After Craving acquired Li Gouzi’s Weibo promotion resources, the Wall Street Journal devoted a page to analyzing Craving’s actions. Based on Craving’s recent surge in popularity on the Internet, soaring sales, and rapidly expanding sales channels, We came to a conclusion: With this $26 million advertising investment, if we want to achieve the same effect on traditional media, we will need at least $180 million to achieve it.
This price is not just talk.
Coca-Cola invests about US$3 billion in advertising costs every year to maintain their global exposure. Only US$3 billion can achieve true household name on a global scale.
If a brand like Coca-Cola wants to become a household name like Coca-Cola, the actual cost will be much more than 3 billion US dollars, because after all, pet products are still a subdivided vertical field. Unlike Coca-Cola, which has such strong applicability, it is far from its own Vertical users are closer but also further away from other users.
After this auction, Aspiration not only became popular online, but also received a large amount of traditional media promotional resources offline. Therefore, taken together, the intensity of this promotion is unprecedented in the entire advertising field.
Even if Coca-Cola invests 3 billion US dollars in publicity every year, these 3 billion US dollars will only be divided into hundreds, thousands, or even several hundred countries and regions around the world, depending on the media and channels. There are thousands of copies, and it is impossible for any single one to be more powerful than this eager publicity.
This simply made Mars regretful and wanted to kill a few executives to sacrifice themselves. Such a huge advantage was taken away by Desire right under their noses. Not only did Mars regret it, but it also made Mars feel huge competitive pressure all of a sudden.
The instant popularity of Desire allowed the whole world to see the huge value hidden in self-media. For a time, all accounts with a large number of fans on Weibo and Twitter became the choice of advertisers for advertising, especially celebrities. On Weibo, the quotations have skyrocketed. For example, a celebrity with millions of fans may post an advertisement for RMB 150,000 in the morning, but in the afternoon it may be sold to RMB 300,000.
Moreover, many companies and individuals who see business opportunities have begun to actively operate their own self-media accounts on Weibo, hoping to quickly gather fans.
Li Mugang spent two nights working with the recording musicians from Rolling Stone Records to complete all the arrangements for "21 Guns". When he came to Makino Technology early the next morning, a bunch of executives approached him, hoping that he could host a The core content of the meeting was how to deal with the crazy advertising popularity of the platform at this stage.
The senior management team of Makino Technology is divided into two camps on this issue.
On the one hand, I think we should encourage and promote the advertising market of Weibo and Twitter to further enhance the value of the entire Weibo and Twitter. We should even set up an advertising distribution platform in Weibo and Twitter.
The so-called advertising distribution platform is because executives in this camp believe that if big Vs are completely allowed to use Weibo and Twitter to make money, then Weibo and Twitter themselves should receive a certain share of the revenue. Otherwise, it will be completely used as a wedding dress for others, which is an invisible loss. Too big.
The advertising distribution platform is to export all advertisements and get them into the hands of Weibo and Twitter. For example, it is clearly required that all users are not allowed to receive advertisements privately, and all big Vs who want to receive advertisements must first connect to the advertising distribution platform. , they can only take over the work from the advertising distribution platform, and the advertising distribution platform itself is actually a middleman who earns the price difference.
For example, if a facial mask brand wants to promote Du Wei's personal Weibo, it must find an advertising distribution platform. The distribution platform will report an additional increase of about 30% to the company based on Du Wei's quotation, and then take it from Du Wei. A 10% commission can basically achieve a gross profit margin of 40%.
On the other hand, some people think that Weibo and Twitter cannot cultivate the advertising market endlessly. In this way, the entire Weibo and Twitter are likely to be flooded with advertisements, thus affecting the proportion of high-quality content on the entire platform, and even causing the platform to decline due to this. Lose a lot of users.
Li Mu came to the conference room and spent more than half an hour listening to the pros and cons. Then he said with a smile: "Everything has two sides. If the car drives too fast, it will naturally consume more gas. Just like It is our platform’s attitude towards advertising. If you allow them to conduct advertising transactions freely without curbing it, the overall advertising volume of the platform will inevitably increase rapidly and affect the user experience. But if you do not allow them to conduct advertising transactions freely, then everyone will If you can’t see a way to realize it, your own motivation will take a huge hit.”
When Li Mu said this, he paused slightly and then said: "Before we look at the problem in detail, we must first make it clear that we are a super enterprise that covers the entire Internet and is even preparing to cover offline. Therefore, in the face of our grand strategy, we will always Don’t think about verticality. Once it becomes vertical, our layout will be smaller, so we have to find a balanced way to deal with everything.”
Kong Lingyu said: "Mr. Li, what about the advertising platform model? The better thing about this model is that we can control the advertising volume of the entire platform, just like we hold a valve in our hands. We can open it when needed. You can also turn it down or even turn it off.”
Li Mu said: "Establishing a dedicated advertising platform, and completely controlling all advertising businesses by the platform, is certainly a manifestation of the platform's control, but this kind of platform hegemony is too obvious, and we cannot take this path."
Kong Lingyu said: "Mr. Li, the platform and traffic belong to us. It is natural for us to set up such a control unit..."
Li Mu nodded and said: "It is natural for us to establish such a control unit, but if we change to a softer and more open approach, it will become a breath of fresh air in the field of Internet platforms."
Li Mu hopes that Makino Technology will become a large-scale closed loop in the industry. This closed loop will make other competitors in the industry look up and be amazed. However, he does not want Makino Technology to form a closed loop at the user level.
The platform wants to achieve a closed loop at the user level. Generally speaking, the motivation is to cherish feathers.
We don’t want others to snatch our users, we don’t want others to monetize our users and platform, and we don’t want them to use this to incubate their careers.
This kind of mentality, in Li Mu's eyes, means caring too much about feathers.
And he feels that any platform that takes too much care of its feathers will generally have difficulty in developing and growing.
For example, at a certain time, their control over the traffic within their platform can be said to be extremely strict. Their keyword bidding system completely links user search behavior with profits. They sell countless keywords in the hope that Every search by users can bring them benefits. Therefore, no matter what keywords users search for, the ones ranked at the top are usually advertisements, squeezing the potential value of users;
In products such as Know and Tieba, a certain degree has also set up a very powerful screening mechanism to identify users who post advertisements as much as possible. They will instantly delete advertising posts posted in Know and Tieba, and will delete all advertising posts. Ads, or users who are just suspected of posting ads are permanently banned, and they do their best to prevent others from diverting traffic to his products. This is a manifestation of extreme love for feathers;
What’s even more outrageous is that even knowledge encyclopedia products like Encyclopedia are mixed with huge interests. If ordinary users want to create an encyclopedia, it is extremely difficult to pass the review, but if they choose to spend money, they can do it in minutes.
For such a company, as an ordinary Internet user or ordinary Internet entrepreneur, let alone pick up a hair from it, even if it is the dandruff it sheds, he will take it away himself and not let anyone get it. You can get it if you want. Money comes.
If a company reaches this point, it will be difficult for it to become a leader in the industry. It will only become a slave to money. Li Mu does not want Makino Technology's platform to follow a certain path in the future.
Although the platforms of Alibaba and Tencent in later generations were not completely open to users, they still gave users a lot of freedom in a moderate manner, such as WeChat public accounts. In such a huge self-media group, WeChat is basically unprotected from external links. Yes, unless the other party's link is a Taobao-related product link, or a link that violates the law, this proves that WeChat is not worried that its users will be snatched away by the public account owner's external links. This is also a platform's self-confidence. Performance.
Moreover, WeChat public accounts have never required control over the freedom of advertising for all account owners, let alone sharing the profits. This is also a manifestation of the platform's self-confidence. There are really few platforms that can truly achieve this.
But it's different in certain degree. External links are very sensitive in certain degree. Basically, more than 90% of the external links published by users will be killed by certain degree in various ways, just to avoid the fear that their users will use these external links. Chain overflow, fear that others will use their users to support their projects and make money that they should make.
Therefore, Li Mu cannot set up a controlled advertising platform on Weibo and Twitter. He must give users enough autonomy.
Of course, the space left for users to be independent must also be appropriately restricted. Otherwise, once everyone publishes advertisements without restrictions, the platform may immediately become a gathering place for spam.
After thinking about it, Li Mu said: "Our Weibo and Twitter must find a moderate solution. In the future, we must not be obsessed with the revenue brought by advertising. That will make our platform flooded with a lot of junk ads. It affects our user experience, but it cannot be completely decided by the users themselves, so in my business philosophy, we need to formulate a set of reasonable and convincing game rules, so that everyone can play according to the game rules and live in peace with each other."
After that, Li Mu added: "In this way, my idea is, first of all, we must limit the spam content of each Weibo Twitter account. For example, the total number of Weibo posts that an ordinary account can post per day cannot exceed ten. This is actually enough. The needs of most normal users;
Secondly, we conduct three judgment logics on content: algorithmic screening, assisted manual review and user complaints. If we judge that spam content exceeds 10%, 30%, or 50%, what kind of punishment will be given respectively, such as: restricting publication, restricting attention, and forcibly Deduction of followers or timely ban or permanent ban;
Thirdly, all platforms that receive advertising must bear certain responsibilities for the products they receive advertising. First of all, they must not advertise any three-no products; secondly, if there is a problem with the advertised product, the account owner must also bear joint liability. It can range from punishment to severe punishment;
Finally, advertisements are only allowed to be spread by traffic owners. No company or individual is allowed to put advertisements on Weibo's major lists in any way. As a platform, what we present to users must be high-quality content! "
(End of chapter)