Trends and luck
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “three times” (ID: tosansheng), Author: Rentong Yao.
Rather than saying that “chaowan” is a potential type of e-commerce business at station B, a more accurate expression should be that low-unit-price, light-weight IP products have a user market at station B. Compared with simply enjoying shopping and chasing randomness, the starting point and destination of IP products are still high-quality cultural consumption.
When the Japanese painter Tomoji (ぽん吉) painted this round dog with a green tongue wrapped in a Chinese cabbage leaf, he and his Chinese partner “dodowo tide play” never thought of this “cabbage” “Dog” will become popular on the Chinese Internet in a peculiar way.
On February 1, dodowo Chaowan launched Punji’s “Vegetable Elf” series blind box crowdfunding on B station membership purchase. This series contains seven toys, including a fox in the shape of a carrot and a mink in the shape of a mushroom. The cat in the shape of garlic, and the dog in the shape of the cabbage that is the most eye-catching. The 28-day crowdfunding finally raised nearly 14 million yuan and sold nearly 30,000 sets, breaking the record of domestic crowdfunding for blind box toys.
In March, the second-listed B station released the willingness to tell new stories through a variety of ways: after summarizing Gen Z in terms of content preferences, station B will also describe the shopping habits of Gen Z, emphasizing The need for brand and young people to connect with the mind through content and community. In short, from young people who love to watch at station B, to young people who love to buy at station B.
The success of “Cai Gou” seems to be the result of a series of accidental combinations: an appropriate image that hits the matching Internet culture popular, opens up popularity across the network, and then through the creation of the UP master inadvertently , Aroused consumer enthusiasm on station B, and finally fell into the successful conversion of membership purchases. But taking a closer look at this project, it is not completely a product of “luck” that cannot be replicated. The interactive relationship between the content and the product it presents is of reference value for understanding the e-commerce business direction of station B.
01 The popular road of “Cai Gou”
“We actually paid attention to Punji a long time ago.” Alu, the founder of dodowo, told Sansheng that he has always liked Punji’s illustrations for games.
In 2019, Punji began to update the image of the “Vegetable Wizard” series on Twitter. Dodowo was developing blind box products. Alu contacted Punji and signed the “Vegetable Wizard”.Blind box development authorization.
As the name suggests, “Vegetable Wizard” is the image of an animal + vegetable combination. Punji’s main business is a history teacher. The original intention of painting this series is to integrate cute animals so that picky eaters can accept vegetables. He will use relaxed words to introduce the nutrition of the vegetables in the illustration and the benefits of eating them.
Ponji can also play stalks. For example, he designed the watermelon octopus sprite because the pronunciation of “cuttlefish” and “watermelon” are similar in Japanese. After signing the contract, dodowo participated in the design, but only proposed from the perspective of blind box style production. For example, it is recommended to make a red version for the water carrot fox elf.
The combination of “Chinese cabbage” and “dog” is purely coincidental. Punji’s text description for this “cabbage dog” is a serious and kind popular science style: “About 95% of Chinese cabbage is composed of water, and its calorie content is very low… It can improve rough skin, lower blood pressure, and reduce puffiness. And the efficacy of preventing colds.”
But when this “cai dog” illustration spread to China, it has nothing to do with whether the children love to eat Chinese cabbage or not-it quickly became a super-hot Internet stalk.
Chinese “cai dog” was originally a self-deprecating term in the ACGN (animation and game culture) circle, used to tease game players who are not skilled. Various types of “vegetables” + “dogs” collage emoticons and videos have long been circulating .
The fund craze that emerged last year helped “Caigou” go further out of the circle. Many young people took advantage of the liquor fever to start buying funds. “Cai Gou” is widely quoted as a joking name for the group of “chives”. One of the well-known funds of Shigekura Semiconductor, “Nuo An Mixed Growth”, the fund manager is named Cai Songsong. With the violent volatility of the fund, the nicknames of the young Christians for managers have been jumping between “Manager Cai” and “Caigou”.
Ponji’s vegetable wizard version “Cai Gou” was born at this time. Unlike a rough homemade emoji, this is obviously a well-designed image. It was quickly accepted by netizens, and it has a vague taste of “appointed official pictures”.
In December 2020, UP’s main “old shrimp” released a toy painting video titled “True Dog”Frequency, the model uses Punji version of the “cai dog”. The number of views of this video quickly surpassed one million, and a large number of viewers expressed interest in buying in bullet screens and comments. Old shrimp replied to thank everyone for your support, and emphasized that “The original design of the original painting was not made by me and cannot be sold. Please respect the copyright of the original painting.”
Originally, because of the complicated leaf shape and difficulty in developing molds, Caigou was not included in the first blind box project of “Vegetable Elf”, but many people became interested in “Vegetable Elf” because of “Caigu”. The deer decided to strike while the iron was hot.
It was accidental to put Caigou on member purchase for crowdfunding. The crowdfunding function of member purchase at station B has been prepared for nearly a year and a half, and there has been no particularly good project. As a long-term supplier of membership purchases, dodowo originally prepared another series of products to cooperate with membership purchases to test water crowdfunding. After the video of the old shrimp became popular, the membership purchase team and Alu quickly decided to replace the project with “Vegetable Wizard”. series.
In comparison, Modian is a more familiar and easy-to-use crowdfunding platform for Chaowan studios. Crowdfunding for member purchases at station B is just a slight modification on the original pre-sale page of the handbook. The initiator cannot adjust the project dynamics and interact with the players in real time. It depends on the editing background operation, which is rough and not convenient enough. But the good heat in the site is ahead, dodowo wants to test the effect of direct conversion.
On February 1, the “Vegetable Wizard” blind box crowdfunding project was officially launched. The first two days did not get a particularly good promotion position in member purchases, and the response was mediocre. Alu told Sansheng that, in fact, members of station B are also waiting and watching.
“Most of the member purchases at station B are male users who buy figurines and models, and the trendy games are relatively weak. The blind box category is neutral and female, and does not occupy a dominant position, so the amount of resources given It’s not very high.” Alu used his own trendy blogger account to actively promote on multiple platforms outside the site, bringing in a wave of traffic and contributing to the first phase of crowdfunding data growth.
The B station saw that this project has the potential to explode, and began to tilt a lot of resources to expose the vegetable wizard project in the search keywords purchased by the members and the banner position on the homepage. “Both sides are working hard.” Alu said. During the period in February, he and the company used various social accounts.Do your best to be active, post illustrations, wallpapers, and share the mold making process. Almost every B-site video and dynamic will bring a jump link purchased by members, and the UP master old shrimp also readily agreed to help promote it.
According to a multi-pronged approach, the data began to rise. Dodowo set up “unlock benefits” on multiple amount gradients, but unexpectedly the amount rose too fast, and the “benefits” were used up in a few days. At the end of the 28-day crowdfunding, the total amount stopped at 13.9 million. This figure broke the domestic crowdfunding record for blind box toys. In the entire trendy play category, it is second only to the 15 million “Nezha: The Devil Boy” hand-funded crowdfunding.
02 Can “Cai Gou” be copied?
The success of “Cai Gou” seems to be the result of a series of accidental combinations: an appropriate image that hits the matching Internet culture popular, opens up popularity across the network, and then through the creation of the UP master inadvertently , Aroused consumer enthusiasm on station B, and finally fell into the successful conversion of membership purchases.
In Alu’s eyes, behind these subtle coincidences is the power of “stalks”. “The products that have been sold well before members purchase have IP.” Alu said, “In this project, you can see that they can sell well without IP. In fact, on the other hand, “Caigou” does not have IP. The image of, through words and cute shapes, has formed an IP.”
One of the experiences that Caigou provides to toy brands is that up owners can get through with sales. “As long as you verify whether the product is popular at station B through the content, you can determine whether the product is good for sale at station B. Relatively speaking, the cost of testing the water will be much lower.” Alu said. “The stranger, the more interesting and the more terrifying, the more this thing will resonate on station B, and everyone can understand it.”
From another perspective, not all trendy toys are suitable for crowdfunding at Station B. Products that can sell well at station B are still unable to break away from the foundation of “content”. The nature of the video community determines that the user’s mentality of using station B is naturally “pasture” rather than “consumption”, and it is difficult to effectively transform the completely floating labels and images within the station. This is also the reason why dodowo’s self-developed IP products perform poorly in member purchases.
Rather than saying that “tide play” is a potential type of e-commerce business at station B, a more accurate expression should be that there are content, low unit price, and light IP products in station B that have a user market—compared to simply enjoying shopping , Chasing randomness, the starting point and destination of IP products is still cultural consumption.
MixPlanet is another example. This is Chaowan Derivatives CompanyA new toy brand developed by Xiaomanniu Culture in 2020, it is positioned as light-handed, mainly sold on B station membership purchases and online mini programs, and its products rank fourth in the membership purchase list.
The brand founder, Mr. Man,’s explanation of “Light Hand-made” is: the volume is larger than the blind box, it is sold in the open box, the price is in the range of 100 yuan, and the model has an IP background. Because of the price advantage, it may become the first hand-made toy owned by young people. He told Sansheng that there are already powerful players such as Bubble Mart and TOPTOY on the head of trendy toys. They have absolute strength in the battle for star IP at both ends of production and sales. “Blind box play will become more and more concentrated. “Huawei” leaves little opportunities for small trendy brands to develop head IPs, and light hands provide a possible growth space.
“China’s national innovation content is now at the forefront of the explosion, but there are no domestic brands recognized by everyone for IP hands in the 100-yuan range.” Man said. Now Guochuang animation tastes are gradually subdivided. A small fan drama can gather a group of high-stick fans, but it is difficult to obtain productization opportunities due to its size.
Therefore, the “dark horse-type” national comic IP that is high-quality but relatively small on station B and has not yet been captured by the top trending brand has become the target of MixPlanet.
The user and atmosphere of the community are what you choose for station B. The purchase group of Qingshouban is from junior high school students to college students. “In China, it is difficult to find a second platform for this kind of young people who are highly concentrated except for station B.” In contrast, station B Audiences are more willing to repeatedly consume different forms of Guoman, such as the interpretation of the second creation, and jump purchases will be smoother.
In 2020, Mixplanet found a good transmission painting, and launched a light figure for its two high-scoring Chinese comics “Dali Temple Journal” and “Foshan Five Elements” at station B. It is sold in membership purchases and mini programs. The ratio can reach half-open. Subsequently, Mixplanet cooperated with the sad frog PEPE to launch the light figure. With the help of the frogs that appeared during the Double Eleven period, the stalks of the frogs were similar to “lonely widows”. The first batch of products was pre-sold 6,000, which became MixPlanet’s sale on station B. One of the best products.
Is there a chance for Chaowan, which has no stalking culture and no IP for Fan drama, to have a chance at station B?
The pre-sale project initiated by designer TenGuSan at station B seems to be a special case. This original humanoid at a price of 196 ranks second in the membership shopping list. It is sandwiched between Caigou and a group of IP co-branded toys. But when you click on the pre-sale comment area, you can see a lot of buyers and designInteractions in the air that the planner is familiar with. TenGuSan, known by fans as “Tian Ge”, entered Station B a year ago and accumulated 600,000 fans with hardcore dry goods. The dolls pre-sold in member purchases are derived from the dolls TenGuSan wears on his face every time he makes a video appearance. mask.
This productized application of personal IP was originally seen most in the UP of the B station virtual area. The two-dimensional image naturally fits the ACG culture and is suitable for the export of derivatives. Nowadays, as the content categories of the main website increase, more brands and UP owners with different styles have new ideas in productization.
The branding path in the 3.0 era, “It is not people looking for goods, but people looking for people, but people looking for people.”
In March 2021, Zhang Zhendong, vice president of station B and head of UP commercialization, stated at the OIB China Emerging Brand Conference that branding has shifted from a shelf occupancy centered on product recognition to user-focused content The degree of involvement of the center’s interest. The key is that the brand makes users interested in the brand, emotional, and ultimately purchase through a UP owner or KOL that users like to follow, and the content generated by the TA.
This passage reveals a new story to be told after the second listing of Station B. Following the generalization for Gen Z in terms of content preferences, Station B also hopes to describe the shopping habits of Gen Z, emphasizing the need for brands to connect with young people through content and community mentality. From the young people’s love to watch at station B, to the young people’s love to buy at station B.
At this stage, the B site emphasizes product promotion for advertising, but it is also doing more to make users get used to the purchase path within the site. As Sansheng mentioned earlier, at the end of last year, Station B officially launched the enterprise account entry platform, providing a window column for the enterprise account interface. Some MCNs have also begun to use the shopping cart function of station B to promote the sales conversion of UP’s own beauty brands.
In the long run, in addition to redirecting to Taobao, Station B also hopes that these purchases can be purchased by members of its own e-commerce sector. In the secondary listing prospectus, the statement on business sustainability is: “Through users’ activities on the platform, we can deeply understand their interests and preferences, so as to create more consumption scenarios around the changing needs of users.” /p>
Under the situation that the promotion of live e-commerce and small shops in station B is not obvious, the case of Caigou’s popularity provides a way to dig out and refine the image that can be productized from the stalk culture in the community. Starting from lightweight toys, expand the categories and audiences of products purchased by members.
Another feature of the Caigou crowdfunding is the change of gender ratio. The light of MixPlanet and Hao ChuanMore than 70% of hand-made purchasers are male, and the gender ratio of “caigou” purchasers is basically 50-50. Cute and terrifying toy products seem to have the opportunity to bring more female users to member purchases.
Of course, all of this is inseparable from the core “content”. The main products purchased by members are still ACG products. How far the interaction between the content main site and the member purchase section can push the boundary between “community” and “derivatives” has raised both the creative ability of the UP owner and the operating ability of the B station. Very high requirements.
After the crowdfunding ended, Punji officially settled in station b, released a short self-introduction video, and was recommended by the banner in the animation zone. The series of vegetable elves have been launched one after another, and Alu told Sansheng that in the future, it may be a fantasy world similar to Pokémon with multiple lineups and stories. Punji has already begun to design the villain.
A new vegetable wizard will debut in March. This is a chili chicken whose feathers are made up of countless chili peppers, referred to as “spicy chicken”. Punji’s explanatory language is still serious: “Chili also has the effect of increasing appetite and promoting digestion. The large amount of vitamin C contained in it also has a certain effect on preventing colds, restoring fatigue, and improving rough skin.” But obviously, “Spicy” “Chicken” has consciously become a “spicy chicken”.