Paying 100k RMB to Sell 5 Thermoses: How to Avoid a Celebrity Livestream Horror Story
As I’m sure you’re well aware of, commerce live streaming was one of the most buzzed about topics in China in 2020. While celebrities have always been used to drive traffic to live streams, this year the amount of celebrities appearing in live streams became almost excessive.
With reduced work due to COVID restrictions, celebrities were eager to earn some extra cash and get in front of audiences by doing live streams, even if they were not good at it.
While many celebrities have turned out to be excellent live streamers and able to drive product sales, there have also many many stories of celebrities who have been extremely boring or even acted unprofessionally, and caused great economic losses for brands.
Paid 100K RMB, Sold 5 Thermoses
One example is actress and singer Huang Shengyi (黄圣依) who became popular again in 2020 because of the hot reality TV show Sisters Who Make Waves (乘风破浪的姐姐).
This year she started running her own live streams and on October 25 a thermos brand paid 100k RMB for a spot on her stream to sell its thermoses. However, in total, she only helped the brand sell 5 cups, which made the brand really angry.
Not only were they angry about the horrendous sales results, but by paying 100k RMB the brand was promised a spot near the beginning of her stream when there would be more viewers, but instead, the brand was introduced in the end of Huang’s livestream.
The other thing that made the brand angry was that Huang was half an hour late AND left early. By the time it came to promoting the bottles, Huang had already left and the show was being hosted by Huang’s assistant.
The Role of Celebrities in Live Streams
The majority of celebrities are good at doing one thing for your stream – drawing additional traffic.
If they are good and have a loyal fanbase, they will also be able to drive sales. But in most cases, celebrities should not be the main host of the live stream. In Huang’s case, this was the brand’s mistake. Ideally there should be a professional live streamer, such as Austin Li or Viya, to guide the conversation and introduce the products, and the celebrity simply joins to add their view of the products and provide additional entertainment.
Many celebrities don’t care about the results of the stream. It is simply another way to make money and not their main focus, whereas live streamers rely on their good relationships with brands and consumers to be successful.
This is a mistake on the celebrities part, as poor live streaming results often leak out and can hurt their reputation.
When working with celebrities, there is also a lot of potential for miscommunication. For Huang’s livestream, many parties were involved, including the brand, an advertisement company, an ecommerce team, an agent that connects the advertisement company and the ecommerce team, a person to connect the ecommerce team with a celebrity’s marketing team, a livestream instruction team and the celebrity himself/herself. And probably even more people.
Though they all sign contracts with each other, the information flow is still inefficient and which can lead to miscommunication about the content and required results.
Not All Celebrities are Bad Streamers
For all the bad celebrity live streamers, there are also many good ones, for example actress Liu Tao (刘涛) who is known as Liu Yidao (刘一刀) on Taobao and Juhuasuan (聚划算).
She is very hard-working. On the day of Double 11, she kept live streaming for 11 hours straight. She once achieved 220M RMB in sales in a livestream and on average, her livestream’s sales performance reaches 100M RMB.
Key Takeaways:
- Brands should be cautious when hiring celebrities for live streams
- Celebrities can drive traffic but not necessarily drive sales
- The majority of celebrities are best suited for a supporting role, in combination with a professional live streamer
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