respectively. needless to say, all kinds of marketing investment and delivery are put into place. the store reputation of "crazy little brother yang" and "three sheep network" also reached 4.4 points respectively. at least from the numbers, the consumer experience is good.

the end point of douyin is to bring goods, and the end point of bringing goods is the xiao yangge model. for douyin, "three sheep" is a perfect case, but the perfection of its business model is probably going to sunset along with the traffic business itself.

03

xiao yangge is in crisis, and the douyin model is in trouble

it is an indisputable fact that the traffic growth rate of the douyin platform has slowed down. according to latepost, the growth rate of douyin e-commerce fell to 40% in march 2024, and the growth rate in april-june fell to 20-30%, and merchants and influencers entered a more intense competition stage.

at this critical period, douyin e-commerce needs to "return to the essence of content" like internet celebrities, "amplify marketing" to increase traffic, and "provide low prices and a full range of goods" at low prices. this is more like an impossible triangle.the additional content production costs and traffic costs incurred by merchants and influencers will inevitably be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices and lower product and service quality.

the slice matrix has always been the pride of "three sheep", but just a few days ago, a former slice master stopped updating and posted this:

"why didn't i do it? because i posted a lot of promotional videos, and many people commented that the same product was cheaper on taobao or duobao. in the meicheng mooncake incident... if this meicheng mooncake is worth 100, and you sell it for 160, i wouldn't say anything. but in the end (on other platforms), it's more than 50 for 3 boxes."

when consumers voted with their feet and left the "three sheep", under the skin of the gorgeous "michelin master black truffle lava premium mooncake" were the netizens who were waiting to liquidate the internet celebrity anchor, and the small accounts that collapsed in batches.

the cause of the crisis can be summed up in three words: anti-professional.

under the influence of douyin's anti-professional rules, it is difficult for douyin influencers to present products in a professional manner.several live-streaming e-commerce practitioners told the author that a product must be demonstrated and explained by a professional anchor for at least 3 to 5 minutes before the basic selling points and precautions can be initially explained.

the internet celebrities of "three sheep" obviously did not do so. douyin's traffic mechanism, low price requirements and recent emphasis on "returning to the essence of content" do not encourage such a professional style of selling products.

the most vivid example of the anti-professionalism of douyin influencers is zheng xiangxiang, who made a fortune by "quickly passing the money". she only reads the product name and price, one product in 3 seconds, and the audience has no time to see it clearly, so they just throw it away. with this completely anti-sales sales method, zheng xiangxiang's sales reached 100 million in 7 days, but after receiving the goods, customers gave them a lot of bad reviews, and some said "the quality is so bad that i am speechless."

although zheng xiangxiang was eventually judged by douyin to have violated regulations and was forced to withdraw from the live broadcast, this "quick payment" and account-deducting live broadcast model can effectively please the algorithm and continues to emerge.

similarly, fans of the “three sheep” enjoyed the entertainment performances, but if they wanted to use real money to vote for brother yang, they had to buy merchandise.

however, internet celebrities only exaggerate the products, quality accidents and brand accidents occur frequently, and the after-sales service levels of suppliers are uneven, making this kind of live streaming appear amateurish in every aspect.

the crisis and consequences of anti-professional influencers are putting douyin e-commerce in crisis. during the 618 shopping festival this year, the traffic of top anchors was reported to have collectively declined. the return rate of the clothing industry was as high as 70-80%. a women's clothing merchant sold 6.7 million and returned 5.9 million. the volume of negative reviews from consumers was also greater than in previous years. problems such as goods not matching the version, stolen pictures and counterfeit money, and return cycles leading to foreign objects in pockets appeared in large numbers.

the root cause is not the unscrupulous merchants, but the fact that douyin's traffic mechanism imposes an impossible triangle of requirements on e-commerce: internet celebrity content, extremely low prices, and increased traffic, which has spawned a large number of anti-professional business models and sales models.

what is the way out for “three sheep”, douyin and even the entire live streaming e-commerce?

rightthe people's daily summarized the crisis best: "the sellers must uphold professional ethics, improve their business skills, and improve their operating procedures. they should be less blindly enthusiastic about gimmicks and traffic, and more focused on improving quality and service."