Wherever there is the Internet, there are Internet celebrities, and wherever there are Internet celebrities, there are myths. There are internet celebrities, and of course there are internet celebrity brands. Today I want to talk about the topic of internet celebrity brands .

The saying “Wildfires cannot be extinguished; spring breezes will bring new life” is the most appropriate way to describe internet celebrity brands. Internet celebrity brands in the mobile Internet era are like leeks, emerging one after another, from Diaoye Beef Brisket, which is known as the originator of Internet celebrities in the catering industry, to Zhong Xue Gao, Yuanqi Forest, and Cha Yan Yue Se, which are currently in the limelight.

However, short life seems to be the inevitable fate of internet celebrity brands. Diaoye Beef Brisket was sold at a low price, Taoyuan Military Village disappeared, Yidiandian Milk Tea became mediocre... This also caused the Internet celebrity brands to suffer from stigmatization. Many founders of internet celebrity brands have long distanced themselves from being “internet celebrities” and acted as if “you are the internet celebrity, your whole family is an internet celebrity.”

Of course, my purpose today is not to pour cold water on a certain internet celebrity brand. I want to talk about the brand and business topics of internet celebrity brands.

The popularity of a brand is just the beginning of a business, not the end.

An important sign of Internet celebrity brands, especially Internet celebrity restaurant brands, is queues . For example, last year, Cha Yan Yue Se, which expanded out of Changsha and opened in Wuhan, went viral on the internet with news that some consumers queued for eight hours overnight just to be the first to taste it.

But the power of internet celebrities will gradually disappear as customers’ trial period passes. The disappearance of the power of Internet celebrities essentially stems from the different value demands of customers for trying new things and repeat purchases.

When it comes to trying new things, customers are willing to spend time and money to get experiences that they don’t have in their daily lives; but when it comes to repeat purchases, proximity, good taste, and cost-effectiveness are more important.

Even Diaoye Beef Brisket, which often talked about revolutionizing the catering industry at that time, could not avoid such "mundane things". When the brand has passed its novelty period, people’s focus will eventually return to the essence of catering.

Even though Diaoye Beef Brisket claims that its secret recipe for cooking beef brisket was purchased for 5 million yuan from Hong Kong God of Cookery Dai Long, the prototype character in Stephen Chow's movie "The God of Cookery". It is also inevitable that a large number of customers complain that the food is "too expensive" and "not tasty".

"It's hard to live up to the reputation." Like Diaoye Beef Brisket, when your brand is overhyped, you are actually overdrawing and stimulating users' enthusiasm for consumption, which will cause users to overdraw their enthusiasm for the product in advance.

Consumers' overly high expectations of internet celebrity brands in the early stages will eventually backfire on the brands.

When a brand becomes popular, what you need to do is to maintain consumers' high expectations to avoid it being a flash in the pan. So I say, the popularity of a brand is just the beginning, not the end.

But the vast majority of internet celebrity brands regard becoming famous as the end point.

"Red-robed Leader" Zhou Hongyi once said that Chinese entrepreneurs all have a common problem after they become successful - they all start to rewrite history, preaching how they innovated and how they strategized in the past. In most cases it's just luck.

Those hindsight summaries by successful people all talk about how great they were. What else can such summaries do other than make people admire them even more?

I find that influencer brands understand this better. Behind every successful internet celebrity brand, we can find countless news stories to discuss the brand’s success methodology, especially the founder’s profound insights into the industry and the market.

In fact, Diao Ye really became famous on the Internet around 2006, when he had just experienced a failed business venture and was doing nothing but hanging out on various websites and forums. He became famous for writing an article on Tianya titled "Destroying One's Own Skills - Earning the First 10 Million by "Doing Subtraction""

Later, after Afu essential oil and Diaoye beef brisket became popular, Diaoye began to write books and articles. He could often be seen giving speeches on various occasions, preaching his disruptor methodology. To this day, you can still see him frequently publishing his own "theories" on his personal public account, but the frequency is much less than in previous years.

To put it another way, theirs cannot be called a methodology, because it has too many unique brand attributes and too many factors that are the bonuses of the times. In the Internet business world where "there is only first and no second", it is simply a fantasy to want to replicate success.

So once people’s illusions about internet celebrity brands are shattered, the internet celebrity brands will no longer be popular.

Why is the illusion of internet celebrity brands so easily shattered?

Because accidental, short-term success is not called success, it has not been verified by large-scale replication. Once they become famous, they are pulled to the podium to preach, either to attract investment or to maintain popularity.

After gaining too much attention, any slight movement of the brand will be magnified infinitely. This excessive binding itself is like a bloody knife wound or a walk on the beach, which is an extremely dangerous thing.

Even for a company as successful as Alibaba, everyone praised Jack Ma as a god back then, and then he made some quotes to gain countless fans. But with Ant Financial's failed IPO, recent public opinion has begun to backfire on Jack Ma, not to mention those internet celebrity brands?

3. The essence of Internet celebrities is still brands

What is the routine of Internet celebrity brands? Personalized freshness and hot topics on social media, coupled with a large-scale marketing offensive to attract the attention of young people .

Telling stories and selling emotions are the paths to fame for all internet celebrity brands. From Perfect Diary, Pop Mart to Zhong Xue Gao, Yuanqi Forest, and Heytea, these new consumer brands have emerged from nowhere in recent years, and this is true for all of them.

The reasons for success are surprisingly similar, but the reasons for failure are always different.

Diaoye beef brisket is "too bad to eat", Luckin Coffee has a scandal...

The hot trend cannot support Internet celebrity brands to go further. Like Diaoye Beef Brisket and Luckin Coffee, when Internet celebrity brands can no longer produce meaningful topics, they will soon be abandoned by fans.

You think your brand is sought after and flaunted like a luxury product, but without the support of brand culture, it is only temporary.

Luxury goods have never been admired just because of their high quality. Rather, it is because the strong spirit of craftsmanship has created unparalleled products, giving the brand a strong uniqueness, durability and authenticity, and this authenticity has strengthened people's impression of the brand's enduring popularity.

But many internet celebrity brands seem to have understood it the wrong way.

Being able to tell stories and sell feelings are just added values ​​of a product, but they cannot become the core of a brand. If separated from the essence of the brand, an Internet celebrity brand may just be an empty shell with nothing on the surface. The dazzling gameplay has caused Internet celebrity brands to ignore the essence of business, and ultimately they can only leave in despair as fans get tired of them.

The Internet era has created a wave of internet celebrity economy. Celebrities come one after another, and internet celebrity brands also come one after another.

Just like the influencers who have kept influencers such as Li Jiaqi, Viya and Luo Yonghao. After the test of time, it is still unknown which internet celebrity brand will be the final winner.

Be it an internet celebrity brand or a general brand. The right way is to break away from the flashy illusion of internet celebrities and return to the essence of business. After all, the noise will always pass, and when the tide recedes, the naked swimmers will be revealed.