“Content + Consumption” is a long-term opportunity in China.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Inspur new consumption” (ID: Lcxinxiaofei), author Cao Rui, oral Xu Dongsheng.
The blind box called “The Most Burning Money After 95” has attracted countless fans recently.
As a branch of tide play, this is not unrelated to the rise of trend culture. In recent years, similarly a small circle of people has emerged, as well as e-sports, Hanfu, and second yuan, and the physical consumption field corresponding to it has also experienced Has grown rapidly.
What are the commonalities in these areas? There is unique content, there is IP. Their promotion of the entertainment and consumer industries is increasingly being verified in the needs of the segmented population, and content and consumption are undergoing deep integration.
But in this kind of industrial change, where is the real opportunity, what kind of new business will be produced? What kind of requirements are there for entrepreneurs? How do more cultural and consumer companies face this trend?
“The form of content + consumption is re-creating the entire consumer industry. Under each segment of consumer groups and consumption scenarios, there is an opportunity to generate very large new brands.” Xu Yingsheng, a partner of Vision Capital, told Inspur new consumption.
Xu Dongsheng, Partner of Vision Capital
The previous years of experience in cultural industry investment has made him sensitive to new populations and front-end traffic changes, and the integration of content and consumption depth has made the efficiency of the industry chain high and the value has become thicker. The focus of great efforts in the year.
In the recent two-hour interview with Xu Dongsheng, the new consumption of Chaos, around the “content + consumption” trend, brand opportunities under the new consumer scene, and future IP in the strengthening of consumer companies, he and us In-depth discussion, shared with more entrepreneurs in this big track.
01 From content to consumption: second dimension, trend, why Hanfu breaks circle
(1) Outbreak of niche circle culture
The Vision Capital is a professional Internet cultural consumption fund, which compares various chains such as consumer groups, upstream supply, and distribution.To understanding. In recent years we have found that cultural content has changed on the demand side. These changes have a lot in common with the demand side of physical goods.
First of all, from the results, consumer demand for content is becoming more and more fragmented, and different consumer scenarios require different content. This does not mean that the opportunities for enterprises are getting smaller. On the contrary, many sub-sectors have ushered in in recent years.
The reason is that China has a very large population base and market depth, and each subdivided vertical population has a large volume, even exceeding the population of a European country.
For example, e-sports, people who don’t know will feel that its audience is very small, but in fact, there are more than 150 million e-sports crowds, so it will generate billions of dollars of listed companies like fighting fish, and it will continue to produce.
There are also two-dimensional, trend culture, people in the past will think that they are marginal culture, but in fact there are more than 200 million audiences.
These layers have always existed. In recent years, why have they expanded from niche to more people and even out of circles?
I think there are two core reasons:
The first is the change in the media environment. With the development of mobile Internet and social networks, the threshold for content production and production has been greatly reduced, and the efficiency of communication has increased, so that consumers have access to corresponding content under different consumption scenarios, and the threshold for consumption has also become Very low.
The second is the improvement in the quality and impact of IP content. For example, Hanfu and Guofeng culture have existed for more than ten years. Why has the popularity rate in the past three years been greatly accelerated? In addition to the mobile Internet, there is also the power of IP.
From the previous “琅琊榜”, “Sansheng III”, to the current “Chang’an Twelve Hours”, “Chen Qingling”, the high quality and large IP that is constantly emerging is affecting more people.
This forms a positive cycle: the improvement of content quality and communication efficiency, which allows more consumers to see and like it; the lowering of the threshold of consumption drives the physical consumption field corresponding to entertainment content. Rapid development.
(2) Common grounds of entertainment and new consumption
So returning to the whole big investment logic of lithography capital, initially we believe that the underlying logic supporting the growth of entertainment is three points: the first is the growth of consumption power; the second is the change of the medium and system of communication; It is the growth of demand for segmented content by segmented people.
At the time, we judged that the entertainment industry would have a very strong growth cycle. Of course, everyone knows that there was a cold winter last year, mainly because of two points:
One is the stricter regulation, but this is the trend that the entire cultural industry has been in existence for the past 15 years. Because the core of cultural content is influence, the greater the influence, the greater the responsibility. Enhance the social responsibility of the content side through supervisionRen, very reasonable.
This can also bring a benefit. In the case of film and television, the reduction in the cost of actors will in turn increase the investment in production, so supervision will play a role in improving the quality of content production.
Second, the withdrawal of capital, this is a cyclical phenomenon. It has a day to evacuate and there will be a day to come back. Therefore, using the principle of first-principles, it is actually a good time to invest in entertainment content.
We look at consumption with the underlying logic of cultural content: new people, new channels, new products, new consumption scenarios, these “new” are the core engines that drive growth in the future.
And these pieces are precisely the places where lithography capital is very sensitive. The market accumulation in traffic and content platforms allows us to better grasp new businesses such as “content + consumption”.
Summary: First, we will be more sensitive and vote faster; second, we will look more accurate. For example, what content should be combined with what consumer products, what kind of model to use online and offline to conduct business.
Third, we can make the company grow better. The dozens of cultural industry companies we have invested in in the past have very strong content and traffic, which can easily help content or content + consumer companies to grow.
Large-flow platform companies like Kay’s storytelling and ten-point reading can create a new format that combines content and consumption, and it will help us with the startups we invest in.
There are also companies like Magic Chopsticks (Invincible Treasurer), which provides supply chain and liquidation services for Net Red in the fast hands. After we have finished voting, we can serve the content + consumption on the live track. The company provides great help.
At the same time, we also see that the combination of content and consumption is getting closer and closer. Many companies with entertainment content also take the initiative to go to the back end and make derivatives, including the aforementioned Hanfu and Guofeng in the field of clothing. , are the same logic.
Because from the perspective of the value chain, the “content + consumption” is more efficient and the market is bigger. So at this stage, “content + consumption” is one of the core areas of focus for Vision Capital.
02 Brand opportunities brought by “content + consumption” under the new consumption scene
In the case of specific investment, if a coordinate system is used to describe, the horizontal axis represents different subdivisions, and the vertical axis represents different consumer categories, then the horizontal and vertical integration points will generate investment opportunities.
But I want to emphasize a few “news” just mentioned. The opportunity must be generated by new people, new channels, new products and new scenarios.
(1) Why invest in the big lion? New brand born under the new consumption scene
For example, why do we vote for the big lion?? It is essentially a new brand of urban youth, combined with the “eat” category, and born under the new consumption scene.
A meal is a very large market. We have seen that there are already listed companies with a market value of hundreds of billions of dollars like Haitian soy sauce.
But it is a traditional brand that corresponds to the universal population and traditional supermarket channels, as well as traditional consumer scenes, which are only used when eating at home.
But nowadays urban youth, many times eating is called take-out, in this consumption scene, he also needs to accompany the meal, but no one provides it, which creates a great opportunity.
Zuo Da Shi now covers tens of thousands of restaurants and has sales data and geographic locations of millions of consumers every day. When it passes this consumption scenario, it will be much easier for consumers to enter the offline channels where these people are born after they have generated brand awareness.
But if you start in the traditional channel to compete with Haitian soy sauce and Laoganma, its entry cost will be very high and the difficulty is very large. This is our initial investment logic.
Of course, this business model needs to run through, and the requirements for the startup team are very comprehensive. In addition to quickly covering restaurants, you also need to be very familiar with the supply chain, able to continuously produce high-quality goods, and this high is for the target audience, beyond their expectations, to meet their needs, not universally popular .
So the products of Zuo Shishi are constantly iteratively optimized, and they have done a lot of SKUs that traditional canned vegetables and hot sauce companies do not have to adapt to the needs of its consumer groups in the take-away scenario. Including it provides SaaS services for small and medium-sized restaurants, and builds a strong BD team to quickly enter the restaurant and provide quality products to consumers.
I think that in this track, companies that generate 100 billion market capitalization can be expected. As mentioned earlier, the base of each segment of China is large enough, meaning that the demand is large enough, but these needs have not been better met.
Traditional enterprises are separated in content, goods, services, and channels. When you re-engineer these industries through mobile Internet content plus consumption, market space will be truly opened.
We have been emphasizing the integration of “content + consumption”. If you use the “content + consumption” logic to analyze Ruixing, you will find the same applies:
First, it captures a large number of new consumers who have not touched Starbucks; second, it occupies the office, takes out and delivers this new consumption scene; third, it uses a lot of office buildings. Elevator advertising, as well as a large number of Internet communication and social promotion methods, this is its content.
In addition to virtual content, it also includes physical content. Does Ruixing provide coffee that is different from Starbucks? Is there a new consumption scenario based on takeaway to adapt the product? There are.
So content plusThe form of consumption is re-creating the entire consumer industry, and each segment has the opportunity to generate very large new brands in each consumption scenario.
(2) “Content + Consumption” is a long-term opportunity in China
A lot of people ask me why there is no such phenomenon in the United States? I think that the United States actually exists. The net red goods sell well in the United States, but it is not as obvious as China. How is this difference caused?
First, the stage of social development is different from the basic culture. China’s interpersonal relationship chain is closer than the West, and we can see a very large gap from the length and frequency of WeChat and Facebook.
Second, China’s traditional media environment and advertising environment are actually polluted and diluted very seriously. Therefore, everyone’s trust in advertising is lower than in the West, but they trust the recommendation of friends or insiders. On this basis, China will have the role of KOL and KOC.
Third, China’s population base has brought a very large market depth. There is a very large information asymmetry and circle differences, such as sinking people (we don’t like to sink the market because it is not formed by the geographical environment, there are also sinking people in the north, Guangzhou and Shenzhen), but the developed countries market is almost It is flat.
These three points are the main reasons why China can form a business closed loop based on social networks. Including why the live broadcast and the WeChat group sell goods, can you sell so well?
First, compared to advertising, everyone is more willing to trust acquaintances; second, live broadcast breaks the limits of the geographical environment, you can see what the first-line market is consuming, and then naturally willing to buy the same product.
plus the development of e-commerce infrastructure, you can buy it, so it has formed this kind of unique consumption loop in China. This form is difficult to appear in the European and American markets, because their media and advertising environment is not so bad, and no acquaintances are recommended.
So, I think this is the biggest opportunity for Chinese consumption, and it is a long-term opportunity. In today’s social network and media environment, everyone is both a producer of content, a communicator of content, and a consumer; each person is both a buyer and a seller.
03 Under the trend of industrial convergence, all future consumer companies will strengthen IP
(1) For IP, the most important thing is ownership and continuous iteration
In addition to the “content + consumption” type of companies based on the new retail scene, the IP of consumer companies is also an important development trend.
The past content and consumption were fragmented, but as the mobile Internet and business environment matured, these links were gradually opened up, and content and consumption began to blend together.
For example, IP can easily authorize and even customize the products themselves, and then sell them through e-commerce and media channels, and consumers can also access the content.