The 2024 Spring Festival Gala just let Xiaohongshu grab the "jackpot"?
Different from the melee of the Spring Festival Gala in previous years, the first to cooperate with the official announcement of the Spring Festival Gala this year is not Ali's **, Alipay, nor the national app Douyin, but Xiaohongshu, which has a daily activity of just over 100 million.
Internet manufacturers and CCTV Spring Festival Gala have a history of cooperation for 8 consecutive years. In 2015, WeChat opened the door to the traffic of the Spring Festival Gala with 500 million red envelopes, and after that, Internet manufacturers flocked to the Spring Festival Gala. At that time, there was a saying in the Internet industry: "Those who have not been on the Spring Festival Gala are not called big factories." ”
From 2015 to the present, Tencent, Alibaba, and other Internet giants with hundreds of billions of revenue have "seized" the stage of the Spring Festival Gala 8 times, and each time it is a marketing feast in the name of "exclusive" and throwing hundreds of millions of dollars.
This year, Xiaohongshu, with an annual revenue target of only 24 billion yuan, has become the first Internet company to officially announce the Spring Festival Gala, but it is not an exclusive interactive partner, but a "note-taking and live broadcast sharing platform".
This seems to mean that "spending a lot of money" in the Spring Festival Gala is no longer the only way for Internet companies. In the era of stock games, Xiaohongshu's cost-effective strategy of "three thousand weak water, only one scoop" began to appear on the stage.
1. Be careful and make a big deal with a small one
Xiaohongshu, who won the Spring Festival Gala cooperation, must not want to let go of any possible marketing contact.
On January 19, Xiaohongshu officially announced that it would become a note-sharing and live broadcast sharing platform for the "2024 Spring Festival Gala" of ** Radio and Television Station, claiming to "take users to participate in the Spring Festival Gala in front of and behind the scenes". Subsequently, many brand accounts issued notes to build momentum, and each section put the interface of the event, and the community topic Everyone's Spring Festival Gala has accumulated 1300 million views.
The natural huge traffic pool of the Spring Festival Gala will naturally bring dividends to Xiaohongshu. The traffic of the Spring Festival Gala has two distinctive characteristics, one is the high peak.
As a national-level program, the Spring Festival Gala has an audience of more than 1.1 billion. In 2021, Douyin will conduct live broadcasts as the exclusive interactive partner of the Spring Festival Gala, with a total of 12 people2.1 billion. Time goes further, and in 2019, it also took the name of the exclusive interactive partner of the Spring Festival Gala to win Chinese New Year's Eve 2400 million DAUs, a year-on-year increase of 673%。
In the face of such a huge traffic pool, when Xiaohongshu officially announced the cooperation, users seemed to be a little incredulous: "This splashing wealth is also the turn of Xiaoposhu (Xiaohongshu alias)?" ”
The second is the national nature, the audience is all over the world, whether it is overseas or in a small county town on the fourth or fifth tier in China, people will turn on the TV on Chinese New Year's Eve, ** Spring Festival Gala, which is the circle-breaking audience group that Xiaohongshu dreams of.
For Xiaohongshu itself, the proportion of first-tier and new first-tier users is almost half, which makes its growth difficult. Last year, the departure of Kappa (nickname), the head of community content at Xiaohongshu, also implicitly expressed this dilemma - Xiaohongshu was stuck in 100 million DAUs and could not move. The Spring Festival Gala is an excellent connection point, and Xiaohongshu can take advantage of the Spring Festival Gala to reach a wider circle of users, making up for the shortcomings of community users and content simplification.
The growth and traffic effect brought by the Spring Festival Gala has long been confirmed by major Internet manufacturers. In 2015, WeChat opened up a new scene in the payment track with red envelope play, and since then, WeChat red envelopes and Alipay have competed against each other. In the process of appearing on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala for 8 times, the Internet giants have issued a total of 6.5 billion yuan in red envelopes. I have long been familiar with the red envelope game. But why did Xiaohongshu only choose the form of live broadcast cooperation this time?
Looking closely at the official introduction issued by Xiaohongshu, the event with the theme of "companion live broadcast" emphasizes an information point: the good things for planting grass on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala can also be purchased simultaneously on Xiaohongshu. It turns out that what Xiaohongshu wants most is not the traffic of the Spring Festival Gala, but the "same style of the Spring Festival Gala".
For the e-commerce industry, the Spring Festival Gala is a unique "live broadcast with goods". In the course of the party, there are always some "the same style of the Spring Festival Gala" rushing to the hot search, Li Sisi's lipstick, Liu Qian's same magic props, Qin Lan's cardigan sweater and other stars with the same style are all on the hot search, and the audience is "asking for links" while watching the party.
In 2022, Zhang Xiaofei's blue-green coat occupied half of the hot search list on Weibo's Chinese New Year's Eve, and the topic Zhang Xiaofei's coat won 3200 million readings, followed by the topic Zhang Xiaofei's coat of the same style was sold out in 10 minutes Took over the baton of the first hot search list and received 500 million readings.
Not only clothing, but Urbandecay's Cowherd Eyeshadow, Armani Power 405 lipstick, emoji phone cases, etc. are all popular items in the Spring Festival Gala over the years. At this special moment of the Spring Festival Gala, the audience's spending power is more likely to be stimulated.
Combine this consumer trend with community content. Xiaohongshu's purchase of the "same model of the Spring Festival Gala" is very sufficient, and the event page reads "The same model of the Spring Festival Gala has been loaded". Everything is ready, just wait for the Spring Festival Gala.
2. Little Red Book, it needs a chance
In this Spring Festival Gala event page, Xiaohongshu preemptively carried 9 products exposed as "proofs", with "everyone's New Year's gift" as the theme of the event. Some merchants broke the news that during the Spring Festival, Xiaohongshu prepared 5 billion traffic** to support merchants. During the event time of January 21 and February 16, the double ** of cross-store full reduction and single product direct drop will be opened.
Xiaohongshu is so eager to hold this event well, and the pressure of commercialization is one of the core reasons.
From the content point of view, the Xiaohongshu community has been out of the circle many times with grass genes, and has walked out of its own path in many content apps. The community atmosphere of "Undecided Little Red Book" has cultivated users' search habits. According to statistics, Xiaohongshu has an average of 300 million search queries per day. "2024 Xiaohongshu Search Promotion*** also mentioned that nearly 9 percent of users believe that search results on Xiaohongshu have an impact on their consumption decisions.
But a user's singular search mind is a double-edged sword. The cultivation of user search habits is based on trust in amateur original content, which actually lays a hidden danger for the commercialization of Xiaohongshu. The game between original content and advertising is bound to become a stumbling block on the road to commercialization.
On the other hand, users' perception of Xiaohongshu is still a content community, with the habit of searching but not the mind of consumption. What often happens in Xiaohongshu is that users are planted grass in Xiaohongshu and then switch to comprehensive e-commerce platforms such as ** and JD.com to complete the order.
In order to retain users, Xiaohongshu has made many efforts in the past year. Not only did the e-commerce and live broadcast business be restructured as a first-level department, but it also shut down the self-operated e-commerce small oasis and welfare cooperative, remade the strategy, and smashed 50 billion traffic resources to turn to buyer e-commerce.
In 2024, Xiaohongshu will accelerate its pace, and the first news is to poach people across industries - hiring Wu Yingbing (Benny), the former head of Didi's supply and demand strategy, and Zhang Rui, the former head of Didi's hitchhiking business, to join the e-commerce business and commercialization teams respectively. The former is a data growth expert across the e-commerce and tools space, while the latter has a working background in technology and business intelligence. Xiaohongshu has expanded the "helmsman" team from experienced veterans of Didi mining commercialization, further demonstrating its determination to commercialize.
However, on the other hand, in Xiaohongshu, the "infrastructure" of e-commerce still seems to be lacking. Unsound logistics system, imperfect after-sales guarantee, and the chaos of goods with wrong goods, "the most expensive to sell, and the most insecure" is the evaluation of Xiaohongshu e-commerce by many users. These are also important factors that affect the mental development of users. As of press time, only 270,000 people have made reservations for Xiaohongshu's Spring Festival Gala live broadcast. JD.com also announced its return to the Spring Festival Gala, becoming the second Internet company to officially announce its cooperation with the Spring Festival Gala.
In fact, in the era of stock, everyone is looking for growth and transformation, looking for a way to break the situation. JD.com is trapped by rivals, Xiaohongshu is limited to business growth, and the competition of Internet companies is like a boat against the current, and if it does not advance, it will retreat. One of the two wants to open up new markets, and the other wants to fight big with small and leverage new consumption. But whether it can win and reproduce the successful script of WeChat back then depends on actual data.