A few days ago, LeTV became popular again because of news about the magical work of LeTV employees. The last time it became popular was just before the Spring Festival in 2022. At that time, major Internet companies were spending crazy money on marketing, often giving out billions in red envelopes. However, LeTV very sincerely stated that it owed more than 10 billion and had no money to do red envelope activities.
Among LeTV’s various self-defeating marketing, some netizens feel that today’s Dangdang is very similar to LeTV. Both companies have been brilliant in the past. From capital favoring to investors withdrawing their capital, and both founders being forced to leave the company, they always bring topics and popularity wherever they go.
Formerly LeTV and Dangdang, one was the world's first IPO listed company in the industry and the earliest video company listed on China's A-share market; the other was China's first B2C online mall based entirely on online business and listed in the United States.
However, with the rapid development of the Internet, the two companies gradually fell behind. Although the world is still there, things and people have long since changed.
Despite this, the two companies still stick to the city and rely on online marketing from time to time to promote themselves and increase their presence. Recently, both companies have used similar marketing techniques. Not only did they spend no marketing expenses, they even gained good marketing attention.
01, are all masters of free traffic promotion
A few days ago, a self-media blogger broke the news online that LeTV has more than 400 employees. Not only have they not been involved in involution or 996, they have never been owed wages or had their social security benefits stopped. The related popularity immediately reached the top of the hot search list, and many netizens expressed what conditions are needed to become an employee of LeTV.
Subsequently, LeTV officials personally responded to the hot search, announcing that LeTV did not have 996, but it had a boss, and it also did not forget to run a wave of advertisements for new products. With the popularity rising, LeTV also started live broadcast on its short video account and recruited new employees through online recruitment.
is similar to LeTV, and there is also Dangdang .
Also last week, due to the intense attention paid to the Huawei and Chen Chunhua incidents, the media gradually uncovered news events related to pirated books. As soon as I heard that it was related to books, Dangdang would definitely not miss this good opportunity for promotion.
So Dangdang began to publish a statement on its official Weibo account, shouting from a distance Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, saying that Dangdang has focused on promoting reading and selling books for more than 20 years, and hoped not to be mentioned in headlines and Douyin of pirated booksellers.
Dangdang not only mobilized many online writers and publishing houses to repost the blog post, but also aroused the recognition of many original authors. The industry believes that there is a trend to clean up the industry.
However, as the incident progressed, although Dangdang failed to truly “clear the trend,” it managed to generate a good amount of traffic to a certain extent, achieving the effect of free promotion for Dangdang.
02,
Dangdang and LeTV used to be the well-deserved leaders in the industry. They not only drove the development of the entire industry, but were also sought after by capital. However, as market competition changes, both companies have fallen into "internal and external troubles". The founders have left the company, and the market share has been divided by competitors...
Because the income from the main business is gradually declining, and advertising and marketing expenses It is getting more and more expensive, so both companies can only choose low-investment, high-return advertising and marketing methods.
Subsequently, both Dangdang and LeTV found the most suitable path for their own marketing and promotion. The former chose to engage in trouble, while the latter chose to make a fool of themselves.
During the Spring Festival of 2022, LeTV’s self-defeating effect was most obvious.When major Internet apps launched activities to share cash, LeTV put the slogan "Oweed 12.2 billion" on its own APP icon, instantly becoming popular and occupying major hot topic lists.
After the first big explosion of self-destruction received a good response, LeTV began to let itself go, and printed the words "The boss builds the car in America" and "Can't afford to separate" on the APP icon.
In addition, at the beginning of this year, when major online video industry giants announced high-profile membership price increases, LeTV went in the opposite direction and issued a statement on its official website, stating that LeTV Video membership prices would not increase, and claimed that it was "self-aware", "Not eligible for price increase" etc.
Due to a series of self-defeating operations, LeTV has launched a wave of free marketing. This year, the number of downloads of LeTV Video APP has increased by nearly 20% compared with 2021.
Compared with LeTV, Dangdang’s Pengci is slightly better. Pengci is so red that even his own family members are not spared.
In 2018, Dangdang founder Li Guoqing caused huge controversy after commenting on the Liu Qiangdong Mingzhou incident. Dangdang immediately issued a statement on its official website condemning Li Guoqing, and then relied on this wave of marketing to give itself a good advertisement.
In 2020, Li Guoqing and Yu Yu got divorced. In the end, he was kicked out of the company by his wife and received a breakup fee of 100 million yuan. Because Li Guoqing was dissatisfied, the two founders immediately started to snatch the official seal, which even made it onto the major Internet hot lists. The "Celebrating Yu Year" battle also attracted countless people to watch.
Immediately afterwards, Dangdang also started marketing on the official website, launching the "50 off for spending over 100" campaign, and the homepage also opened a special page "From breaking cups to grabbing stamps" to recommend marriage, sexual relations, company management, etc. to users Books on.
03, are all struggling to support
Compared with Dangdang, LeTV is much more tenacious. First of all, in terms of operations, Jia Yueting left the United States. Even though LeTV’s brand reputation almost collapsed, it still continued to try new business opportunities under the leadership of its co-founders, and began to launch smart hardware products around the video business. It does some every year Change and innovation.
Because of LeTV's persistence, finally at the end of 2021, data showed that LeTV had achieved a double balance of annual operating profit and cash flow . In other words, although LeTV still owes debts, it already has a certain amount of cash flow savings. .
On the other hand, Dangdang seems to be unsatisfactory. Affected by the breakup of the two founders, coupled with the impact of short video and live broadcast e-commerce, Dangdang’s performance has become somewhat sluggish.
According to public information, before 2020, Dangdang had been profitable for five consecutive years. Although its market share continued to decline, it could still maintain normal cash flow and ensure the normal operation of the company.
However, with the impact of live streaming, the online sales logic of traditional books has also changed. It is said that relevant data shows that during the 2021 Book Expo, on-site retail sales were about 26 million yuan, while online live sales were as high as 150 million yuan.
Let’s look at the attitude towards short videos. As a veteran player who has been deeply involved in books for many years, Dangdang originally had the opportunity to cooperate with more short video platforms and explore business opportunities, but it always stuck to its own laurels and awkwardly rode on the popularity to maintain a subtle sense of existence.
LeTV seems to be a lot more open. Just on the 30th of last month, LeTV announced a second-generation cooperation with Kuaishou. Under this cooperation framework, Kuaishou creators can edit and re-create LeTV Video’s exclusive self-made copyrighted works and upload them to the Kuaishou platform. At the same time, LeTV Video can access the Kuaishou mini program platform and use the functions of the mini program to achieve membership promotion and content monetization.
Times are constantly changing, and new things will eventually replace old things.LeTV and Dangdang are the best examples. Only by accepting new things and adjusting operating strategies in the process of continuous development can enterprises keep up with the times.
