Key Opinion Leaders are no longer someone “famous” in their profession but in their social media fanbase.
Miss Yeah 办公室小野
A Sichuan sweet yet petite lady (158cm with 44kg, really?). Her super-extra-organic cooking show lures people to start making lunch in the office pantry.
According to the Statistics from Youtube, Miss Yeah Official Channel in Youtube managed to gain 4.5 million CNY per month.
According to Xinhua News, Miss Yeah annual profit from commercial video production could be up to 55 million CNY, ranking as the top China fans Influencer. (Data from NoxInfluencer, 2019)
And yes you are right, another China cooking chef — KOL that we should think of, is this lady:
Li Ziqi 李子柒
, was born in Szechuan, 1990. Her sweet sixteen angel-like looking face has gotten her a total of 9.8 million fans in China. She promotes not only the China cuisine but also her roots and culture.
Feeling awed with her sweet face? You might also like this page (it’s in Mandarin, whopps! but I bet her pictures in it would make you love her more.)
On August 17, 2018. Li managed a store with Tmall (practically her store has only 5 items to sell). Not surprise, within 3 days, profit could hit more than 10 million sales. As an internet celebrity, Li made a good choice to catch her fans and turn them into the power of purchase. And according to NoxInfluencer, Li’s nett worth could be up to 44 million CNY per annum.
Here, this is her Tmall page. Turning herself into an entrepreneur with nett worth more than millions, I should be shameful now! And she has her own brand. Gosh!
Social media has changed our spending behaviour, significantly. Not only social media provides us with one-way information but also a space for viral marketing, thus creating a butterfly effect in goods and service purchase.
“Internet Celebrity Economy” is raising tremendously in mainland china. Eve Zhang 张大奕 ((https://www.weibo.com/zhangyieve)nett worth, in 2015 was more than 300 million CNY, more than Fan BingBing’s 140 million CNY (according to Forbes). Internet Celebrity is about gaining fans volume.
Oh, nearly forgotten about this guy.
李佳琦
in 2 hours time, he would probably tried 380 pieces of lipstick. Gaining a daily views of millions. His daily magical live view could generate more than 8 million quantity of lipsticks sold. You know how much he charged for a 15–60sec short video recording?
Answer: 500 thousands CNY!
Up to date, such Internet Celebrities have their certain level of influence when it comes to make ups, outfits, food, etc. However, big eyes, sharp chin, high nose bridge and white skin have becoming a trend for China’s female aesthetic conception. A bad thing? Hmm, maybe…
Gu Amo/Amogood 《谷阿莫》
,a 34 year old storyteller, with lame jokes and strong Taiwan accent. He started gaining his fame with narrating a full feature length movie within a short few minutes. “I am Gu Amo, today i would like to talk about ‘this character’ with ‘that character’ conflict on ‘this topic’.” The typical ‘x’ amount of minutes to watch a full length ‘x’ amount of movie duration. his “3-minute to finish watching Bird Man 《鸟人》and Fifty Shades of Grey 《五十度灰》gain more than 4 million views in just few days. His narration on Twilight 《暮光之城》episodes 1–5 gained more than 970 thousands views in Youtube in just 4 days. With his funny Taiwan accent and his character descriptions had successfully achieved him to be china’s top 23 Internet Celebrities in 2015.
According to his Weibo, Bilibili, Youtube, Youku, and Tencent official page viewerships statistics, his annual income could be up to 2.5 million CNY per year! According to his Weibo TV Commercial production quotation and assuming he has one TVC per month, his annual income would be another 120 thousands CNY.
So, why do we still need to go to college? hid ourselves in the library for hours doing PR risk management thesis fo Exxonmobil? damn it!
Even so, his Taobao data states that his monthly income is 23 thousands CNY per month. Girls going crazy for him now? probably YES!
Then, assuming he signed up a contract with Huuya.com with 100 thousands CNY per month. Which sums up to his annual income could be 4.25 million CNY.
And we, the freelancers could only BEG the clients to pay our credit card bills monthly? that’s a shame!
How could he have done that? China has more than 50 thousands of film narrators at least, in the web platforms, but why Gu Amo? The era of 5G is coming, video production is a trend, but what really happens to the high budget Red Cam or Epic Alexa commercial production which would cost more than half a million for just a mere 30sec TVC?
Which also sums up to the trend of “EVERYONE could be a KOL”. Look at Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and also live web platforms like Bigo and UpLive. Needless to say Weibo and Tiktok. Smartphones with super-clear high pixel camera lens; So what happened to the DSLR now? its up in my shelves, somewhere, I don’t remember I owned one…
