the era of super anchors is coming to an end.

author | zhang hanjing

editor | fun business tmt group

the boots have landed, and the recent turmoil of "three sheep" has finally come to a conclusion.

on the evening of september 26, the joint investigation team of the hefei municipal administration for market regulation released the results of its investigation into san yang network technology co., ltd.; it was determined that "three yang" had engaged in illegal activities such as false propaganda in the live broadcast of goods, and planned to decide on the investigation. sanyang company confiscated illegal gains and fined a total of 68.9491 million yuan, and ordered it to suspend operations and make rectifications within a time limit. the disciplinary inspection and supervision department will open a case for investigation of units and personnel who have neglected their duties and oversight.

subsequently, the "three sheep" company also issued a statement saying that it fully accepted the investigation opinions and punishment results of the joint investigation team, assumed relevant legal responsibilities, and would comprehensively carry out internal rectification of the company.

on september 27, three sheep’s customer service stated that after the order registration is verified, users who purchased “hong kong meicheng mooncakes” and “australian grain-fed beef rolls” will be refunded one and compensated three.

as soon as the announcement came out, related topics immediately became hot searches, and there are still many discussions about three sheep’s compensation in real-time posts. the topics surrounding the "three sheep" series of events have lasted for nearly a month since the beginning of september. is it finally coming to an end?

01. is the "crisis" of the three sheeps resolved?

since the rise of live streaming e-commerce, this is the first time that the local market supervision bureau, commerce bureau, and public security bureau can jointly investigate live streaming organizations.

exaggeration, fake sales, and poor after-sales service have always been common problems among anchors who bring goods. before meicheng mooncakes, "three sheep" had been criticized for false advertising and after-sales problems and was on the hot search. however, no product has ever been able to sustain the "popularity" of meicheng mooncakes for such a long time.

from before to after the mid-autumn festival, entries related to "meicheng mooncakes" appeared nearly 50 times on weibo's hot searches.

this continuous controversy caused by mooncakes is inseparable from the previous scolding war between xiao yang and simba. because of the "crab card dispute", simba criticized three sheep as a "three-no" company that has no "quality inspection, after-sales, and compensation attitude" and only speculates.

for a time, all parties focused their attention on the three sheep. at this moment, the meicheng mooncakes in brother yang’s live broadcast room were exposed as “false propaganda”; later, some netizens claimed that the hairy crabs that brother yang had recently brought were not from yangcheng lake; before the mid-autumn festival, brother yang brought it was pointed out that the moutai liquor that had been shipped was adulterated with "top-notch liquor"... some netizens also summarized the products that xiao yang had been involved in controversy before, ranging from food and beverages to jewelry and skin care products, and the amount was as high as more than 20 species.

as the discussion continued to ferment, it also triggered investigations by relevant departments in hefei.

on the evening of the 26th, while the hefei city joint investigation team issued a briefing, the douyin e-commerce security center also issued the "punishment announcement on the "three sheeps""; douyin announced that starting from september 21, the platform the account of "three sheep" has been suspended and will be further urged to actively rectify and properly resolve the after-sales compensation issues for relevant consumers.

regarding the notification results of three sheep, gu denghui, a senior lawyer at beijing zhoutai law firm, believes that three sheep involved false commercial propaganda when bringing goods, and also failed to fulfill its strict product selection responsibilities and verification of product information. ,in addition to administrative fines, consumers may also face subsequent civil lawsuits and bear corresponding compensation.。

regarding the "refund one and compensate three" offer from three sheep's customer service, lawyer gu denghui also said that if the false promotion, quality and other problems of the product are caused by the manufacturer, then the manufacturer should bear the corresponding liability for compensation, but three sheep as a seller and live broadcaster, if you make mistakes in product selection, promotion, etc., you will also need to bear corresponding legal responsibilities;the subsequent specific division of responsibilities and compensation may need to be determined based on the investigation results of the relevant departments and the contractual agreements between the parties and other factors.

in addition to "carrying goods and overturning", what makes three sheep popular for a long time is the "melon" within the company. first, momo, the popular female anchor of three sheep, was found to have stopped for a long time. someone pointed out that simba mentioned in the scolding battle that "lu wenqing and three sheep sent a little girl to jail", and he was talking about momo. .

shortly afterwards, a recording of lu wenqing, suspected to be the co-founder of three sheep network, leaked. in the recording, lu wenqing bluntly said that momo had style problems, and also mentioned that he "praises whoever he wants, and whoever makes him popular will be popular"; and "three sheep network" "sheep" immediately stated that the recording was artificially synthesized and forged by ai and had called the police.

a few days ago, li xiaona, the newly signed anchor of three sheep, cried in a live broadcast that she "doesn't want to take the blame for three sheep." li xiaona said that three sheep asked her to pretend to be someone from the mooncake brand and bear the responsibility for false propaganda; however, the live broadcast was quickly cut off midway.

on september 26, at the same time as the joint investigation team’s briefing, the results of the hefei police’s investigation into lu wenqing’s recording were announced. the police report shows that wang moumou used ai tools to forge the audio and video of lu moumou, and wang moumou has been arrested.

in this nearly month-long fermentation of public opinion, brother yang has never shown up, nor has he responded publicly. now that the investigation results have been announced, brother yang still has not appeared in the public eye.

with the "dust settling", has the "crisis" of three sheep been resolved? can three sheep's reputation and lost fans be restored? there are also reasons why momo disappeared, whether li xiaona was coerced by the three sheep, and how the three sheep will rectify their problems next? still waiting for answers from brother yang and three sheep company.

02. super anchor wants to “retire”

it is not yet known how sanyang company will be reorganized in the future and whether it will be hit hard as a result; but it is foreseeable that brother yang will not appear in the live broadcast room with goods in the short term.

in fact, brother yang has long wanted to "retire". this year, brother yang has publicly mentioned "plans to reduce live broadcasts with goods" many times; in the first four months of 2024, brother yang has only carried out live broadcasts with goods for 19 days, and the length of each live broadcast is also decreasing. .

moreover, brother yang is not the only super anchor who wants to "retire".

simba has also mentioned his "retirement" plan many times, publicly stating that he will spend two years in other industries to study ai, and bluntly said that "live broadcast e-commerce has nothing new to excite him." after "national son-in-law" dong yuhui left oriental selection, the frequency of live broadcasts gradually decreased; "make a friend" luo yonghao has long since faded out of the live broadcast room and invested in new entrepreneurial projects. several major anchors have lowered their enthusiasm for "bringing goods".

industry leaders are often the first to feel changes in industry trends. according to research data from iresearch consulting report, compared with the early stage of industry development,the growth rate of china's live streaming e-commerce market will decline to a certain extent between 2023 and 2026. the industry will show a steady growth trend in the future and enter a stage of refined development.。

faye wong once sang in "kaidao tumi" that "the idols i have been addicted to disappear one by one"; "internet celebrities" and "idols" have life cycles. the live streaming e-commerce industry has been booming in the past ten years, and internet celebrities have been exposed to bad negative news, and some have even been "banned from the entire network"; in the rounds of "house collapse incidents", the former head the ecology of internet celebrity anchors has already been greatly reshuffled.

recently, the "first generation internet celebrity" zhang dayi officially announced the closure of the online store "my happy wardrobe" that he had opened for ten years; ruhan holdings, founded by zhang dayi, was limited by over-reliance on zhang dayi's personal ip and eventually collapsed. delisting.

zhuang shuai, an expert in the retail e-commerce industry and founder of bailian consulting, believes that the main way for mcm institutions to reduce risks is to continuously cultivate new anchors; secondly, to build its own brand. "because ip created by individuals is unstable, but commercial brands can be made into century-old brands or even millennium-old brands. the brand recognition and stability are also better than personal ip."

in recent years, many leading mcn organizations have been making efforts to cultivate "successors" for top anchors, and at the same time, they are transforming towards enterprise, branding and business diversification.

in terms of self-operated brands, qianxun founded the clothing brand "viyaniya" and the cosmetics brand "four seasons diary" very early. later, he also jointly created the food brand "fengweipai" with nicholas tse.

xinxuan operates more than 20 private brands, including the food brand "jianfeng eater", the beauty and skin care brand "benzhi", the daily chemical brand "miaojiesi", and the "cotton code" "holax" and so on. sanyang launched its own brand "xiaoyang zhenxuan", which sold 10 million orders within six months of its launch. it has also reached a cooperation with opcon vision (300595.sz), a leading domestic ok lens company, to jointly invest in the establishment of a subsidiary and establish a new brand "mengshiqing" to mainly develop products such as color contact lenses. at present, xinxuan and sanyang have opened physical stores of "xinxuan supermarket" and "xiaoyang zhenxuan" in guangzhou and anhui respectively.

at the same time, the leading mcn organizations in china have also shown great enthusiasm for “going global”. in january, oriental selection quietly announced a number of overseas recruitment positions, with an average monthly salary of more than 20,000. in april, it was reported that yuanwang technology had tested tiktok live streaming in the southeast asian and north american markets. data from the crowley index research institute shows that nearly 30% of mcn institutions will begin to go overseas in 2023.

however, so far, these new businesses with high hopes have not developed enough to replace the live broadcast business; in a short period of time, the company still needs super anchors to "sit in" the live broadcast room.

on the other hand, platforms do not want to lose the "contribution" of these big anchors yet. according to statistics from the new list, simba himself estimates that the total sales volume in 2023 will be 12.5 billion yuan; on douyin, xiao yang ge and dong yuhui have at least one or two single-game sales exceeding 100 million yuan within a month. even if the top anchors really don’t want to do it anymore, can the platforms easily let go of their “sold titles”?

03. will there be a new "super head"?

however, in order to get rid of dependence on the "best sellers",platforms are also gradually “de-heading”。

after simba became famous, he has been blocked and banned by kuaishou countless times on one hand. the "gratitude and hatred" between kuaishou and simba is a typical story of "xiao he succeeds and xiao he fails". as simba grows bigger and becomes less and less controlled by the platform, kuaishou continues to cultivate other super anchors and support small and medium-sized anchors or store broadcasters, and at the same time continues to increase support for brand self-broadcasters.

according to "qujie business", xinxuan's gmv will account for less than 5% of kuaishou e-commerce gmv in 2023. moreover, as kuaishou’s e-commerce business expands, xinxuan’s gmv share in kuaishou is declining year by year; from 2019, it accounted for nearly one-third of the entire platform’s gmv; by 2023, it will account for less than 5%.

douyin has also been relatively "restrained" in the income proportion of the top anchors in the entire platform, and attaches great importance to the support of middle- and waist-level experts. the "2024 douyin e-commerce expert growth report" shows that among the authors who achieved annual sales of 500,000 to 5 million on the platform, 81% of the experts have less than 100,000 fans. small and medium-sized experts have become the main force in promoting douyin products.

on the other hand, dabo’s overall traffic space is also narrowing. in july this year, "36kr" reported that douyin was reducing the proportion of traffic allocation to dabo and tilting the traffic to high-quality short videos and brand store broadcasts. shelf-type sales such as brand self-broadcasting and product cards have gradually become the norm on douyin.

the "2023 douyin e-commerce annual report" shows that the gmv growth rate of douyin e-commerce experts' live broadcasts in 2023 is 49%, while the gmv growth rate of shelf malls (including brand live broadcasts, videos, and commodity card businesses) is 130% , much higher than dabo.

the living space of dabo is becoming increasingly narrow, and the upward path for new anchors will naturally become more crowded.it is no longer as easy as before for small and medium-sized experts to get to the top.

moreover, in recent years, the continuous "overturning of goods delivery" has made many consumers deeply resentful of the industry of "goods delivery anchors"; this year, there are many experts who have excellent performance in delivering goods, but they have not had time to grow into the head has already overturned.

for example, the crab and sweet potato noodles recently brought by "northeast rain sister" have been involved in controversy. in the past three days, their douyin account has lost more than 600,000 fans; "xiaoying family", which has more than 5 million fans on douyin, has also lost more than 600,000 followers in recent days. due to the huge contrast between the live broadcast of delivering goods and the daily videos, it fell into the controversy of "staged suffering" and lost fans like crazy.

as for the new amateur internet celebrities born this year, their enthusiasm for transformation and sales is not as good as before. @ seven orangutans, which became popular with the nanny skit, mainly relies on advertising and window displays to make money, and has not started live streaming to sell goods; kaifeng wang po, who became popular with "matchmaking", also stopped selling goods after gaining followers, and issued a statement, " there will be no commercial behavior towards any fans." guo youcai, who became famous for his cover of "promise", is still focusing on entertainment and music live broadcasts. he once mentioned in the live broadcast that he did not want to lose his barbecue stall and would continue to persevere on the road of music. .

after dong yuhui, there has been no new phenomenon-level anchor for more than two years. although "rising stars" such as xiaohongshu and video accounts have been continuously supplying "newcomers", the ones who can finally break out of the circle are artists such as zhang xiaohui, li dan, and zhong liti. it is no wonder that some people call dong yuhui the "last afterglow" of the great anchor era.

in the final analysis, the anchor is still a part of the "traffic business". in the past, super anchors were born because the platform needed benchmarks, users needed low prices, and brands were eager to hit sales; but now, the focus of platform development is no longer here, and the low-price strategy has been implemented throughout the industry.

when all parties have better choices or channels, the traffic and benefits available to anchors will decrease, and their status in the industry will no longer be the same.

however, the platform will not stop supporting new top anchors. recently, "mr. k" on douyin has made some progress in the field of selling goods with his voice that contrasts greatly with his appearance and "abstract" live broadcast method. on the other hand, kuaishou's "dan dan" also announced that his fans have exceeded 100 million.

however, do these gradually growing "new heads" really have a chance to reach the heights of the "three sheeps" and "simba"s? how many opportunities are left for them to establish their own business territory?