A brief analysis of the content marketing strategy of Li Ziqi, the “first internet celebrity with ancient style”!

• Introduction•

Explore the value behind the IP of "Oriental Food Lifestyle Expert" - "Ancient Pastoral" internet celebrity Liziqi.

For Chinese people who grew up with "food fear", food that is "well-known" like Li Ziqi's is more likely to impress consumers than products with gorgeous packaging and numerous advertisements. Coupled with the filter of beautiful pastoral life and the sense of security of food made by the "pastoral goddess" herself, consumers' minds have been completely "controlled" by pastoral life.

I have only two wishes in my mind. One is to live such a pastoral life and escape from the city life. The other wish is to settle for the next best thing and have the food made by the beautiful and hardworking fairy in the video. The product link that pops up at the right time gives consumers an outlet to vent their emotions, making the product value tangible.

l The “Li Ziqi fever” phenomenon

Everyone who has watched Li Ziqi’s videos yearns for the ancient rural life in the videos.

In 2017, the number of views of Li Ziqi's food videos on the entire network reached 3 billion, and the number of her Weibo fans soared from hundreds of thousands to 10 million. She was hailed by the media as "the No. 1 Internet Celebrity in 2017" and "the No. 1 Food Internet Celebrity."

A self-media account named "Raist" published an original article "Why is Li Ziqi not a cultural export?" 》 successfully attracted the public's attention at the end of 2019 when anxiety was increasing dramatically. The article introduced that Li Ziqi already has 7.34 million followers on YouTube. All videos are dubbed in Chinese and subtitled in Chinese, the same as the versions posted on domestic social platforms. However, this does not prevent foreign netizens from appreciating Li Ziqi's videos. Foreign netizens have praised the "beautiful rural life" presented in her videos.

By linking Li Ziqi with "cultural export", the article's views formed a highly conflicting topic, and then the "Li Ziqi fever" phenomenon began to be widely discussed in society.

On December 6, the People's Daily Weibo commented: "Because of Li Ziqi, millions of foreigners have fallen in love with China";

On December 9, the Communist Youth League Central Committee posted on Weibo: "Li Ziqi's video content reflects China's cultural confidence and is a new way of life."

On December 10, CCTV News commented: "Li Ziqi didn't say a word to praise China, but she did a good job of telling Chinese culture and Chinese stories." On the same day, the topic #CCTV comments on why Li Ziqi is so popular around the world# quickly ranked second on Weibo's hot search list;

On December 11, Xinhua News Agency commented: "Li Ziqi is a mirror of life rather than a 'cultural hero'."

Despite having 7.4 million followers on YouTube, this “ancient pastoral” influencer faces questions from Chinese people. Many Weibo users complained that what is presented in Li Ziqi's videos is not the real China. They believe that Li Ziqi's videos create a worldview that "China is backward" and "all Chinese people are farming", a utopian pastoral life, and that the videos are the result of deliberate packaging by the team.

l Li Ziqi's "Pastoral Life Content" Makes Product Value Tangible

But it should be noted that Li Ziqi is a short video maker, not a real farmer.

As a short video maker, Liziqi has the right to beautify the pastoral life in the videos, eliminating the clutter and trivialities of rural life, leaving only the beautiful and romantic picture of "picking chrysanthemums under the eastern fence and leisurely seeing the southern mountains".

In the video, in order to make a hot pot base, Liziqi first soaked fresh peppers in hot water for two hours, then soaked them in spices for a quarter of an hour, and then used rapeseed oil, freshly fried onion oil, and beef tallow to make the "hot pot oil", one of the souls of the hot pot base. Crucian carp soup, pork bones, and beef bones are used together to make the broth of the hot pot base, and then the vegetables grown in Liziqi's own vegetable garden are carefully boiled together.

For Chinese people who grew up with "food fear", food that is "well-known" like Li Ziqi's is more likely to impress consumers than products with gorgeous packaging and numerous advertisements. Coupled with the filter of beautiful pastoral life and the sense of security of food made by the "pastoral goddess" herself, consumers' minds have been completely "controlled" by pastoral life.

I have only two wishes in my mind. One is to live such a pastoral life and escape from the city life. The other wish is to settle for the next best thing and have the food made by the beautiful and hardworking fairy in the video. The product link that pops up at the right time gives consumers an outlet to vent their emotions, making the product value tangible.

The video of making hot pot base once made netizens collectively want to eat hot pot. The video was forwarded 38,000 times and received 43,000 comments. In Li Ziqi's Taobao store, the monthly sales of hot pot base reached more than 20,000, with total sales of 15 million.

"A Bite of China 3" made a pot popular - the Zhangqiu iron pot. After the show was broadcast, the Zhangqiu iron pot on Taobao was out of stock for a time. The iron pot forged by Master Wang Yuhai in the documentary is said to have gone through "twelve processes, eighteen times of firing, 1000-degree high-temperature smelting, 36,000 times of hammering..." Within three days, orders for the iron pot were scheduled until 2021.

"Twelve working procedures, eighteen times of heating, 1000-degree high-temperature smelting, 36,000 times of hammering..." are not noisy advertising slogans, but data personally verified by the pot-making masters with their actual actions. Compared with the former which requires huge investment, the latter requires more of the appeal of the lens, stories woven by the content, and good character portrayals, and then dragging the users who are watching the video into a situational world, allowing users to "empathize" for a short time and believe what is happening in this world.

l In the era of content marketing , the influence of KOLs such as "Li Jiaqi", "Li Ziqi", and "Papi Jiang" cannot be underestimated.

French philosopher Baudrillard explained the role of "advertising symbols" in commodity sales in "Consumer Society":

This mimetic aesthetic is deeply connected to the function that society assigns to kitsch; that is, the expression of class social expectations and aspirations and the illusory participation in a culture with higher-class forms, manners and symbols; it is an aesthetic of cultural adaptation that leads to a subculture of objects.

China is the country with the largest Generation Z in the world. According to research reports, Generation Z accounts for 25% of the total population, which has exceeded the 24% of the Millennials. Accounting for a quarter of the world's total population, the young consumer group is a group that has not been neglected and has become the new generation of consumer mainstay.

Generation Z will have a stronger ability to accept new things and a stronger desire to try them. After young consumers have received subculture education on the Internet, they have become an emerging consumer force and are paying for the education they have received.

Brand marketing has changed from the past era of global traffic, where people believed that purchases could be made as long as the cognitive and transaction chains were connected, to today's era of content social platforms, where people have become the most core element in the relationship chain between brands and consumers.

This “person” is KOL. The large number of internet celebrities and low-level KOLs have brought considerable dividends to the brand. The brand relies on the middle and tail KOLs of the four major social giants, including WeChat, Weibo, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu, to achieve fission-like dissemination of the brand.

In the era of content marketing, the influence of KOLs such as "Li Jiaqi", "Li Ziqi", and "Papi Jiang" cannot be underestimated. Nowadays, brands are trying every means to get on the traffic train of "Li Ziqi", "Li Jiaqi" and "Papi Jiang".

Behind Li Ziqi's IP, capital from all sides is driven by their own desires. These include Oasis Holdings, ZTE, Xinhua Media, Vanke, Enlight Media, etc. One particularly eye-catching capital is Sina Weibo.

As Baudrillard said in "The Consumer Society", consumption is not for the purpose of satisfying "actual needs", but the constant pursuit of manufactured and stimulated desires.

Papi Jiang's content can be deconstructed into "collecting the most popular comments and jokes from netizens and performing them in a concentrated video format"; Li Jiaqi's content can be deconstructed into "providing an outlet for the swollen consumption desires of contemporary sophisticated boys and girls, standing at the forefront of the lipstick economy and becoming a 'beacon' of lipstick"; Li Ziqi's content can be deconstructed into "finding an ideal lifestyle that meets public expectations."

It can be found that there is a common logic behind the successful emergence of "Li Jiaqi", "Li Ziqi" and "Papi Jiang". On the one hand, it eliminates people's long-standing alienation from the camera and makes the content expression of the video closer to the civilian context. On the other hand, it also finds a new public sentiment. It is a concentrated expression of a certain field of Internet culture. They have come out on top in the war with similar competitors and become the top Internet celebrities in the same field.

l How to look at "Li Ziqi's cultural export theory" dialectically

Li Ziqi said: "I want to do more things that are beneficial to society to the best of my ability, such as the dissemination of traditional culture and intangible cultural heritage craftsmen. I want to show these old things to everyone and let more people know about them."

"In the subsequent global communication, she didn't have a slogan, but she had a memorable taste, and won the feedback from netizens one after another. It is worth learning from."

"Sceptics say that Li Ziqi's videos are 'staged', 'fake', and 'only pick the best', but apart from documentaries, most movies are also fake. But that doesn't stop people from being really touched by the content and really liking it. Therefore, over-ratings or under-ratings are not necessarily right. Our problem now is not how many problems Li Ziqi has, but that there are too few Li Ziqis. If the number of internet celebrities who come from the grassroots and really go global increases from one to dozens, hundreds, or even thousands, then the Chinese story will really have something to tell." - This is how Bai Yansong evaluated Li Ziqi.

Li Ziqi's "overly idyllic content strategy" fits the needs of young people to escape from urban pressure. In essence, it helps people to spiritually escape from real life. Its practical significance is a spiritual massage to relieve stress.

• Conclusion•

In the 5G era, more platforms, media and monetization models will emerge, and there will be a large number of new opportunities for traffic monetization, especially in vertical fields.

With the advent of the 5G era, will the “Li Jiaqis,” “Li Ziqis,” and “Papi Jiangs” change their dominance? Will it evolve into a new and different form? Let's wait and see.

Author: Clockwork Brown

Source: PR Home