Image source @ Visual China
Text | Pencil road, the author | Zhang Xuan, editor | Wu Jinna
Since last year, because of the internet celebrity attraction filter and rushed to the hot search, the complaint about the "false grass" of the Little Red Book has not stopped. In order to govern the community ecology, seal brands, seal notes, seal accounts, fight lawsuits... On the road of community governance, Xiaohongshu has acted frequently in the past three months.
According to the data released by the official account of Xiaohongshu "Potato Butler", since the special governance of "false grass planting", Xiaohongshu has banned a total of 81 brands and offline merchants, and in 2021, xiaohongshu governance has 535016 notes on the diversion of fake notes, and the number of accounts for the diversion and sale of fake accounts has 100729, covering 502 brands. This includes cosmetics giants like Fancl, which are valued at more than 20 billion yuan, and domestic daily chemical internet celebrity brands like Adolf, which have annual sales of more than 15 billion yuan.
Recently, Xiaohongshu also lit a sword to the notification platform and MCN agencies, and filed lawsuits against 7 institutions.
Around the "planting grass", in addition to the "originator of planting grass" Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Douyin, and even Douban and Zhihu have bred a gray industrial chain of ghostwriting and generation. Judging from the actions of major platforms in the past year, increasing management efforts and maintaining a good content ecology will become the conventional means of operation of each platform.
The governance of consumer communities is a long run, and today's wave will not be the last governance. On the way to becoming a true consumer decision-making value, the major platforms are still obstructed and long. For new consumer brands that are eager to go out of the circle, in terms of improving the quality of content marketing and improving the delivery effect, more methods need to be thought out within the scope of the rules.
Little Red Book under the fierce medicine "poisonous weed"
"The brand is suspected of illegal marketing, and the relevant content will not be displayed." Daisy after 95 is a deep user of Xiaohongshu, and when she was about to open Xiaohongshu to search for relevant notes of Runbaiyan, she found that the page was blank and there was only a short notice. Searching for news found that Runbaiyan had been banned by Xiaohongshu.
However, Daisy soon found that opening the previously collected Runbaiyan notes could still see the content at that time, and it did not affect likes, comments, and collections. This means that banned brands will only not appear in public domain traffic pools such as information flows and search pages. Users can still watch normally on the homepage of the account where the brand notes have been posted.
Sealing the brand is a "strong medicine" under Xiaohongshu in the process of cracking down on false marketing, and in the past three months, it has been banned for three rounds.
On December 17, 2021, Xiaohongshu made the first move to rectify false marketing, and 29 brands such as Dove, Ludeqing, Half Mu Huatian, and Nivea were banned by Xiaohongshu.
Then on January 5 this year, Little Red Book shot again. Fancl, Hou, Adolf, Runbaiyan and other 39 brands have entered the banned list for suspected illegal marketing. This time, the Weibo topic once rushed to the top of the hot search list. Fancl is a cosmetics giant with a valuation of more than 20 billion yuan, and Adolf is an Internet celebrity brand in domestic daily chemical care in recent years, with annual sales of more than 15 billion yuan.
The most recent one was on January 19, in response to the special action of "Qinglang • Crackdown on Traffic Fraud, Black Public Relations, and Network Water Army", Xiaohongshu began the third round of false grass cultivation on the 19th, and after the first two batches of banning 68 fake grass brands and offline merchants, Xiaohongshu once again banned 6 offline merchants including Yushe Impression, Anyu Hotel, Guangzhou Shuguang Beauty Hospital, etc., as well as 7 brands including Youtianlan, Zhichu, Oudebao, etc.
Pencil Road found in the Search of Little Red Book that among the banned brands that have been announced, only the New Zealand milk brand "Zhichu" can search for relevant notes, and other brands prompt "not to display".
According to the data released by the official account of Xiaohongshu "Potato Butler", since the special treatment of "false grass planting", Xiaohongshu has banned a total of 81 brands and offline merchants. The reason why they do not hesitate to open the knife to potential financial owners is that these brands have laid a large number of notes that have not been really experienced in the Xiaohongshu community, and have not taken the official filing process, and will not display sponsorship/cooperation and other related labels, which will affect user judgment and interfere with the order of the platform, so they are regarded as "false grass" by Xiaohongshu and have become the focus of governance projects.
In addition to sealing the brand, Xiaohongshu also lit up its sword to the notification platform and MCN agencies. On February 25, Xiaohongshu announced that it had filed a lawsuit against three notification platforms and MCN institutions, including Cloud Media, Qunliang, and Shengshi Qilin. Earlier, on January 19, Xiaohongshu announced that it had filed a lawsuit against four notification platforms and MCN agencies, including Micro Media Notice, Chengbao and Nanjing Mussel. So far, Xiaohongshu has taken legal measures against 7 intermediary platforms.
Xiaohongshu said that these institutions are engaged in the business of "ghostwriting and sending" false grass notes, helping merchants and bloggers to carry out false promotion, causing great harm to the platform content ecology and platform reputation, and seriously damaging the legitimate rights and interests of users. To this end, Xiaohongshu requires the above-mentioned institutions to immediately stop the false promotion and trading of Xiaohongshu and compensate Xiaohongshu for economic losses of 10 million yuan, and the compensation will be used for the platform's false grass management.
Pencil Dao inquired about the legal proceedings of these 7 related companies on the Qichacha App, and there is no case filing information related to Xiaohongshu at present.
According to media disclosures, starting in 2019, Little Red Book seems to have a similar community governance campaign every once in a while to combat low-quality content and fake marketing. According to the disclosure of the potato butler account, in the whole of 2021, the Xiaohongshu governance drainage and sale of fake notes 535016, the number of accounts dealing with the diversion of fake accounts 100729, covering 502 brands.
The black production chain behind the flood of false grasses
In 2018, the talent show "Creation 101" exploded, and the program's sponsor Xiaohongshu was also "broken" by more young girls. As the largest "grass planting" community in China, Xiaohongshu has more than 200 million monthly active users, of which the proportion of young groups such as the post-90s generation has reached 72%.
The amount of grass notes on the platform has become an important reference for many consumers before placing an order, and the "homework" of planting grass, evaluation and demining is done, and daisy's skin care white can also understand the efficacy and applicability of some cosmetics.
The saying "Little Red Book" is not an exaggeration. According to a research report released by Dongxing Securities in August last year, 90% of Xiaohongshu users had searched on the Xiaohongshu platform before purchasing goods. Wang Lin (pseudonym), a Xiaohongshu service provider, told Pencil Dao: "The brand power generated by Xiaohongshu grass tends to be close to sales power, which is why new brands such as Perfect Diary and Zhong Xuegao can be run on the Xiaohongshu platform." ”
Since February 2018, Perfect Diary, as one of the first domestic brands to enter Xiaohongshu, has cooperated with 15,000 KOLs to publish notes to share Perfect Diary's product experience, makeup tutorials, etc., driving the rapid rise of its brand awareness and sales. In addition to the perfect diary, behind the popularity of the new consumer brands of Nature's Name, Gu Yu, Hua Xizi, Ubras, and Zhong XueGao, they also have the credit of Xiaohongshu.
As the entrance to consumer decision-making, Xiaohongshu has become a must-fight place for consumer goods marketing, and Matrix Partners once divided the cold start of new consumer brands into three stages in the article "Cold Start Operation Manual for Cutting-edge Consumer Brands", and Xiaohongshu was the main delivery channel in these three stages, and said that in the entire early stage, marketing expenses need to account for 30% of the total GMV.
However, to achieve a large number of notes coverage within a certain marketing period, it requires higher time costs and operating costs, for example, in the cooperation between the brand and Xiaohongshu, according to the official marketing service agreement, Xiaohongshu will first charge the brand a 10% service fee, and then charge the creator a 10% settlement fee.
"This ratio is high among various platforms, and once the sales volume is high, it will be a large amount." This is not the end, some talents will also count their own 10% into the cost of cooperation when talking about cooperation, so it is not a small expense for the brand side. Jerry, a small red book channel agent, told Pencil Road. On the other hand, bloggers' recommendations are not necessarily explosive. ”
This has also led to many brands choosing to bypass the platform to cooperate directly with MCN, KOL and KOC when doing Little Red Book delivery. As a result, around the "planting grass" has spawned a gray industrial chain of ghostwriting and distribution, that is, the brand side or MCN agency will use third-party notification platforms such as "micro-media notice" and "cloud media easy" to recruit a large number of paid people with physical goods/services or cash, and produce content on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Weibo, and Dianping for illegal marketing. According to reports, there are more than 20 gray industry survival notification platforms relying on "ghostwriting and distribution".
For example, on the "Grass Planting Notice Cloud Media Easy", which has been sued by Xiaohongshu, it is still possible to see ghostwritten grass planting notices. In one of the notices of tattooed eyebrows, the promoter required the account to be a mother and baby number of more than 1,000 powder, and said that the material involved portrait graphics and text, including and taking hugs, and the commission budget was only 25-50 yuan / single.
There was even a "0 fan" promotion. That is to say, even if the order recipient is a Small Red Book user with 0 fans, as long as the image or copy provided by the merchant is forwarded, you can get a free product after completion. Some food brands with relatively low unit prices like to use this promotion method.
"This is actually no different from online swiping." Little Red Book user Xu Lili (pseudonym) "likes" to "sift wool through this way," which is equivalent to a free trial and tasting of products." When asked whether such behavior is legal and compliant, she is also at a loss.
"The governance of illegal marketing, we will definitely insist on doing it for a long time." It is a protracted battle with many governance difficulties that cannot be completely overcome through a single platform. For example, similar to micro-media notices, red notices and other third-party order intermediary platforms, we still have not found a particularly good way to combat them today, but we will continue to try and find a way. Shen Lian, editor-in-chief of Xiaohongshu, once said.
"Planting grass" is not easy, "weeding" is even more difficult
Some commentators believe that behind the Xiaohongshu rectification of false grass, there are also considerations for the commercial interests of the platform. At present, the monetization income of Little Red Book is gradually dominated by advertising services. According to the "2021 Xiaohongshu Brand Research Report", the revenue of Xiaohongshu in 2021 is mainly composed of advertising and e-commerce, and the share of the two accounts for 80% and 20% respectively. How to balance the authenticity of the content and the interests of advertising money owners is also related to the commercial interests of Little Red Book.
On December 22 last year, Little Red Book held its first business ecology conference in Shanghai. At the meeting, Xiaohongshu provided brands with services from demand release, marketing planning to product launch, and then to in-depth cooperation in the entire marketing chain.
Among them, Xiaohongshu's self-built creator business cooperation service platform Xiaohongshu "Dandelion" is a key link, but the contradiction is that the dandelion platform requires that the number of fans of the account is not less than 5000, which filters a large number of ordinary people to a certain extent. In addition, from the actual operation point of view, many bloggers do not have high intentions for receiving business orders from dandelions, because on the one hand, they do not want the platform to take too many commissions, on the other hand, they are also worried about the impact of fan stickiness due to the release of notes.
"Therefore, the third-party platform is also indispensable, because the entire ecology of Xiaohongshu actually needs this part, so the third-party platform cannot be completely removed, but needs to be further regulated, and what is excluded is not planting grass, but false grass." Said Jerry, the channel agent mentioned above.
"But for consumers, it is a good thing to rectify false grass cultivation, which can help users receive more real information." One blogger said. Judging from the content currently banned by Xiaohongshu, most of the content that is judged to be false marketing is low-quality content such as repeating the same, looking at pictures and writing notes.
In the past, fake grass planting has become a matter of great concern on major community platforms. In addition to the "originator of grass planting" Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Douyin, and even Douban and Zhihu have all been targeted by black and gray production institutions engaged in false grass planting. Judging from the actions of major platforms in the past year, increasing management efforts and maintaining a good content ecology will become the conventional means of operation of each platform.
In the past few years when new consumption was hot, the grass planting model allowed many emerging brands to go out of the circle through the community. But everything is too late, and now in the promotional copy of many brands, it will be mentioned, "Little Red Book Notes X 10,000 Pieces" and "Douyin Shop Video X"... Among them, the moisture geometry is known only to the brand itself.
The governance of consumer communities is a long run, and today's wave will not be the last governance. On the way to becoming a true consumer decision-making value, the major platforms are still obstructed and long. For new consumer brands that are eager to go out of the circle, in terms of improving the quality of content marketing and improving the delivery effect, within the scope of the rules, they also need to exert greater efforts.