Sun Dongxu was removed from the position of executive director of the company, Dong Yuhui changed from a "delivery anchor" to a "senior partner", and will be solely responsible for new accounts related to cultural tourism.
It's a rare win-win situation: Dong Yuhui and his fans have proven their worth and ushered in a satisfactory result;Dongfang Selection ushered in the mutual recognition of Dong Yuhui, and Dong Yuhui continued to "die for his confidant";Although Sun Dongxu has been won some titles, it can be seen from Yu Minhong's many statements that he may really just lose some titles.
Affected by this, the stock price of Dongfang Selection strengthened at the opening, and it was nearly 18% intraday.
Before Dongfang Selection was involved in the turmoil, Simba, another head anchor, was also on the hot search because his CEO Guan Qian was dismissed from the palace by "forced palace", and after the relevant information was exposed, it was not very decent.
These two incidents essentially point to the internal discord between the big anchors and the management of each company, and more precisely, there is a natural and irreconcilable conflict of interest between the head star anchor and the Internet celebrity incubator or management behind it.
Of course, this is not the first time, Li Ziqi and Wei Nian, "Lang Stomach Fairy" and You Su, Zhu once and Zhang Xiaoce...When the Internet celebrity incubator, MCN Company, rises to the top with the aura of celebrity anchors, and then forms an over-reliance on a single individual, conflicts around interests, power and risks are inevitable. And this almost unsolvable problem undoubtedly greatly limits the potential of MCN institutions as a business entity.
The "Small Essay" incident has once again raised questions about the commercial value of MCN, and MCN institutions can neither create and replicate star anchors, nor can it control the balance of the relationship between star anchors and institutions. To be more precise, MCN institutions are essentially more like the "vassals" of these celebrity anchors, who rely on the accidental popularity of celebrity anchors to grow up, trying to analyze and copy the popularity path of celebrity anchors to cultivate more anchors, but in fact, this has not formed a so-called mature and clear Internet business model.
Celebrity anchors and MCNs are difficult to find the best solution
On December 16, the Dongfang Selection Douyin account issued a personnel appointment and dismissal notice, announcing that "Sun Dongxu will be removed from the position of executive director and CEO of Dongfang Selection, effective immediately", this notice was considered by the outside world that Dong Yuhui "won". Not only that, in the live broadcast room that day, Dong Yuhui and Yu Minhong, who were in the midst of the turmoil, joined the live broadcast, and Yu Minhong promised in public that Dong Yuhui would definitely have the right to speak in the future selection in the East.
Then, in the early morning of December 18, the Dongfang Selection Weibo account released a live broadcast preview, and on the event poster, Dong Yuhui's identity has become "Dongfang Selection Senior Partner". And in the afternoon, Yu Minhong issued a new appointment notice, appointing Dong Yuhui as the cultural assistant to the chairman of the board of directors of New Oriental Education and Technology Group, and concurrently the vice president of New Oriental Cultural Tourism Group.
Yu Minhong went down and strongly supported Dong Yuhui, Dong Yuhui took advantage of the situation, claiming that "the one who is a confidant dies", this ** crisis caused by grabbing credit and lasting for nearly a week seems to have been resolved with a decent solution under the mutual understanding of both sides. But will the surging competition for the distribution of interests and the right to speak between celebrity anchors and behind-the-scenes companies end?For Oriental Selection, not necessarily.
It was imperative for Dongfang to "de-Dong Yuhui" in Dongfang Selection, but the outbreak of this incident only magnified Dong Yuhui's influence on Dongfang Selection.
Look at the visual performance of the stock price. Dong Yuhui stopped broadcasting, and the stock price of Dongfang Selection plummeted, and the total market value fell to 266400 million Hong Kong dollars, evaporated more than 7 billion Hong Kong dollars in a week, and Dong Yuhui rebroadcast, Dongfang Selection's share price rose sharply, as of **, an increase of 219%。To tell the truth, even Yu Minhong may not have such a "face" in the primary market.
Of course, what is more critical is that the management of Dongfang Selection tried to dissolve Dong Yuhui's personality in a low-cost way, realize the disenchantment of fans to Dong Yuhui, and then make great strides to promote "de-Dong Yuhui", but they didn't expect that instead of losing their fans, fans attacked Dongfang Selection. This "fan circle" tendency just confirms to the outside world the strong stickiness between Dong Yuhui and the mainstream user group in the Dongfang Selection live broadcast room, which is built on Dong Yuhui's personality charm and the slightly blind worship of fans, and the strong exclusivity shown by fans in this incident highlights and deepens the stickiness.
However, this kind of predicament of being constrained by celebrity anchors and coerced by traffic will only make Yu Minhong more uneasy.
The relationship between the celebrity anchor and the MCN institution is like a time bomb, the harmony between the two sides is a win-win situation, and the disharmony between the two sides may be damaged, especially for the MCN institution, the stay of the star anchor largely determines the development of the company, which causes the MCN institution to have a low ability to resist risks and has great vulnerability.
Moreover, this relationship is affected by multiple factors such as the personal wishes of the celebrity anchors, the division of interests, contract disputes, the imbalance of discourse rights, and the allocation of resources between the celebrity anchors and other anchors, so it is particularly uncontrollable and risky.
Li Jiaqi and Mei ONE have achieved the binding of interests by jointly holding shares in new companies and ceding certain speaking rights, which provides the most suitable solution for MCN institutions to deal with the relationship with celebrity anchors. But this can't be done once and for all, when de-individuation is put on the table sooner or later, celebrity anchors and MCN institutions will inevitably set off a new round of competition and pulling, and it is not easy to get through it smoothly.
Does MCN's business model really work?
MCN is a product of the influencer economy. In the era of the rise of short**, the early popular Internet celebrities "fought alone" at first, but when the account has a certain strength, the brands and platforms that the account and the talent itself come into contact with become more complex. With the rise of live streaming and the birth of celebrity anchors, MCN institutions serving live streaming have been born, which are larger and more commercialized than before.
From 2019 to 2022, the "MCN concept" has been popular in the A** field for three years, and "MCN concept stocks" such as Yuanwang Technology, Tianxiaxiu, and Shengxunda have performed strongly.
However, the pursuit of MCN is essentially driven by the Internet outlet of live streaming, and the continuous refreshment of the record of the head anchors of Double 11 every year, the business growth of e-commerce platforms and short ** platforms, and the influx of Internet celebrities and celebrities into live streaming all confirm the transformative new form of live streaming and the huge business potential behind it, but it is not the value of MCN as a business entity itself.
From the Dongfang selection of "small compositions" incident, the outside world once again questioned the value of MCN institutions, and this doubt can actually be attributed to the most fundamental business model.
The business model of MCN institutions, simply put, is to incubate Internet celebrities or anchors, obtain traffic through standardized batch manufacturing of Internet celebrities or anchors, and then complete the realization by bringing goods, advertising, etc. Each MCN agency has its own set of Internet celebrity cultivation theory, and they sign Internet celebrities on a large scale, provide them with their own capabilities in operation, technology, brand docking, etc., and invest corresponding resources, thus giving birth to a large number of relatively professional and mature Internet celebrities or anchors, forming the current live broadcast army.
However, what the capital market values is the ability to cultivate top Internet celebrities or anchors, and the commercial value of MCN institutions is also determined by the number of top Internet celebrities. Like Mei ONE has only had one top anchor for many years, Li Jiaqi, and after Wei Ya stopped broadcasting, she launched a number of live broadcast rooms such as "Bee Surprise Club", which is committed to cultivating new anchors to bring goods, but the results have always been mediocre.
In other words, MCN agencies are essentially boosters of Internet celebrities, rather than manufacturers, which to a certain extent makes MCN agencies' business models unable to withstand scrutiny and practice.
Of course, most MCNs can't even meet or incubate a top Internet celebrity or anchor, and can only rely on a group of middle-waist personnel to support the company's operation and grab the scattered traffic on the platform. This cannot be said that the model is not viable, but their business development potential is limited to this.
In addition to incubation, MCN institutions are also exploring other monetization paths in order to recreate new business models. For example, the in-depth first-class chain, the MCN agency in-depth first-class chain is not only to provide convenience for the anchor's product selection and quality control, but also to open up the first-class chain in the longer term and make products and brands by themselves. Compared with not knowing when a top anchor will be incubated, this model is obviously more mature and stable.
However, the question is whether MCN institutions can successfully create competitive products and private brands, which is still a mystery, and most MCN institutions have only taken the first step.
Even if the MCN agency is lucky, it finally incubates a super Internet celebrity, after experiencing a lot of infighting and redistribution of interests, so that the big Internet celebrity has the right to speak in the company and is deeply bound, after solving the above problems, but the life cycle of an Internet celebrity is also limited, if it has traffic for a long time, it will inevitably usher in the de-heading and content iteration of the live broadcast platform, because only the head Internet celebrity keeps accelerating the change, which is the most beneficial to the platform, after all, Kuaishou and Simba are a lesson from the past. This is undoubtedly a fatal blow to MCN institutions, and it can only return to the problem that the head Internet celebrity cannot be copied at all.
Perhaps, the love and killing between super anchors and MCNs and devouring each other is like a fate, and the fate between them, even if there is no shadow of the platform, it may be one of the beneficiaries of this mutual devouring.
Transformation?MCN institutions are "powerless".
In the current contest between celebrity anchors and MCNs for the right to speak and the struggle for interests, celebrity anchors have the upper hand in most cases. For example, at the beginning, Lang Stomach Fairy and You Su broke up, and the former's reputation deteriorated, which did not affect its performance in bringing goods, and the new number rose by more than 300,000 fans in a month, and the estimated live broadcast sales of the month reached 213820,000, and the latter has an account with 3000W+ fans, and its GMV for the live broadcast debut with goods is only 274W.
Now Dong Yuhui's promotion, salary increase, and right to speak can be regarded as a victory for star anchors for the time being.
This is mainly because MCN institutions have neither cultivated others who can compete with celebrity anchors, nor have they yet found other ways to make money other than relying on anchors to sell goods. However, the current compromise does not mean that it will remain unchanged, but will only accelerate the process of depersonalization of MCN institutions and promote the process of transformation.
Oriental Selection can be said to be the most determined one, because unlike other MCN institutions, Oriental Selection was originally the product of the transformation of New Oriental's education business after the "Waterloo", it is not for Dong Yuhui alone, for the incubation of Internet celebrities, and it will not be limited to being an MCN institution. This is also the reason why Dongfang Selection has always emphasized that it is not a live broadcast company, nor is it a star-making MCN agency.
Judging from the current actions of the head MCN institutions, there are two directions for transformation, one is to take advantage of the explosion of the concept of large models, embrace digital human anchors, and further replicate the ability of "super anchors", and the other is to enter the upstream ** chain, launch self-operated brands, and extend to the back-end of goods to achieve low prices in the live broadcast room.
In addition to business transformation, there is also Xinxuan Group's model of wanting to change the traditional "master and apprentice" system and transition to modern management through external forces, but this wave of attempts obviously ended in failure.
Business transformation is key. Let's look at the digital human anchor first, AI digital human compared with real people, the cost is lower, and it is not easy to collapse, since the beginning of this year, there have been many "digital anchors" in my country quietly on duty, 24 hours of uninterrupted live broadcast. Not to mention the business prospects, what restricts the development of digital human anchors is technology, and the current AI technology cannot provide us with an intelligent, natural, and interactive digital human.
And even if the digital human anchor technology matures, how can MCN institutions like Yuanwang and Qianxun compete with giants like Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance for the market?
Relatively speaking, it is more feasible to launch self-operated brands and rely on products to speak, and it is also more compatible with the live streaming business, so almost all powerful MCN institutions regard it as the second growth line. Among them, Dongfang Selection is the most radical, not only accelerating the launch of new self-operated brand products in the field of agricultural products, but also extending its business line to the cultural tourism industry, wanting to launch the brand of Oriental Selection in the cultural tourism industry. But from the attempt of Dongfang selection, it can also be seen that the transformation is difficult.
So far, Dongfang Selection has created 200 self-operated products, and in the first half of fiscal year 2023, these self-operated products have contributed nearly half of Dongfang Selection's revenue. The consumers who can pay the bill have not formed a recognition of the brand of Dongfang Selection, but still stay on the anchor, and this "small composition" incident is an example. Dongfang selects the fans, and the high road increases the fans, and everyone buys things and recognizes Dong Yuhui instead of Dongfang Selection.
On the other hand, compared with traditional retail giants, Dongfang Selection has a large gap in terms of commodity categories and quality control, which limits the large-scale development of Dongfang Selection, and thus lacks control over costs. According to the financial report, the gross profit margin of Dongfang's self-operated products is estimated to be only about 25%, which is relatively low.
Transformation is the future of MCN institutions, but there is no successful model at present. What's more dangerous is that when celebrity anchors fall off the altar one after another, or become unsustainable, the pursuit of MCN by capital and platforms will disappear directly.
And the recent public turmoil of the contradiction between the anchor and the company is a very dangerous signal for the entire MCN industry.
The Tao is always reasonable, and he used to use the name Crooked Dao, a new ** in the Internet and technology circle. This article is an original article, and it is forbidden to retain any form of information about the author.
Kunpeng Project