Article | Amazing Research Institute, Author | Early Xia

After a lapse of nearly 7 years, Luo Yonghao appeared again on the JD live broadcast. Unlike in the past, Luo Yonghao's status changed from “CEO of Hammer Technology” to “Delivery Anchor,” but what hasn't changed is that the collaboration between the two has still attracted a great deal of attention.

As of 12:00 p.m. on May 31, Luo Yonghao's broadcast had a cumulative total of 17 million viewers within 12 hours of the “Make a Friend” live broadcast, and the total GMV exceeded 150 million yuan. Although the results are average, “Make a Friend” is already the performance of a super leading anchor on the JD live streaming platform, where the average number of viewers is only around 100,000.

From 2016, when Taobao launched the live streaming business until now, JD Live has not received more attention in terms of presence or business value. Now that JD is once again broadcasting live at the most important promotion point of the year, what kind of market environment will JD face this time around?

What did Luo Yonghao bring to the JD rematch live broadcast?

On the eve of “Double Eleven” in 2016, about half a year after Taobao launched the live streaming business,$JD-SW (09618.HK)$A follow-up strategy was adopted to launch the live streaming business. This year, Luo Yonghao was also a guest on JD's live broadcast as CEO of Hammer Technology and hosted the “Lao Luo Special”. However, at the time, the complete set of gameplay for live streaming with goods was not mature.Many consumers are still used to buying products directly through the search function of e-commerce platforms, so JD has not invested too much energy in the live streaming business.

It wasn't until demand for offline shopping shifted to online in 2020, when consumers poured into live streaming rooms, used the anchors as shopping guides and started a shopping boom, and live e-commerce suddenly exploded into a blowout period that JD paid attention to the value of the live streaming business again.At the time, Zhang Guowei, then head of JD Live, publicly set a goal: to promote the launch of 100% of its own stores by 2020, and reach a POP store launch rate of over 60%.

In order to achieve the goal, JD invited celebrities such as entrepreneur Dong Mingzhu, technology blogger Wang Ziru, and the CCTV anchor group and singer Wang Feng to the JD live broadcast room to start bringing goods. Among them, Dong Mingzhu teamed up with Wang Ziru to livestream the delivery special. JD matched over 100 million levels of total in-station exposure and provided support for a 10-million-level traffic matrix.

In terms of data, in more than three hours of live streaming, Dong Mingzhu and Wang Ziru achieved sales of more than 703 million yuan, setting a record for the highest transaction in the history of live streaming in the home appliance industry. The “Super Delivery Group” formed by well-known CCTV anchors Kang Hui, Sabine, Nigmati, Zhu Guangquan, and Peking Station host Chun Ni brought in 1.39 billion yuan of goods during the 3-hour live broadcast; Wang Feng's live streaming debut also garnered over 200 million yuan in sales and 9.15 million viewers.

Given the increase in both traffic and sales brought about by the celebrity effect,At “Double Eleven” in 2020, JD Live quickly expanded the scale of its live broadcast lineup, inviting more than 300 celebrities to experience live streaming and delivery. At the same time, it also held more than 500 “Creative CEO Live Streams”.As for the live streaming market, which is dominated by Via and Li Jiaqi, JD's “crowd-to-sea tactic” has also been slightly successful. JD's big data shows that within 6 seconds after “Double Eleven” in 2020, JD's live delivery transaction volume exceeded 100 million.

Although JD has responded positively to the rise of live streaming, it may not actually have higher expectations for live streaming at the platform's strategic level. Xu Lei, then CEO of JD Retail, once said that live streaming is a particularly good marketing tool and will slowly become standard in the industry, but it is not a business. It can also be seen from this,In the past, JD defined live streaming as a tool rather than a business that can create value on its own.It is also this strategic positioning that has led to JD not achieving the same level of market performance in the field of live streaming as it did in the e-commerce industry.

When referring to live streaming with goods, people often think of leading anchors such as Via, Li Jiaqi, and Simba first, and then their live streaming platforms. The absence of “top anchors” caused JD Live to not get the label of live streaming.

A report released by Guosheng Securities mentioned that among the MCN agencies counted, the proportion of those that chose to deliver goods live on JD fell from 6% in 2020 to 4% in 2021, and the gap with Douyin, Taobao, and Kuaishou is getting wider.Luo Yonghao's return is probably to make up for the lack of impression labels and market appeal of JD's live streaming.

Is Luo Yonghao the “answer” to JD's live broadcast?

As can be seen from the development trajectories of major live streaming platforms after 2020,Expanding sales around traffic is the core game rule of the industry.Therefore, whether it's Via, Li Jiaqi, and Simba, or Liu Yuhong, Dong Yuhui, and Crazy Little Yang, who later became popular on Douyin, and Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui, who were promoted by Xiaohongshu, the success of every leading anchor is inseparable from the platform's support. Corresponsively, leading anchors have indeed brought real revenue to the platform.

However, the cooperative symbiosis between the platform and the anchor not only brings about the common growth of traffic and sales, but also brings more hidden dangers. Since 2020, Kuaishou's leading anchor Simba has been banned from the platform three times, but Simba's experience of being blocked and unblocked over and over again made many netizens deeply puzzled. It was clear that the anchor counted the platforms “like a grandson” during the live broadcast, but in the end, the platform went online and regained her freedom.Simba's high-profile and arrogant ambition is precisely the platform's excessive reliance on leading anchors.

The year before the “Bird's Nest in Sugar Water” incident occurred, Kuaishou's GMV for live streaming reached 40 billion yuan to 45 billion yuan, while the total GMV of the Simba family's live streaming reached 13.3 billion yuan, accounting for about one-third of Kuaishou's total annual volume. Relying on the platform's early traffic support, Simba herself began to support her own anchor camp. In 2020, CBNdata collaborated with Taobao Alliance on the 618 celebrity list. Simba, Chu Ruixue, and Egg Xiaopan of the Simba family took the top three of the list, while family members occupied 6 seats in the top 10 list. Interestingly, Lo Wing-ho ranked 9th in this list.

The platform is also unwilling to be held hostage by anchors. Starting in 2021, Kuaishou began to tilt traffic towards mid-career anchors by adjusting traffic rules and increasing the percentage of fans.Zhang Yipeng, head of Kuaishou E-commerce Marketing Center, said bluntly, “The platform is willing to send some very expensive traffic to the middle class because we want the platform to become an ecologically rich e-commerce community. Our investment in supporting small and medium anchors is uncapped.” Kuaishou's “decimbalization” action had remarkable results. The top 5 places on Kuaishou's seven-day delivery list for the 2021 Spring Festival were Grand Duong Yu, Lee Xuan-zhuo (wine master), Kwai Er's selection, doll, and Lee Hae-jin, while Simba disappeared.

In the game between Kuaishou and Simba, the value of the platform and leading anchors to both parties can be seen: the platform needs the influence and role model of leading anchors to open up the revenue channel of live e-commerce, and at the same time attract more low- and low-end anchors to join to create value growth for the platform; leading anchors need to use the platform's traffic support to accumulate influence to build personal IP.

As far as JD is concerned now, the collaboration with Luo Yonghao is clearly not simply for live streaming transaction volume, but rather for brands to see the potential value of JD's live streaming, and to help platform merchants increase the conversion rate of self-broadcasting through the entry of leading anchors and MCNs.What Luo Yonghao can get is to further implement multi-platform live streaming, strengthen his own brand, and establish the ability to deliver goods across platforms in a market environment where live streaming traffic from celebrities peaks.

Live e-commerce starts again, and JD “gets on the bus to make up for tickets”

In recent years, the focus of development of the e-commerce form of live streaming and delivery has been shifting at an accelerated pace. In the early days, the live streaming format centered on celebrities accumulated traffic for the platform to attract users and also established e-commerce channels for live streaming, but leading anchors had too much influence and threatened the control of the platform itself. At the same time, from a commercial perspective,The chain of talent delivery from product selection and live streaming to after-sales is longer, and the market size is limited. It is far less efficient than brands personally participating in self-broadcasting to achieve large-scale growth.

Therefore, starting in 2021, major platforms will support all kinds of businesses to do self-broadcasts. Among them, Douyin's traffic distribution system became a gradient split of 631:60% for brands to self-broadcast, 30% to mainstream celebrities, and the remaining 10% for leading anchors. In 2020, top anchors will be able to enjoy 50% of the traffic alone.

Changes in platform traffic strategies have allowed brands to see more opportunities.In September of last year, Uniqlo's official brand account, which had been registered for more than 3 years, finally began self-broadcasting on Douyin. Uniqlo also opened an account “Uniqlo Hot Fitting Room” to share outfits through short videos. On the eve of Double 11 last year, data disclosed by Douyin e-commerce showed that the number of merchants participating in Douyin Double 11 in 2021 was 3.5 times that of the same period in 2020.

The shift in traffic distribution towards merchants only solved the problem of large-scale commercial growth. After experiencing explosive growth, the number of users of short videos and live streaming goods began to encounter bottlenecks. Platforms were forced to join the competition over stock traffic, and there was also an upper limit on the commercial traffic that could be distributed to e-commerce businesses.

According to a later LatePost report, tests conducted by Douyin in 2022 showed that once the e-commerce content displayed by Douyin exceeds 8%, user retention and user usage time on the main site will be clearly negatively affected. As a result,Platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, which have content as their core, have begun to accelerate their alignment with traditional e-commerce platforms. By establishing shopping malls to develop shelf e-commerce, the negative impact of commercialized content on the platform's content ecosystem can be mitigated.

On the one hand, content traffic is being used more to support brand self-broadcasting, and on the other hand, platforms are shifting to shelf e-commerce to establish exclusive commercial content zones, and anchors whose living space is being squeezed are also looking for a way out. However, a series of leading anchors, including Lo Wing-ho, chose a cross-platform live broadcast, but the ultimate goal of “Luo Wing-ho” was not just one more platform for live streaming.

When they succeeded Liu Yuhong and his wife as the new influencers, Oriental Selection emphasized the value of building a self-built supply chain. This is because Dongfang Selection, which has a self-built supply chain, has changed from being a “delivery anchor” to a merchant, and has the ability to set up its own stores and sell its own products. Just like Douyin anchor Mad Xiao Yang, who has hundreds of millions of fans, launched the “Xiao Yang's Choice” series of self-operated products one after another after setting up the company.

For anchors, delivering goods is still working for platforms and brands — live streaming traffic depends on platform policies, and revenue has to be negotiated with brands.Thinking back and forth, the anchors discovered that becoming a merchant was their ultimate destination, so they began experimenting with multi-platform live streaming to get rid of their reliance on traffic from a single platform and establish their own brands. This is exactly what traditional e-commerce platforms are happy to see.

Going back to JD's live streaming itself, people once thought that JD had missed the period of rapid growth of live streaming and had not nurtured Via, Simba, and Li Jiaqi. However, looking at it now, the development of the live streaming delivery industry seems to have presented JD with a new ticket.

When Douyin and Kuaishou supported self-broadcasting for merchants and began to divest commercialized content and establish a new shelf e-commerce ecosystem, brands saw the trends and opportunities of self-broadcasting more clearly, so they also chose to open self-broadcast channels on traditional e-commerce platforms such as JD and Taobao, where e-commerce services are more mature.

At the same time, leading anchors seeking multi-platform development will also take the initiative to start a round of farming on new platforms, using their own content as a counterweight to counterbalance different platforms and regain their voice. However, for JD, whether it is the addition of leading anchors or the full launch of self-broadcasting by merchants, it is a great opportunity to trigger a new round of growth.