This 618, Li Jiaqi can't hold on

This 618 event was very difficult and exciting! Even Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room, which was once full of random intrusions, began to come to an end!

At 8 pm on the 19th, Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room started pre-sales of the “6.18” hot products, and the top live broadcast room officially “opened the book”.

While live streaming is booming, the minimum salary for anchors has continued to drop.

A media investigation found that the minimum salary of some anchors in Hangzhou can reach 6,000 yuan/month; the hourly wage of part-time anchors can be as low as 50 yuan, which is close to the level of non-popular live streaming cities.

On the 20th, Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room started broadcasting the "618 Super Hot Products Festival" at 8 a.m., and by 4:30 p.m., Li Jiaqi had not yet appeared, and the number of viewers had exceeded 10 million.

At 8 pm on May 20, Tmall’s first wave of 618 sales started directly, and the cancellation of official pre-sales became the biggest change in Tmall 618 this year.

However, Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room started pre-sales of the 618 super hot products one day in advance. With the continuous efforts of the assistant broadcaster and Li Jiaqi, the live broadcast room broadcast for more than 18 hours that day.

Judging from the momentum alone, Li Jiaqi and the MCN agency Mei ONE behind him are still working very hard during this year's 618.

The corresponding reality is that Li Jiaqi's popularity has declined since this year.

But it’s not just Li Jiaqi who is involved.

In the first hour of sales, the transaction volume of 28 brands exceeded 100 million yuan, and there were 216 items with transaction volume exceeding 10 million yuan.

Within one hour of the start of Tmall’s 618 sales, Apple’s transaction volume exceeded 1.5 billion, and transaction volumes of brands such as Huawei, Xiaomi, and vivo also quickly exceeded 100 million.

In the first hour of beauty and cosmetics sales, sales of six brands exceeded 100 million yuan, and 47 minutes after the start of sales, the Collagen Stick became the first beauty and cosmetics product to exceed 100 million yuan.

One hour after the simultaneous broadcast on Taobao Live started, the views of the live broadcast rooms of Li Jiaqi, Lieer Baby, Bee Surprise Club, Mushrooms Are Coming, Chen Jie KiKi, Jiumeimei and others exceeded 100 million.

At the same time, live broadcasts by internet celebrities and live broadcasts by merchants in stores also started a fierce competition.

Xiaohongshu stated that during the 618 period, Xiaohongshu e-commerce will focus on live streaming, especially store live streaming.

In addition, according to Taobao Live, on Tmall Double 11 in 2023, store broadcasts became a new growth engine, with store broadcasts accounting for more than 70% of the live broadcast rooms with over 100 million views.

Can Li Jiaqi successfully defend his title in this 618?

After this 618, will this be the last one?

Is live streaming by internet celebrities really on its way to old age?

In this regard, Chen Ting, a reporter from the Daily Economic News, and Shu Le had a discussion. I think:

Li Jiaqi and a group of live-streaming influencers are heading towards the twilight of the gods.

As a sales channel, live streaming e-commerce can truly achieve the lowest price on the entire network. In essence, only store live streaming can truly realize channel flattening.

Live streaming by internet celebrities will inevitably bring in commissions, and the amount may be large. Although sales may be better, it will prevent the channel from being infinitely flat, and it will gradually become a supplement and brand marketing strategy during the big promotion phase.

In the future, for top anchors, it will be a battle of survival in a major transformation.

Top anchors can and must go vertical and form word-of-mouth marketing to their fan groups through their own understanding and experience of the products.

In other words, from traffic promotion to grass-planting promotion.

As long as you maintain sufficient verticality and have a deep understanding of the category, you can maintain your presence. The past way of Internet celebrities bringing goods in a pan-category manner under the pan-entertainment will gradually be marginalized.

In general, live streaming by internet celebrities and live streaming by corporate stores still have their own advantages and disadvantages.

The advantage of live streaming by internet celebrities is the third-party evaluation and sharing of experience, which has a certain objectivity; the disadvantage is that the price cannot be the lowest.

The advantage of store live streaming is that you can decide the price yourself, but the disadvantage is that you are boasting about the products yourself and it is difficult to convince users, and the effect of promoting products is not as strong as that of third-party live streaming.

In addition, there is live streaming of industrial belts, which is essentially a form of store broadcasting. It just tries to increase sales channels through the Pinduoduo and Taobao models similar to factory store sales, using live streaming to sell goods.

But no matter what, the Li Jiaqi era, with its endless influx of categories and numerous failures, is coming to an end.