KOL Marketing: Why are couple KOLs more popular among advertisers?

Seemingly influenced by the advancement of the “super-single society”, couple KOLs are becoming more and more popular among netizens. Will the next growth entrance for short videos be born from this?

This generation of stupid netizens seems to have reached a new level in their attainment of Buddhism: it’s okay to be single, as long as you watch others fall in love. Jealousy does not exist. Instead, one has to eat dog food every day to feel at ease. Only by eating the daily sweetness of CP, bickering, fighting, and pranks can the audience maintain their smile.

Will couple KOLs be the next growth point for short videos?

According to the "2019 Short Video Content Marketing Trend White Paper", in 2018, the advertising revenue of couple KOLs accounted for 15% of all vertical categories, second only to comedy and beauty KOLs.

▲ Excerpted from "2019 Short Video Content Marketing Trend White Paper"

According to statistics from the professional list of Kas Data, there are no more than 10 pairs of couple KOLs currently ranking at the top, and there is still a lot of room for growth in this sub-category. On this basis, couple KOLs are favored by advertisers, which means that mid-level couple celebrities also have good revenue in 2018.

Couple KOLs can be said to be the product of 1+1>2. If energy permits, both parties can occupy one category each, and when they combine, they can gain the addition of emotional fans and achieve traffic exchange.

So back to the question at the beginning, will couple KOLs be the next growth entrance for short videos? How will creators view this emerging sub-category with emerging potential?

The editor will explore the living environment of couple KOLs from three aspects: user psychology, risk management and life cycle.

PART 01: The 200 million singles market has given rise to "love" content

"Love" can be said to be one of the significant pain points of Internet users at this stage. The National Bureau of Statistics' "China Statistical Yearbook 2018" tells us that in 2017, the number of single people aged 15 and above in the country reached 215 million. According to data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, my country's marriage rate has been declining for five consecutive years, and the divorce rate has been rising for seven consecutive years. Influenced by many factors, the process of becoming a "super-single society" in my country is constantly moving forward.

▲ Image source: Questmobile official website

People's attitude towards love and marriage is no longer like the previous generation, which focused more on "economic affordability" but began to care more about "emotional quality". As a result, an emotional gap of 200 million has gradually opened up. The content produced by couple KOLs is essentially not much different from romance novels, love movies, and love songs. They are all intimate relationship texts for mass consumption.

From the perspective of user psychology, their consumption motivations can be divided into three directions: sense of immersion to trigger resonance, emotional teaching to accompany growth, and the desire to pry into privacy.

1. Sense of Involvement

It's hard not to get scared when people put on VR glasses to watch horror movies. Similarly, when the audience puts themselves into the first-person perspective of the content, they can also experience the feelings and thoughts of the parties involved, the sweetness of cuddling, the confrontation of bickering, the suspicion of the cold war and the pain of breaking up...

Viewers can experience these romantic feelings simply by watching the video, and can also manually choose to skip the negative emotional parts.

For today's busy young people who have high demands on relationships, the cost of falling in love is too high. One solution to venting emotional needs is to put yourself in the role of the character, examine your own views on love, and find resonance through empathy.

1. teaching

To a certain extent, this generation of young people, who have been brought up with the educational concept of "not allowed to date in school and urged to get married as soon as they graduate", generally lack "love quotient". They still need to learn and explore love and marriage, and the daily life of couple KOLs is like a reality show around the audience. They provide their true feelings to the audience for reference and share their growth in love with the audience.

Furthermore, dating variety shows are relatively mature in exploring this type of content. For example, "Heart Signal" originating from South Korea selects eight amateurs to conduct a love experiment. The game between the opposite sex, the help, jealousy, and secret competition of the same sex have become a major highlight. Another example is the Japanese love mystery variety show "Don't Be Cheated by Wolf-kun", which teaches the audience to identify PUA, identify "scumbags" and protect themselves, and has received high praise from the audience.

The daily life of couple KOLs is also different from long-video dating variety shows. They meet the audience's fragmented content consumption needs, have more diverse consumption scenarios, and lower consumption thresholds.

1. Voyeurism

There is also a relatively small group that attracts the audience's attention, such as the fairy CP with a mine at home, LGBT couples, etc. The audience is curious about their daily love life and wants to explore the similarities and differences between the two sides to advance their understanding of love.

▲ Celebrity couple, Yin Shihang & Xu Jingjing

In addition to the eye-catching economy, fan stickiness also brings the value of couple KOLs to a higher level.

The reason for this is that, on the one hand, love-related content mainly guides emotional consumption. Once the influence of the celebrity reaches the standard, the result of information communication will be more in place, the conversion rate can be optimized to a certain extent, and some loss rates can be avoided. On the other hand, it is similar to vlog, that is, when the audience recognizes the celebrity's lifestyle, their aesthetic preferences will be influenced by the celebrity, and at this time the celebrity has the attributes of a "lifestyle" blogger. In summary, consumption decisions and aesthetic preferences together constitute the cornerstone of the commercial value of couple-type influencers.

This also means that there is a high degree of compatibility between couple celebrities and vlogs, and their emotional life also has private attributes. Sharing private life with the audience is one of the effective ways to acquire highly sticky users. It is understood that the current concentration of couple KOLs and vlogs based on Weibo is generally high, including Ding Yuqiong & Zhang Zifan, Lin Ji Shiying & Luo Xi, etc.

PART 02: The test of couple KOLs: when love becomes business

There is one difference between the daily love life of couple KOLs and large-scale love variety shows. Variety shows are better at creating atmosphere, are more sensitive to the highlight moments of the guests, and the editing is good at capturing their subtle emotions. The planning uses sophisticated plots to make it more dramatic and watchable, so that the audience can experience more emotional changes from it.

The video content of celebrities is often limited by length and information density, and relatively less attention is paid to details. This also requires couple KOLs to express abundant emotions in order to attract audiences. To some extent, passionate and lively content has a more "real" feel. Authenticity is precisely the basic demand of the audience for consuming private sharing, and is also an important dimension that determines the life cycle of couple KOLs.

In addition, compared with variety show stars, celebrities are closer to the audience's perspective, and compared with high-ranking stars, they are more approachable. Couple KOLs may be everyone around us, carrying similar cultural imprints, such as being introverted and not good at expressing themselves.

▲Celebrity couple, Ding Yuqiong & Zhang Zifan

However, love has a time limit, and couple KOLs need to consider how to balance the impact of emotional breakdown on content output? How to deal with linking emotions with interests and at the same time handle the way of getting along with your partner/partner? When a relationship breaks down, how do you split the influence of both parties?

On the other hand, if YouTube is not handled properly, celebrities may face the double blow of losing both their relationships and their careers.

YouTube celebrities Ben & Jack broke up because their relationship was subject to too much commercial operations. Afterwards, Ben expressed regret for presenting his relationship in front of the audience. Lorenzo, a YouTuber in a similar situation, said that in the process of making videos, no matter it is conception, shooting, editing, or promotion, every link is likely to cause quarrels with his partner, and the relationship between the two will change from lovers to business partners over time. But when his relationship with his partner was in crisis, he stopped updating the channel. Faced with the fame and fortune he had gained, Lorenzo felt very embarrassed. The house was owned by both of them, and they had to live in the same room after their breakup.

This is undoubtedly a series of complex issues. All of the above interact with each other on creators, raising the threshold for couple KOLs. This may also be the reason why the size of this sub-category is currently relatively small. In order to avoid the above risks, couple KOLs and content agencies need to correctly assess whether the relationship is stable and what the possibility of a "successful marriage" is before entering the game. Whether you have the ability to handle emotional crises and break up gracefully. Alternatively, it is also an option for couple KOLs to wait until they enter into marriage and then share the process of how they got to know each other.

PART 03: Adjust content and categories according to emotional stages to optimize content life cycle

In addition to showing off their love, what else can couple KOLs do for their audience?

We found that the content of couple celebrities currently has several main directions:

1. Short videos (less than 1 minute): popular challenges, jokes about spoiling your wife/daughter-in-law, and daily clips;
2. Short videos (3-5 minutes): popular challenges, vlogs, daily clips, and vertical content released by both influencers.

The former mainly relies on short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, while the latter is rooted in social platforms such as Weibo and emphasizes social distribution.

In addition to content showing affection, you can also choose to create around a fixed theme. For example, Ding Yuqiong & Zhang Zifan’s food vlog "Kitchen and Love", YouTube celebrities Anllela Sagra & Tomas’ daily fitness routine, etc.

In addition, couple KOLs can also have room for development in areas beyond the emotional stage. Parenting, handcrafts, and food all have a lot of room for imagination.

Speaking of this, there is a longer-term example for reference - "that couple Kim & Nico". This celebrity CP joined Meipai in 2015 and posted the daily life of their lovely daughter Nini.

The original content was about dad Kim flirting with Nini, and after Nini learned how to express herself, she flirted back with Kim, forming the #strongest mistress on earth series#. Before that, Kim often played pranks on each other with mom Nico, and the videos mostly focused on comedy.

In August this year, the parent-child online reality show "Fairy Tale Hero" invited Kim and Nini to participate, and they appeared on the same stage with Huang Yi and her daughter, and Ouyang Jing and his son. Kim also gained new status as a singer by writing a song for her daughter, "Poems for Ni".

▲Kim&Nini

"That couple KimNico" are the first generation of users and celebrities in the short video field. They constantly adjust the content direction based on their advantages to adapt to market demand, and adjust the track between demand and advantages to maintain the vitality of the IP.

Since the beginning of this year, variety shows have been restricted by policies and have favored amateur dating reality shows. According to media reports, the new variety shows launched in Q1 2019 mainly focus on dating observations, outdoor travel, and music auditions. With the layout of long video platforms and satellite TV stations, and with the promotion of multiple parties, love-related content will attract more national attention, which will also have many benefits for couple KOLs in the short video field.

Source: caasdata (ID: caasdata6)