Tweet This
Last August in Guangzhou, Modern Brothers (摩登兄弟) performed their first official concert.
If you know anything about this three-member rock band — they have six million followers on Chinese social media platform Weibo and almost 40 million on Douyin — you might have guessed correctly that they sold out the stadium.
Prior to the concert in Guangzhou, girls from all over China would flock to the small city of Dandong in Northeastern China to watch the Modern Brothers’ street performances and take selfies with the band’s heartthrob lead singer Liu Yuning. At one point it got so out of hand that local residents had a hard time getting train tickets in and out of the city.
From the outside, the story of the group’s meteoric rise looks like a classic case of talent, hard work, and good looks mixed with some smart social media management. (Modern Brothers became popular on the live-streaming app
While that’s partly true, there’s another aspect of their story — a secret behind their success.
Take one look at the logo on the microphone Liu Yuning held at the Guangzhou concert to see the not-so-minor detail: YY.
YY’s Dilemma
YY created China's virtual gifting economy and was the forefather of the country’s massive live-streaming industry. However, over the past several years, YY has done little to attract a younger audience and has faced stiff competition from trendier live-streaming and short-video platforms. On top of that, the cost of user acquisition has skyrocketed as China’s internet population matures.
The company’s leadership knew something had to be done.
The Solution
In Q2 of 2018, YY revealed its new user acquisition strategy.
To attract younger users, they began promoting their top talent on other platforms then channeling those performers’ new fans back to YY.
Modern Brothers was the pilot project for testing this strategy.
“Recognizing that short video platforms are flourishing rapidly in China, we have leveraged [other platforms’] traffic to help Modern Brothers multiply their fan base,” said CFO Bing Jin in a Q2 earnings call.
“Once Modern Brothers became an online phenomenon in China from the short video content, we then actively drove the increasing number of loyal followers back onto our YY Live platform to enjoy live-streaming performances and real-time interaction.”
Attracting and retaining top talent is an issue for live-streaming platforms, and YY’s strategy not only draws users, but also artists who covet Modern Brothers’ success.
While many still see live-streaming as a popular career choice in China, it’s not as glamorous as it used to be. While becoming a top streamer is lucrative, many remain unsatisfied and strive for mainstream celebrity status. YY fuels this fire by incentivizing streamers to perform well with the promise of elevating them to stardom.
A New Approach
YY is not the only live-streaming app trying to incubate mainstream stars.
MOMO, a leading social networking and live-streaming platform, has been investing heavily in broadcast and online TV shows, sponsoring the variety shows I Love Anime and Phantacity. While the sponsorship model was primarily about integrating MOMO's logo into the set design, Phantacity also featured several top MOMO streamers in the program. This year’s season of Produce 101, a favorite girl-group competition reality show, also featured a MOMO streamer.
Another example is Inke, a live-streaming platform that’s been playing around with new content types, like co-producing an original online TV series starring many of the platform’s top streamers.
However, that’s where the similarity between YY and other platforms ends.
Most Chinese live-streaming and social media companies stymie their talent from growing elsewhere.
The aforementioned MOMO, for example, restricts streamers promoting themselves on other platforms. They cannot mention other social handles on their profiles, and MOMO can close their accounts if they are caught streaming somewhere else.
Only a week ago, Bytedance and Tencent made the news after Bytedance executive Li Liang accused WeChat of monopolizing China’s social media landscape. This was after the Tencent-owned messaging giant vowed to escalate its restrictions on link-sharing within the app.
Moving Forward
It looks like YY is transforming into an entertainment agency, one that helps their artists obtain record deals and organize offline events.
In YY’s Q3 earnings call, Bing Jin said the following:
“In September 2018, we hosted the YY Fan Carnival in Guangzhou, bringing together over 300 top-tier live streaming hosts to produce a super variety show, integrating music, dance, gaming and many other entertainment programs into a single event that lasted three days. Over 250,000 fans participated in this event in-person. More than 11 million viewers turned into the online broadcast. At the peak show time, the concurrent online viewer count exceeded 1.6 million.”
The Modern Brothers experiment has clearly worked, and YY has already begun replicating their success with other streamers.
This new strategy, which focuses on talent development, has changed my opinion of YY. While I used to think of YY as a legacy platform coasting on its past success, I now believe it is an innovative company that’s taking the right steps to grow in today’s social media environment.
