On the evening of April 24, the number of followers of Liu Genghong's Douyin account exceeded 45 million.
In just one week, its number of followers has grown by more than 30 million.
On April 21, the number of followers of the account jumped from 20 million to 30 million. The last Douyin account with 10 million followers was Andy Lau.
Compared with Andy Lau's nationality, Liu Genghong is a lot worse, so his popularity is even more amazing.
Before becoming popular, Liu Genghong was often mentioned as Jay Chou's good brother. As a singer, he released his masterpiece "Rainbow Paradise".
In addition, after he participated in the fifth season of "Where Are We Going, Dad" in 2017, as "Little Puff's Dad", his career has improved somewhat.
"Fitness guy" is another label attached to him.
In fact, he has experienced the change of trend from inspirational weight loss to national fitness. He has participated in many weight loss and fitness variety shows such as "Super Weight Loss King", "Reduce My Life", and "Come on and Get Your Body". Macro Fitness Book.
Liu Genghong is about to turn 50 years old, and his life has indeed been changed by fitness.
In the 30 years of his career, he has never been a tepid artist and has become the top streamer of short video platforms.
A fitness industry observer analyzed to Yicai that Liu Genghong's popularity was due to the surge in people's demand for fitness at home during the epidemic, and he created the most popular, even genderless, popular aerobics to fill the mainstay of this period. The vacancy of star anchors for basic entry fitness.
There is nothing special about his basic movements, but with the ingenious cooperation of Jay Chou's song "Compendium of Materia Medica", a breaking circle dance exercise video has been widely spread, triggering a follow-up effect from Internet celebrities to the public.
"Cloud Fitness" under the Epidemic
Recently, Xu Yingying, a white-collar worker who has been under lockdown at home for more than a month, took the whole family to Liu Genghong's shuttlecock exercise.
She recalled to Yicai that she first noticed Liu Genghong because of a hot search related to Liu Genghong's wife Wang Wanfei.
In the video, Wang Wanfei, who danced with Liu Genghong, gradually became exhausted, gritted her teeth, and deformed her movements, just like an ordinary person who was forced to practice by a coach.
Xu Yingying thought it was very interesting. She followed a live broadcast that night, and then her mother, husband and son all joined in.
She has almost zero foundation in fitness. Her mother used to run every day, and her husband had the habit of exercising with equipment. Her four-year-old son was "joining in the fun".
Xu Yingying felt that the aerobics in Liu Genghong's live broadcast room was more suitable for people who had no usual exercise habits, and might not reach the intensity required by those who have been exercising for a long time. Her husband soon felt that it was meaningless, and she could last for an hour at most. The 60-year-old mother can follow almost every game.
"The atmosphere in his live broadcast room is quite happy." This is one of the most important reasons why Xu Yingying is willing to dance with Liu Genghong. "During this period of time, everyone is bored at home, and finally there is one thing that can release the backlog of negative emotions, and Exercise does get you out of reality a little bit."
Fitness is changing in various forms, carrying various slogans to lead the trend for a period of time.
As early as the TV era, there was Zheng Duoyan's weight-loss and weight-loss exercise that was popular among the public. In recent years, various shaping exercises and aerobics including "Swan Arm" have become popular on short video platforms.
Since the epidemic, the demand for home fitness has surged, and a number of successfully operating head accounts have appeared on the fitness track, covering multiple sub-tracks such as weight loss, yoga, and shaping.
As early as the beginning of 2020, overseas fitness expert Pamela quickly became popular in China, and opened personal accounts on platforms such as Station B, Xiaohongshu, Weibo, Keep, etc., and entered Douyin on April 12 this year.
Station B fitness UP master "Saturday Ye Zoey" has 9.1 million fans.
At the beginning of this year, Kuaishou anchor "Mao Ning's Counterattack" became popular with a 100-day counterattack to lose weight punch-in video.
On Douyin, "Liu Fang's Body Etiquette", which focuses on plasticity, posture and simple fitness movements, currently has 16.66 million followers.
According to new data, Liu Fang's live broadcast sales reached 91.86 million yuan in the past month.
As early as June 27, 2018, Liu Genghong entered Douyin.
In December last year, he signed a contract with the head MCN agency Wuyou Media.
The popularity of Liu Genghong is closely related to the promotion and marketing of this MCN head agency.
Worry-Free Media has previously popularized "Big Wolf Dog Zheng Jianpeng & Yan Zhen Couple". The account currently has more than 50 million fans, and the live broadcast sales in the past month have reached 43.406 million yuan.
After Liu Genghong signed with Worry-Free Media, he initially tried to replicate the former couple's model of bringing goods, but the response was mediocre.
According to Feigua data, from December 19 last year to February 17, 2022, Liu Genghong and his wife did 9 live broadcasts with goods, and the sales of goods were 7.236 million.
In February of this year, Liu Genghong began to transform into a fitness live broadcast, and the number of fans began to increase significantly. His star status has more advantages than ordinary amateur fitness bloggers. He is deeply bound to Jay Chou's songs and planned to dance with stars such as Zhong Liti. It also pushed up the heat even further.
Douyin is behind the scenes
Chen Haoyu, the project director of an MCN agency in Shanghai, analyzed that Liu Genghong's popularity is inseparable from the strong support of Douyin and the inclination of traffic resources.
"Douyin will focus on supporting the IP of a certain track every once in a while. In the recent epidemic, seeing that everyone has fitness needs, they will focus on supporting Liu Genghong." In Chen Haoyu's view, Liu Genghong's explosion was similar to that of Zhang's classmate earlier this year. It became popular, and behind it, Douyin is tilted towards the traffic of vertical tracks.
Previously, focusing on the rural revitalization strategy, Douyin invested traffic resources to support the content creation of Sannong on the platform, and Zhang, who recorded the daily life of the Northeast countryside, quickly became popular in three months, and his followers increased by nearly 20 million.
The daily active growth of short videos has entered a bottleneck period. By supporting accounts on the vertical track, Douyin has introduced new content to reduce the fatigue of use and enhance user stickiness.
In November last year, ByteDance announced an organizational adjustment. Xigua Video and Toutiao merged into Douyin. Douyin has officially become the core growth engine of the ByteDance Group. Therefore, it is also under the dual pressure of traffic realization and user growth.
At the same time, the WeChat video account has made great strides.
According to Tencent's fourth quarter and full-year financial report for 2021 announced last month, the video number DAU (daily active) in 2021 will exceed 500 million.
It will also bring some sense of crisis to Douyin.
Chen Haoyu believes that Liu Genghong's explosion is a major benefit for the platform, "A while ago, everyone paid attention to all aspects of the epidemic, but the attention to the ecological content of Douyin was not so high, and the daily life was reduced. After supporting a Liu Genghong, he came out. , everyone flocked to it, and it drove the traffic of the entire platform.”
Live streaming, brand cooperation, personal peripherals, fitness courses, etc., are the profit models of fitness internet celebrities before. Among them, live streaming is a mainstream direction for fitness bloggers to monetize.
Liu Genghong's last live broadcast was on March 19.
"Actually, he is very good at bringing goods, and he sells fitness-related foods, such as protein powder and other healthy foods, or sports-related equipment, shapewear and the like." Xu Yingying noticed that Liu Genghong mentioned in the live broadcast that things must be Only the whole family has eaten and used it before recommending it to everyone. This seems to be paving the way for the subsequent live broadcast.
In addition to the singer certification, another certification of Liu Genghong's Douyin account is "high-quality e-commerce master".
Liu Genghong’s agent mentioned on his Xiaohongshu account that they will be very cautious in the selection of cooperative brands. The premise of cooperation is that the product ingredient list is cleared.
With soaring fans, Liu Genghong's commercial value has received widespread attention.
On April 21, in response to various online rumors about brand cooperation quotations, Wuyou Media and Liu Genghong Studio issued a joint statement saying that they have recently received cooperation consultation from the brand side, but now they want to focus on providing fans with more high-quality products. live content.
From Chen Haoyu's point of view, for Liu Genghong, the point is that he has more influence and more fans.
"He shouldn't be in a hurry to cash out, because after the fans increase, cash out is a natural thing."
Some MCN institutions in Shanghai struggle to survive
Liu Genghong's popularity has made many people think that during the epidemic, MCN institutions are the most profitable industry at the moment, but this is not the case.
In the Shanghai area, many medium-sized companies are in trouble due to the epidemic, and some have even begun to plan to find another way out.
Chen Haoyu told Yicai that in a large group covering the relevant principals of MCN institutions in Shanghai, someone launched an investigation and found that more than half of the Douyin content ecological companies in the group were suspended.
As the person in charge of a medium-sized MCN company, Chen Haoyu felt very confused: "Actually, just like catering, it's fine for a very large company or a very small company. The most uncomfortable thing is the middle company. For more than a month, the entire capital chain will be affected.”
There are a variety of profit models in the Douyin ecosystem. Some companies are entertainment anchors, and they share and monetize with the entertainment anchors. Some companies have their own supply chains and bring their own goods; many like Chen Haoyu’s company, the profit model is brand operation. , that is, the Douyin account operation of the agency brand, responsible for the overall operation planning.
"We need teamwork to realize live broadcast and cash flow. Now the team is not together, the logistics has stopped, and the goods cannot be obtained. Many things cannot be done, so we can only stop."
Before the outbreak of the epidemic, Chen Haoyu's company had already negotiated the cooperation plan with a fitness mirror brand. "It's stopped now, and it can't be done. People don't want to waste money."
Chen Haoyu said: "We have 3 brands in operation, and we have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars every month. Now it has stopped due to special reasons. The team salary will not be paid, and some people may leave, and the whole project will be yellowed."
Chen Haoyu revealed that most of the live broadcast anchors he knows have stopped working at home, "Some of them want to transform into entertainment anchors, but they are not suitable for it. They are not able to do it alone. They must cooperate in many aspects, and operations must be present at the same time. ".
He took the live broadcast of women's clothing as an example. The anchor set up a booth at home, and the effect was greatly reduced compared with the company's professional live broadcast room. "The scene is not good, the lighting is not good, no one will watch the anchor no matter how good the anchor is. When the audience sees this scene, they will directly Swipe away, even if you can live broadcast, there will be no traffic.”
"Many Douyin ecological companies must combine the three dimensions of people, goods, and the field to be able to realize the realization. The cooperation of the anchor, the supply chain, and the whole team is very important. But now people, goods, and the field cannot be realized. Together, many brands in Shanghai, that is, Party A, have already stopped work, and it is even more difficult for Party B to do it." Chen Haoyu said.
(Chen Haoyu is a pseudonym in the text)