Li Jiaqi and Li Ziqi: Where should traffic influencers go?

Two mobile phones and two internet celebrities triggered a "family crisis".

The wife was watching a Taobao video in the room. She couldn’t resist the urge to buy things because she thought, “All girls”, “Amazing”, and “Buy it”. “Li Jiaqi is simply the devil that makes me keep shopping!”

The husband lay on the sofa and felt the poetry and distance of chopping wood, farming, weaving and cooking in the countryside. Looking back at her family who knows nothing but spending money, she can't help but sigh: "I want to marry a wife like Li Ziqi!"

Wife: I am not afraid of anything except Li Jiaqi OMG
Husband: Life is not easy, I would marry Li Ziqi

In 2019, "Lipstick King" Li Jiaqi and "Ancient Style Food Blogger" Li Ziqi were the most popular internet celebrities. One represents the desire of the material world, and the other represents the sustenance and yearning of the spiritual world.

Now the hand of fate has pushed them in front of more people.

They have similar names and similar growth trajectories. From obscurity to overnight fame, they focus and persist in doing the same thing, and rely on platforms and institutions to realize their dreams. This is a struggle story of a grassroots Chinese internet celebrity.

But behind the camera, they also have the same confusion and anxiety. When the camera magnifies the beautiful side, where will the true self be placed?

In the world of internet celebrities, new people are constantly pouring in, while old ones are gradually disappearing. Where will they go?

A contradiction: the framed image and the filtered self

In November this year, Li Jiaqi told the media that he was not an "Internet celebrity". He described himself as a "relatively popular service staff."

At the same time, facing GQ magazine, Li Jiaqi said that he was an internet celebrity, not a star. But he left this message: "I won't say I want to be a star, I will just be Li Jiaqi."

The contradictory answers reveal his multiple identities.

Waiter, that was his past. Before participating in live shopping, Li Jiaqi was an offline salesperson at the Maybelline counter. Internet celebrity is his present progressive tense. On this year’s Double 11, Li Jiaqi’s single-person sales exceeded 1 billion yuan. He currently has 15.6697 million fans on Taobao Live, and the number of views of his live broadcast on the eve of Double 11 reached 36.8202 million. On Tik Tok, he has 36.939 million followers.

Li Jiaqi has never directly revealed his ambition to become a "star". But it is undeniable that Li Jiaqi is getting closer and closer to the entertainment industry.

In November this year, he participated in the national variety show "Happy Camp". In the latest season of "Tucao Conference", Li Jiaqi became the main guest of the first episode, and the host Wu Xin, actor Anita Yuan and other stars served as foils at the same time.

"Li Jiaqi behaved very unnaturally," his followers said.

The camera of "Tucao Conference" captured this scene: 10 minutes before going on stage, Li Jiaqi's left thumb kept fiddling with the base of his right hand. He was a little nervous.

Even when sitting in the main guest seat, Li Jiaqi still seemed reserved. Belly laugh, breathless laughter, these words have nothing to do with Li Jiaqi in the show. Most of the time, he sat upright with his hands resting on his thighs. His body is static, and what moves is his facial expression.

"His movements are no longer exaggerated, and his voice is no longer excited." In the eyes of a follower, he is a Li Jiaqi who is inconsistent with his image in the live broadcast room.

Li Ziqi is also struggling with multiple labels.

The peaceful and tranquil life in the countryside is what she wants to show in the video. Embroidery, flower planting, wine making, weaving, and cooking, Liziqi satisfies the public's imagination of ancient women. This is the origin of her "fairy spirit".

"The way she puts on a cloak and walks in the snow looks like Xue Baoqin in A Dream of Red Mansions!" exclaimed one of Li Ziqi's followers.

Liziqi doesn't want to be a static symbol. She built an oven, made a bamboo sofa, and did spring ploughing and autumn harvest by herself, showing her independent side in the video.

Perhaps in Li Ziqi's heart, there is still a dream of being a chivalrous woman. Dressed in red, she rode a horse through the mountains and forests. A pot of fine wine, drinking alone in the pavilion by the lotus pond. She even preserved the latter in the form of Shu embroidery.

"Li Ziqi really knows everything!" A fan of Li Ziqi sees her as the best template for his future wife.

On Weibo, Liziqi described herself as a "female mortal". Occasionally, she would refer to herself as "Laozi". In September 2017, Li Ziqi said on Weibo that she didn't want her fans to only see her as magnified and beautified by the camera.

She made fun of the sun spots on her face, admitted that she sometimes has a bad temper, and also posted photos of her nails with mud. These aren’t “fairies”, but they are real.

More controversy comes from Li Ziqi's past. From 2007 to 2013, Li Ziqi was a DJ and bar singer. A group of photos of Li Ziqi wearing smoky makeup and working in a nightclub circulated on the Internet. This is inconsistent with her pure and classical style in the video.

The lens is a dream maker. Li Jiaqi and Li Ziqi showed their best sides in front of their respective cameras. Their images are thus framed by the labels of "Lipstick King" and "Fairy". Other aspects of real life have been filtered through the lens.

This may be the origin of their contradictory image.

Second symbol: scarcity and anti-traditional existence

"I started watching Li Jiaqi because I was curious about how a boy would sell lipstick," revealed a follower of Li Jiaqi.

The scarcity of Li Jiaqi lies in the fact that he is not only a BA (beauty consultant) who can stimulate purchasing desire, but also a male BA. This defies stereotypes about gender and the beauty industry.

"I quite believe what Li Jiaqi says." A girl who has just entered the workplace thinks that Li Jiaqi is like an older brother and a "male best friend" around her. In real life, it is difficult to meet such people.

Fans will list the many advantages of Li Jiaqi in his videos, including his harmless appearance, rich professional knowledge, the courage to confront big names, and the ability to play and joke with his assistant. This is also why girls are willing to stay in his live broadcast room and voluntarily empty their wallets.

In the early days of live streaming, some people left negative comments because they could not accept male makeup, and even abused him for distorting social views.

A male beauty influencer told the IT Times that although the public's acceptance of men wearing makeup has increased, the industry is still controversial. "Netizens on the platform are not friendly to us. In 2017, they would directly scold me, but now they will deliberately leave teasing messages."

Li Jiaqi once chose to ignore the malicious comments, but in the end he still responded to the abuse from netizens, which shows that this is just his job.

In another space of the online world, Li Ziqi's videos also have anti-traditional genes. She embodies people's yearning for a peaceful life and a reflection on daily life.

In Li Ziqi's videos, there is no nine-to-five clocking in, no crowded buses and subways, no office struggles and overtime, but rather the beauty of the neglected agricultural society.

Earlier this month, Liziqi uploaded an 11-minute video that recreated the process from a soybean to a drop of traditional handmade soy sauce. This part of the content is only 6 minutes long, and the rest of the time is filled with various delicacies cooked with soy sauce. A table of delicious food is the final destiny of this soybean.

What Li Ziqi focuses on in the video is the joy after the soybean harvest and the sense of accomplishment after making soy sauce. But in real life, the work of weeding, fertilizing and long waits in the fields are often overlooked.

"It seems that when Li Ziqi cooks, there is no smell of oil smoke on her body!" said her fans.

This is the common feature of Li Ziqi's videos. She poeticizes rural life and tries to change the public's stereotype of rural life . Especially when she put on ancient costume and worked, time in the video seemed to stand still.

But netizens can't help but reflect, is rural life really as beautiful as shown in the video? If the protagonist in the video is a peasant woman who knows everything but looks ordinary, would you still watch it?

Let’s put aside for now the question of whether Li Ziqi can represent Chinese culture and export it overseas. Bai Yansong once commented on Li Ziqi: "It's not that Li Ziqi has many problems now, but that there are too few Li Ziqi."

Anti-traditionalism and scarcity form the foundation for the growth of Li Jiaqi and Liziqi .

Three starting points: Internet celebrities pushed to the forefront by traffic

Let’s go back to 2016. At that time, Li Jiaqi and Li Ziqi could not have imagined what kind of surprises their lives would bring three years later.

In the second half of 2016, Mei ONE cooperated with L'Oréal to launch a project called "BA Internet Celebrity" to try online sales. Li Jiaqi is one of the seven selected anchors.

At the beginning of the live broadcast, Li Jiaqi insisted on trying lipstick with his mouth. He once tried 380 lipsticks in a live broadcast. Behind the camera, he felt his lips go numb and sting when he touched warm food. At one point, he had shades on the lipstick.

On March 25, 2016, Li Ziqi uploaded her first video "Peach Blossom Wine" on Meipai. Li Ziqi originally planned to shoot short videos to attract traffic to her Taobao store, which is the main source of income for her and her grandmother.

Liziqi also has a focused side. She revealed on Weibo that in order to film an episode of "Lanzhou Beef Noodles", she went to learn from a ramen restaurant chef and practiced kneading dough repeatedly for more than a month. She said that she shot more than 200 shots for the 2-minute video of ramen, but ultimately used less than 50 of them. During the three days of filming, she wasted 20 kilograms of flour, and the wasted dough was made into naan, which was eaten for half a month.

"I was attracted by the ramen clip. Li Ziqi's technique is very sophisticated. People in the comments were saying that Li Ziqi must have learned it for a long time and it must not have been easy!" said Li Ziqi's followers.

In order to capture a few dozen seconds of snow scene, she, who had no team at the time, had been frozen on the snowy mountain for seven or eight hours. Her hands had lost all feeling and she needed to warm them up before adjusting the position of the camera.

In many videos, there was bruise on the nail of Li Ziqi's left thumb. Many fans left messages expressing their sympathy in the comments.

This reflects the efforts made by grassroots internet celebrities when they first became famous. But life is far from chicken soup. When their efforts are not proportional to their performance, the thought of giving up may cross their minds.

In 2018, Li Jiaqi did 389 live broadcasts. He said frankly that he dared not not do a live broadcast in 5 days.

Li Ziqi's short videos did not meet her expectations at the beginning. On April 24, 2016, Liziqi uploaded "Cherry Wine" on Meipai. As netizens were slow to give likes, Li Ziqi looked at her phone and began to doubt whether she should continue on this path.

In the short video "Cherry Wine", Liziqi used "Myth" as the background music. God first played a joke on her, and then let her see the "myth".

This video that frustrates Li Ziqi was liked by the CEO of Meitu and was pushed to the homepage of Meipai the next day after it was uploaded. Currently, this video has received 46,000 likes on Meipai and has been played 1.865 million times. Li Ziqi decided to continue.

There was a dramatic side to both Li Jiaqi and Li Ziqi in their early days in the industry. No matter how hard they tried, they could not be seen by more people. Just when they were entangled and struggling, a glimmer of hope made them choose to persevere. That's one way of saying it.

Indeed, concentration and hard work are necessary conditions for grassroots internet celebrities to become famous. But the turning point of these two stories lies in the platform's traffic diversion.

Perhaps in a sense, they saw the importance of the platform at the beginning of their career.

Four explosions: the right time, right place and right people behind the breakthrough

Baidu search index shows that Li Ziqi's name began to appear in news headlines from June 20 to June 26, 2016. Li Ziqi’s first small peak occurred from May 8 to May 14, 2017.

On May 13, 2017, Li Ziqi rarely showed her vulnerable side on Weibo. Faced with rumors, smears and attacks, she decided to stop updating. But ten days later, she uploaded a new video "Crayfish". Since that video, Liziqi said she would no longer make videos alone.

Qichacha shows that on July 20, 2017, Li Jiajia, who is suspected to be Li Ziqi's real name, established Sichuan Ziqi Culture Communication Co., Ltd. and held a 49% stake. The major shareholder of this company is Weinian Technology, the MCN agency that Li Ziqi is currently signed to.

It is reported that the largest shareholder of Weinian Technology is Liu Tongming, and the second largest shareholder is Weimeng Chuangke, which belongs to Sina.

It is worth mentioning that on August 29, 2016, Weinian Technology registered the trademark "Li Ziqi". In a Weibo post, Li Ziqi revealed that in September 2016, she received a private message on Weibo from "Mr. L". "Mr. L" was believed by the media to be Liu Tongming.

If we connect the time points together, there will be a story like this: as early as the end of August 2016, Liziqi attracted the attention of Weinian Technology. In the end, she signed a contract with this MCN agency with Sina background. This means that Liziqi can get help in content production, copyright management, publicity and promotion, fan operation, monetization and sales, and resource matching.

As a result, Li Ziqi has completed her transformation in accumulating fans and currently has 21.69 million fans on Weibo. This is the acceleration behind her soaring into the sky.

In addition, on Chinese Valentine's Day (August 17) in 2018, Li Ziqi launched her Tmall store and began the journey of monetizing her traffic. Within three days of opening, her online store’s sales exceeded 10 million. However, behind Li Ziqi's fairy spirit, there is a hint of commercialism.

In the first half of 2018, Li Jiaqi was still accumulating strength. Around Double Eleven this year, he defeated Jack Ma in selling lipsticks live, but the public is still not fully familiar with the three names "Li Jiaqi".

The change occurred later that year. Li Jiaqi’s Douyin account posted a short video composed of his famous quotes from live broadcasts. Li Jiaqi once again tasted the feeling of being the center of attention.

Looking back at Li Jiaqi’s Weibo in 2019, on January 31 he was still excited about celebrating his one million fans. Now he has 9.02 million fans, an eight-fold increase in 11 months.

"I only had over one million fans three years ago. Can you imagine? But it only took me three months to get 30 million fans. It only took me half a year to get 50 million fans, and I became an internet celebrity," Li Jiaqi once said.

This is thanks to a conversation between Li Jiaqi and Zhao Yuanyuan, the head of Taobao Live, at the end of 2018, who positioned Li Jiaqi as a "global internet celebrity." It was also because of this conversation that Li Jiaqi moved from Taobao to outside Taobao and registered accounts on multiple platforms.

In addition to having the support of institutions and platforms, Li Jiaqi and Liziqi have also seized the opportunity.

According to data from the Forward-looking Industry Research Institute, the market size of China's beauty industry was 358.14 billion yuan in 2017, and it is expected that the market size of China's beauty industry will exceed 500 billion yuan in 2022.

At the same time, in 2018, the beauty and cosmetics consumption of those born after 1995 increased by 347%, maintaining triple-digit growth for three consecutive years. In terms of consumption behavior, post-95 consumers are dependent on social networks. This is an opportunity for Li Jiaqi and others.

On the other hand, Liziqi seized the trend of short videos. According to iMedia Research data, the number of short video users in China reached 501 million in 2018, while in 2016 the number was 153 million, more than triple.

The "slow life" presented in Li Ziqi's videos has also attracted attention due to the broadcast of slow variety shows such as "Chinese Restaurant" and "Longing for Life".

If we think carefully about the road to fame of Li Jiaqi and Liziqi, behind their personal efforts and persistence, there are also the opportunities of the times and the leverage of institutional platforms.

The outbreak is the result of the right time, right place and right people.

Five Anxiety: Will the Internet Celebrity Curse happen again?

"Whether it's a star, internet celebrity, or anchor, there will always be a day when they rise and a day when they fall," said Li Jiaqi.

In the online world, there are many stories of internet celebrities who became famous overnight, soared to fame, but eventually left the stage in disgrace.

On December 24, a piece of news about "Papi Jiang's pregnant belly" topped the hot search list, but was then quickly drowned out by other topics.

Papi Jiang was one of the most popular internet celebrities in 2016, when Li Jiaqi and Li Ziqi had just entered the market. In April of that year, Papi Jiang’s first advertisement was sold at a sky-high price of 22 million yuan, sparking heated discussion.

Only three years have passed, and Papi Jiang is no longer a common sight in the online world. On December 19 this year, Papi Jiang updated a short video on Weibo, which only received more than 50,000 likes and more than 2,000 comments.

Even top internet celebrities like Papi Jiang will one day fade out of the public eye. How to keep yourself popular? How will it transform? As they tossed and turned in the middle of the night, they had to think about these difficult problems.

Li Jiaqi is anxious. He once told People magazine: "I'm afraid that all my luck has run out, because it's so good, so good that none of us really have recovered. We are also wondering why we became so popular."

He could only keep broadcasting. Some careful fans noticed that Li Jiaqi's voice began to age and his eyes were full of fatigue. "He looks haggard." In a live broadcast, Li Jiaqi showed his side after removing makeup, with traces of acne on his left cheek.

Nowadays, netizens see more choices in Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room. In addition to beauty products, Li Jiaqi has also sold laundry detergent, movie tickets, non-stick pans, hairy crabs, etc. It was just the latter two that caused Li Jiaqi to fail in the live broadcast room.

The article in "GQ" magazine restored another possibility for Li Jiaqi, that he will create his own brand in the future. This may be another attempt besides getting closer to the entertainment industry to gain more traffic.

Li Ziqi's videos have also changed. Originally, her videos only showed one dish and one thing, and were about 5 minutes long. Now the video has been stretched to more than 10 minutes. In addition to restoring the entire process of crops from sowing to harvesting, she also uses one ingredient as the theme to make multiple dishes.

At the same time, she slowed down her pace of updates. It has been 3 weeks since her last video. In December she posted just one, while in September, October and November she uploaded 2, 3 and 4 videos respectively.

In the world of internet celebrities, if you don’t advance, you will retreat. No one can predict what the future holds. This is the similar confusion and anxiety faced by Li Jiaqi and Liziqi.

Li Jiaqi once told the media that he wanted to slow down in 2019. After three years of live streaming and earning seven figures a month, Li Jiaqi has completely given up his private life. His days and nights were filled with work and loneliness.

On September 18, 2017, Li Ziqi shared this story on Weibo: She tried to introduce 6 passion fruit seedlings to Sichuan. Passion fruit requires a tropical environment with an average temperature above 18 degrees. She set up a tent for this purpose. The passion fruit, which should have bloomed in May and June, has not yet shown any signs of blooming. It wasn't until September that she saw the passion fruit buds without any preparation.

This is an unexpected encounter, echoing the stories of Internet celebrities in the online world. The process was tortuous, but it finally blossomed. The desire for fame was finally satisfied.

However, after gaining some illusory popularity and going through all these things, will they still cherish the past?

Li Jiaqi has lost the shyness and blushing he had in the early days of live streaming. He hasn’t sung in the live streaming room for a long time and has no chance to sing karaoke or play mahjong with his friends. Li Ziqi's peaceful life was disturbed. She shared on Weibo that a drone once flew over her head.

On Weibo, Li Jiaqi and Li Ziqi follow each other. Imagine a quiet scene like this: one day, when Li Jiaqi appears in Li Ziqi's video, he enjoys the leisurely side of life, while she quietly makes rouge and lipstick.

There, there is no fatigue behind desire, nor the anxiety of commercialization. The good times...

Author: Sun Pengfei

Source: IT Times