New Content Trend: KOLs Interviewing Other KOLs

Over the past couple of years, it has gotten increasingly harder for top KOLs to sustain continuous growth. Competition from new KOLs is fierce – becoming a KOL is one of the one desirable career paths for young people in China right now, and, on top of that, many platforms tend to drive traffic to up-and-coming accounts, deliberately giving new creators enough of a boost to give them hope and convince them to keep creating content. 

So of course, top KOLs are always seeking novel ways to get in front of or attract new audiences. Recently, we spotted a new content trend emerging where top tier KOLs have begun working with each other by interviewing or visiting other KOLs’ workplaces or homes.

How it All Began

The trend originates with a top fashion and beauty KOL who goes by the name Teacher Xu 徐老师 (founder of the WeChat official account Shenyefachi 深夜发媸), who began a content series where she visits influencers’ or celebrities’ houses, including top live streamer Li Jiaqi (李佳琦), stylist Fil小白, mega beauty KOL 阿沁, and fashion KOL Becky Li.

Usually, she announces who she will be visiting ahead of time and elicits questions from her Weibo followers or asks what they would like to see in this person’s house. One or two weeks later she will post the video of her visit. 

It is worth noting that the views, likes, and comments of Teacher Xu’s videos about visiting KOLs are higher than her other posts. Her video of her visit to celebrity stylist Fil小白’s home even made Weibo’s hot topic ranking. To date, the video has 8M views, 15k comments and 105k likes.

Even though the influencers that she visits spend much of their lives in the public eye, their fans get to see a new, intimate side of them through Xu’s videos. We get to know what lipstick bro Li Jiaqi’s home looks like, we can see the vast aray of clothes and accessories that Fil has collected and we learn that the mega beauty KOL A Qin loves listening to Taylor Swift’s songs so much that she has collected every single album of hers.

In addition to this new information that Teacher Xu brings to her followers, she also creates content for the other influencer that his or her followers will also want to watch, getting her in front of their massive audiences.

Xu is also just a lot of fun to watch, bringing lots of joy to viewers with self-abasing and goofy scenes, such as making fun of her big head when trying on other KOLs’ hats.

Ximen Dasao Jumps on the Bandwagon

Seeing Xu’s success, Dasao (大嫂), the popular fashion KOL behind the WeChat Official Account “原来是西门大嫂” decided to give it a try, filming a video of her visit to famous OG wanghong Zhang Mofan (张沫凡), the founder of beauty brand MO·AMOUR.

I say OG wanghong because Zhang launched her brand and became a top KOL in China all the way back in 2010! In 2018, the annual sales of MO AMOUR reached 100 million RMB.

Usually, Dasao’s Weibo posts get around 200-2,000 likes. But this video received nearly 20k likes. Except from simply visiting her dressing room and gardens, Dasao also adds gossips to the video. For example, by watching the video, we find out that Zhang’s ex once gave her a Hermes bag valued at over 1M RMB. Also, there is a section of the video where Dasao and Zhang find speculating comments about themselves from the Internet and question each other to get the true response.

Becky Li joins in as well

I mentioned above that one of Xu’s videos featured a visit to the home of top fashion KOL Becky Li, creator of the WeChat official account Becky’s Fantasy (黎贝卡的异想世界). Well it appears Li must have enjoyed the visit and liked the idea because she too has joined this trend, recently filming a video of her visiting the home of Chinese actress Zhang Jiingchu’s (张静初).

Why This Content Works

While in the West it is very common to see big YouTubers collaborating with each other in order to grow their audiences, that tactic hasn’t been as prevalent in China, but it looks like that’s changing. But what’s key is that the KOLs aren’t simply collaborating, they are going into each other’s homes and workspaces and giving audiences to see a more intimate, unscripted version of themselves.

Top KOLs are often treated as celebrities in China so revealing their homes and lives is definitely something followers would love to see. People are curious about them, and that’s why these videos can get so popular.

How Brands Can Leverage This Trend

For brands, this type of content is perfect for very, VERY natural product placement. During these videos numerous brands are often mentioned, for example when Xu visited A Qin’s home, Xu was looking at A Qin’s LV bags and A Qin noted that besides looking good, LV bags are also great investment pieces. And during Xu’s visit to Austin Li’s home he was recommending products left and right, even gifting her some products to take home.

Now is a great time to try out this trend. Since this format is still new and brands are not sponsoring it yet, so viewers are not expecting that there will be advertisements.

For brands that want to try it, the key thing: is it MUST appear natural. The KOL’s interest in the product must be genuine otherwise viewers will feel it is forced.