How long will these IP marketing be popular?

No one can tell how long they will remain popular. Just like we don’t know which group of people will become popular next year.

In 2018, those who didn’t get opportunities were desperately making a fuss, and those who became famous overnight were not so confident.

Becoming famous overnight has become increasingly easier in 2018, but also increasingly paradoxical. A certain person or a certain type of thing will suddenly become popular overnight, and these people and things have cleverly grasped the pulse of social sentiment at that stage.

But precisely because the future is unpredictable, overnight fame seems so elusive in 2018. In the unbearable cold wave, they huddled together for warmth and became the few lucky ones.

1. One article goes viral, and the change of discourse power in the era of self-media

The era of self-media has arrived, and many content producers have a platform to express their opinions on an equal footing with the media. With the expansion of discourse power, self-media, with its extremely simple content production process and more daring natural advantages, stole the limelight in 2018 and even became a force that shook the three giant companies.

Tencent has become the first giant wall to be shaken by self-media.

On May 5, Internet observer Pan Luan bombarded Tencent’s WeChat Moments with an article titled “Tencent Has No Dreams” on his public account “Luanfanshu”.

In more than 10,000 words, the author clearly and logically discusses how Tencent has gradually lost its original vision from aspects such as Tencent's weakening of product innovation, its enthusiasm for investment, aging management personnel, and limited internal trial and error space.

Adding a "no" between the words "Tencent" and "dream" made this article quickly grab the headlines of major technology media from the very beginning. The article's solid analysis and profound perspective not only attracted heated discussions from many Internet giants such as Tencent President Martin Lau and ByteDance CEO Zhang Yiming, but also triggered one of the biggest misunderstandings in the history of the Internet this year, namely the "Pony Ma Huateng responds to "Tencent has no dreams"" incident.

Pan Luan is not a self-media person in the strict sense. According to media reports, Pan Luan was first known to people in the industry as an editor of Huxiu, and it was this experience that allowed him to accumulate extremely deep knowledge in the business and technology circles. His current identity is the operating partner of "Zuiyou".

At the second Toutiao "Golden Byte" Award Ceremony, Pan Luan won the "Company Report of the Year" award with his article "Tencent Has No Dreams", beating out a number of media outlets. The name "Pan Luan" officially became the first business card of self-media in 2018.

"Tencent Has No Dreams" fired the first shot in the self-media's challenge to large companies. It also slammed the label of self-media as "shallow and ignorant, and only knows marketing" heavily to the ground.

In addition to the high quality of the article, the reason why "Tencent Has No Dreams" became so popular is also due to the unequal status of the two parties in the incident: one is Tencent, one of the largest giants in China's Internet, and the other is a weak self-media person. Although giant platforms have abundant resources, weak content producers can also use high-quality content to shake this huge business empire in the era of self-media.

Just two months later in July, an article titled "The King of Vaccines" not only shook up a giant company, but also shook up an industry and the traditional reporting pattern of the media.

The incident originated from a notice issued by the State Food and Drug Administration on July 15. The notice showed that the rabies vaccine produced by Changchun Changsheng Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (Changchun Changsheng) was found to have problems such as falsification of production records. It has been ordered to suspend production and its GMP certificate has been revoked.

However, the relevant media reports at this time are still focused on following up on the progress of the incident, and no media has taken the initiative to speak out on the matter. On July 21, an article titled "The King of Vaccines" was published on a public account named "Shoulouchu". In the article, the author Shouye peels an onion and reveals how the company involved, Changchun Changsheng, did not hesitate to commit fraud and turned the vaccines that flowed into people's bodies into a capital tool.

As soon as this article came out, it immediately hit the public's social sentiment regarding vaccine safety. As of July 22, before "The Vaccine King" was deleted, the article had received more than 40,000 likes and its reading volume was conservatively estimated to have exceeded five million. After this article was published, five official media outlets, including People's Daily, Guangming Daily, CCTV.com, Procuratorate Daily, and China National Radio, officially commented on the matter. Big Vs such as @谢娜, @稀土队, and @刘强东 also spoke out on the matter. At this point, the vaccine incident reached its peak in public opinion.

This is undoubtedly a classic case of self-media taking the lead in leading the wave of public opinion and traditional media following suit. While people were venting their anger, they began to turn their attention to the author of the article, Shouye. Who is he, who is well versed in self-media communication?

According to media reports, Shouye's real name is Zhang Yuqun, a former real estate industry reporter for Southern Weekend and current director of Interface Real Estate. The articles he published on "Shou Lou Chu" also include "Miss Tian's Past of Flirting with Men", "The Age of Gamblers", "Wang Shi Is Not Being Himself", "My Brother Xu in Society" and many other articles with "over 100,000 views". His articles are known for targeting big names, having unique angles, and sharp writing style. They are professional yet interesting, macro yet logical.

It is his traditional media experience that has enabled him to accumulate a rich reserve of knowledge. However, the change in content reporting process is the main reason why self-media is ahead of traditional media in this report. While the content of traditional media is still going through the publishing process of reporting, planning, and review, self-media platforms can already take advantage of this time to send out reports first.

If the trend of change in content platforms is to allow high-quality content to reach users more quickly and conveniently, then the content production process must also obey this trend.

Just three months later, the technology self-media platform "Xiaosheng Bibi" took advantage of the process advantages of the self-media platform and created another tourism unicorn.

On October 20, a self-media account named "Xiaosheng Bibi" published an article titled "Is the tourism unicorn valued at 17.5 billion a ghost town made up of zombies and water armies? 》article. The article uses data analysis provided by Hu Rui Data to directly point out that Mafengwo Travel Network is suspected of plagiarizing and falsifying review content. (For details of the incident, please see "")

On the evening of October 22, Mafengwo announced that the defamation case it filed against Shenzhen Hu Rui Data Co., Ltd. and Ding Ziquan (the operator of Xiaosheng Bibi) had been accepted. At this point, the incident has escalated into a legal case between a self-media person and a unicorn company. The outcome of the incident is awaiting legal judgment, and "Xiaosheng Bibi" has become famous for this extremely righteous behavior and has received almost unanimous support from netizens.

Perhaps, authors like Pan Luan, Shouye and Ziquan, who have single-handedly moved the industry's iceberg, have become the representatives of the spirit of media professionals in 2018. The fact that these giant companies were affected means that they can no longer use the forces they think they can control to block the outside voices and the direction of public opinion. In the era of self-media, the change of discourse power has brought about not only changes in information reception habits, but also the awakening of the whole nation's awareness of independent thinking.

2. Grassroots counterattack: a resilient grass in idol culture

However, the popular self-media still cannot withstand the biting cold wind that blew towards various industries this year. From the cold winter of the film and television industry and the blocking of self-media accounts, to the large-scale bankruptcy of game companies and large-scale layoffs of Internet companies... forwarding koi has become the last straw that breaks the camel's back as people struggle desperately in anxiety.

In 2018, whether or not people had watched Produce 101, they all remembered a “human koi”: Yang Chaoyue.

This "Yang Chaoyue Koi Picture" with a light shining behind it has so far occupied a considerable number of people's social platforms such as Moments, WeChat avatars, Weibo homepages, and mobile phone wallpapers. Reposting Yang Chaoyue's posts whenever something happens seems to have become a ritual, allowing people to ease their anxiety about future uncertainty through imaginary cause and effect.

The reason why Yang Chaoyue became so popular can be traced back to a phenomenal variety show "Creation 101" in 2018. In this program that turns the fan economy into a "girl group produced by all the people", "the hope of the whole village" Yang Chaoyue is far from the standards of traditional girl groups: she sings out of tune, can't keep up with the dancing, and often cries in front of the camera.

But what’s interesting is that her strength is completely inversely proportional to her popularity. In a competition system where victory or defeat was entirely determined by fan votes, she consistently ranked high in the voting in every episode, and finally made her debut successfully with the third place. In contrast, many strong contestants were eliminated. This made many indignant fans post a picture on the Internet saying "Retweet this Yang Chaoyue, she got third place in the final exam even though she knew nothing about it" to "blackmail" her.

On August 9, Lehua Entertainment announced that Meng Meiqi and Wu Xuanyi, who ranked first and second among the debuting members, will withdraw from the girl group. Netizens speculated that Yang Chaoyue, who ranked third, would automatically become the "C position" (without any effort). After this criticism was captured by various Weibo celebrities, self-media and marketing accounts, it sparked a craze across the entire network to watch Chaoyue's sister's "koi history".

In the article "The Most Complete Yang Chaoyue Koi Wallpaper in History", the self-media "Banxian Yaoyao" recounted Yang Chaoyue's amazing luck: she was invited to participate in the Running Man Carnival because she wanted to meet Lu Han, and she was assigned to Mao Buyi's group because she shared Mao Buyi's lyrics, and so on. This article was then quickly circulated in the circle of friends, with the number of readers instantly exceeding 100,000, and almost all the comments in the comment section were filled with people fulfilling their wishes after reposting Yang Chaoyue's post.

From then on, people began to seriously believe in Yang Chaoyue's koi physique that "you can have good luck without working hard." The slogan "Retweet Yang Chaoyue" has changed from a tool for black fans to attack her to a weapon for the whole nation to pray for good luck. In this cold winter when everything is going wrong, it has given people the happiest imagination.

Yang Chaoyue can be regarded as a special type of idol derived from a special era. Fans' worship of idols mainly stems from their simple fantasy of beautiful things. As long as idols can meet the demands of mainstream fans, live a glamorous life under the spotlight, and satisfy fans' fantasies time and time again, they can successfully attract fans.

Yang Chaoyue can be regarded as a resilient grass that has grown against the tide in this flourishing idol culture. Among the other 100 girls, there are many trainees who are both beautiful and talented. When fans are caught in the dilemma of being overwhelmed by the flowers, Yang Chaoyue appears in the eyes of fans as the beautiful but extremely weak one.

She represents a grassroots class that lags behind the elite class in all aspects. Her high-profile debut not only satisfied fans' fantasy about an ordinary girl group, but also the fantasy that the grassroots can also counterattack and achieve success. Just like her name, even if she is not outstanding, she can still surpass others.

3. Anxiety derivatives: Koi dreaming

If being an idol requires at least being pretty, then being a koi fish has no requirement at all, all you need is luck.

On September 29, Alipay launched an event called "Wish You Become China's Koi" on its official blog. As long as you forward this Weibo post, you will have a chance to be selected as the Chinese Koi and enjoy the "exclusive favor" from major merchants around the world.

In the long list of favors listed under this Weibo post, from major brand-name clothes, shoes, bags, and cosmetics to accommodation, air tickets, hotels, tickets in dozens of countries, and even private pilot training in the United States, all are free of charge for this "Chinese Koi".

This Weibo post was retweeted over 1 million times within six hours, setting a record for the fastest retweet of over a million times in corporate marketing history. Alipay's Koi marketing has become the most successful marketing case in 2018 - the total number of reposts on Weibo was nearly 3 million, and the number of fans increased by more than 2 million.

A Weibo user named @信小呆 is one of the three million. On September 30, she reposted the Alipay Koi Weibo post and commented, "The rest of my life depends on this one."

Just after the National Day holiday, Xin Xiaodai "fought" for her second half of life. On October 7, Alipay announced the results of a lucky draw on Weibo, and @信小呆 became the “Chinese Koi” drawn from 3 million people.

Xin Xiaodai also felt incredible when recalling her experience that day, "I really wanted to sleep until 11 o'clock, but I woke up at 9 o'clock. When I was in the toilet, I found that my phone was vibrating wildly. The first thing I thought of was April Fools' Day. The second thing I thought of was Alipay, telling me who won the prize?" After logging into Weibo with a computer, she found that she was "hot". She was so excited that her hands were shaking, and she also posted on Weibo: "Do I not have to work for the rest of my life???"

This Weibo post received 270,000 comments and 730,000 reposts, and was also reposted by her idol Li Xian. A large number of users petitioned the new Chinese koi under this Weibo post. Her Weibo followers also quickly increased by 400,000 within a few hours.

When Xin Xiaodai was interviewed by the media on October 9, he also revealed his identity: he was born in Tianjin in 1992 and is an IT engineer. She also claimed that she was a "homebody", single, and still using a Xiaomi phone.

Such a down-to-earth identity makes the European spirit of this Chinese koi more real. In @信小呆’s subsequent Weibo posts, we can see that she, who now has more than 1 million fans, has been invited to attend various activities, take on endorsements, and do live broadcasts. She has jumped from an ordinary programmer to a well-known Internet celebrity. Her personal certification on Weibo has also changed to "2018 Alipay China Koi, IT Engineer".

According to statistics, this marketing campaign of Alipay set four records:

1. The fastest time to reach one million reposts in the history of corporate marketing

2. The highest total forwarding volume in corporate communication cases ever

3. Corporate marketing topics dominate the Weibo hot search list

4. Corporate marketing can increase the number of personal followers by the most within 24 hours

Alipay did the right thing at the right time and in the right place.

In this Koi marketing, Alipay chose "surprise attack". Without any warm-up or advance publicity, the concept of "Chinese Koi" became popular on Weibo with just one Weibo post and immediate follow-up comments and reposts from multiple companies.

The reason why this effect can be achieved is that Weibo is an excellent platform for the concept of "koi". The openness of Weibo social networking allows the joint marketing between Alipay and various companies to create huge momentum in a short period of time. Koi is a mythical animal derived from Weibo. Just click your fingers and forward, and good luck may fall from the sky. This low-cost way of participation is something that most Weibo users cannot refuse.

The word "koi" also accurately captures the social sentiment of users' desire to get something for nothing. The countless worship and reposts of Xin Xiaodai once again confirmed how anxious 2018 is. Since then, countless Koi-drawing activities have been launched online. While "Koi" is constantly being consumed, can it also allow people to see through the tricks of this new Koi cult?

4. Tasteful IPs are not tacky at all

A pair of simple brothers have become the new darlings of the short video industry.

This pair of brothers are called the Huanong Brothers, and they live in Quannan County, Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province. They always find a hundred strange reasons to eat the bamboo rats they raise. For example: this bamboo rat has heatstroke, this bamboo rat is depressed, and this bamboo rat is so beautiful.

Liu Suliang, one of the Huanong Brothers, is a bamboo rat breeder. At the beginning of each video, he would grab the tail of his bamboo rat and play with it with a somewhat loving look. And the next second, he casually found a half-hearted reason to turn the cute little bamboo rat into his meal.

These short videos of people eating bamboo rats in various ways gained huge attention after they went viral on the Internet. While watching him come up with a hundred weird reasons for eating bamboo rats, netizens actively cooperated with him in making jokes, interacting with him, and even making emoticons for bamboo rats.

In Fushun County, Zigong City, Sichuan Province, @Food Writer Wang Gang is taking the "dry goods" food blogger route. In the video, he can teach the audience how to make a hard dish from start to finish in just a few minutes using his special accent and rich images.

Afterwards, these two popular earthy internet celebrities "got together". Wang Gang came to the bamboo rat breeding farm of the Huanong Brothers and admired bamboo rats and ate bamboo rat meat with him. The two even engaged in bundled marketing, with the Huanong Brothers responsible for providing bamboo rats, while Wang Gang guided fans to buy bamboo rats from the Huanong Brothers in the video and taught fans how to make a delicious braised bamboo rat.

The popularity of earthy IPs stems from the fact that many people living in remote areas have found a place to express their opinions on public platforms: self-media platforms such as Toutiao, Kuaishou, and Douyin are open to all users with low thresholds, making content creation no longer just a synonym for "high-end". On the contrary, as long as people read your content, you are a successful content creator.

Rustic internet celebrities like the Huanong Brothers and Wang Gang don’t take the exaggerated route. In his videos, he delicately displays the simple and warm rural life. While satisfying the audience's curiosity, they can also gain some healing feeling from this primitive, slow-paced life.

However, although they do not have a high level of education, they all have their own way of operating fans. They know where to stimulate discussion among fans, and how to use these topics to interact with fans and strengthen their personal brand.

Although the content of Tuwei IP is a bit "rustic", their ideas and methods of self-media are not "rustic" at all.

5. The Birth of Alternative Internet Celebrities

If the Huanong Brothers became famous by eating bamboo rats, then the other brother who became famous overnight really made a living by his looks.

On August 29, on the "Internet celebrity" program "1818 Golden Eyes" on Zhejiang TV Channel 6, a young victim named Xiao Wu denounced the barber shop's deceptive behavior on the show. Overnight, he went from being a real estate agent with a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan to an internet celebrity who caused a frenzy in the emoticon world.

After netizens discovered his hilarious expression of "frowning his eyebrows and tilting his head to accuse" on the show, they began to crazily create emoticons for him. After the show was broadcast that day, the number of reposts of Xiao Wu’s Weibo for the show had reached 40 million, with both reposts and comments reaching 70,000 to 80,000, and Xiao Wu’s own Weibo followers also increased by 20,000. Netizens have dubbed him "Hairline Boy" and "Eyebrow Brother".

After becoming famous overnight, the cheating barber shop owner apologized to Xiao Wu earnestly. Xiao Wu also said in an interview with the media that he actually doesn't like netizens making emoticons for him, nor does he want to enter any entertainment circle. He just wants to sell houses peacefully.

Later, this sentence was made into a classic "It smells so good" ghost animal material by netizens. Because after he became famous, he began to frequently accept endorsements, advertisements, and appear on TV shows, and even on Happy Camp. Even when Hedgehog wanted to contact him for an interview earlier, he found out that his schedule for the next two months was already full. At this time, Xiao Wu began to actively interact with netizens on Weibo using his own emoticons.

Xiao Wu’s popularity also attracted a lot of criticism. People lament that the threshold to enter the entertainment industry is getting lower and lower. Even someone like Xiao Wu, who has no talent or good looks, can gain fame in the entertainment industry that many people cannot achieve in their entire lives.

In this era where traffic is king, no matter who you are, as long as you can capture the user's attention in the flood of information, you can live in the spotlight. Xiao Wu's rise to fame seems very unconventional. He can become famous without any effort just by relying on his face, as long as he continues to entertain people in emoticons.

However, he has no skills to make it in the entertainment industry, so he can only rely on constantly producing emoticons to maintain his popularity. However, his enthusiasm can be easily destroyed by new things or constant visual fatigue. Topics need to change, but only good works have permanent appreciation value.

However, the 18-year-old Xiao Wu doesn't seem to have the energy to think about these things. He may also know that his popularity is being consumed quickly, so he should make as much money as possible while he can. At worst, he can go back to selling houses.

In 2018, whether it is self-media, koi, earthy IP or alternative internet celebrities, their overnight fame represents the laws of social development in an era. Some say this is the best year yet because content creators have received unprecedented opportunities and respect. But some people say this is also the worst year because people are immersed in a flood of various novel information, and the time that should be used for self-reflection is lost.

No one can tell how long they will remain popular. Just like we don’t know which group of people will become popular next year. In the waves of the times, they are just a wave that is discovered for a short time.

Source: Hedgehog Commune (ID: ciweigongshe)