After the "little composition" controversy, Dong Yuhui will appear in the Oriental Selection live broadcast room for the first time. At 23:46 on the evening of December 17, the Oriental Selection Douyin account released a live broadcast preview: From 20:00 to 22:00 on December 18, New Oriental founders Yu Minhong and Dong Yuhui will appear in the Oriental Selection live broadcast room at the same time. At the same time, Jingguantai also noticed that Dong Yuhui was "promoted".
The preview poster for Oriental Selection’s live broadcast on December 18 shows that Dong Yuhui’s identity has become the “Senior Partner of Oriental Selection”. In the previous warm-up video for Oriental Selection Jilin trip on December 6, Dong Yuhui was introduced as "Oriental Selection Anchor".
Picture/Oriental Selection live broadcast preview on December 18 (left)
Oriental Selection Jilin Tour Live Preview (right)
Source/Screenshot of Mirror Observation Station
In the comment area of the live broadcast preview on December 18, a user pointed out, "The senior partner, that is, VP, vice president level, has equity and options, and is one of the company's shareholders and bosses. He is no longer a worker. Congratulations."
There are also doubts that Oriental Selection (01797.HK), as a listed company, has not issued an announcement on this arrangement, and the substantive conditions such as shareholding ratio have not been announced.
But in any case, the status of "senior partner" seems to have reflected the sincerity of Dongfang Selection.
This is also a choice made carefully by Oriental Selection. At around 22:00 on the evening of December 17, in the Oriental Selection live broadcast room, when an audience asked about the live broadcast preview, the anchor said that the live broadcast preview has not been decided yet and is being revised.
On December 6, the Oriental Selection editor's comment about "who wrote the essay" developed into a public opinion storm with the consequences of all parties involved.
Until December 16, Yu Minhong and Dong Yuhui appeared together in Yu Minhong's personal Douyin live broadcast room to respond to everything about the "little composition" controversy. The storm finally subsided for the time being.
Subsequently, Oriental Selection’s handling of CEO Sun Dongxu also received an official seal.
On December 17, Oriental Selection issued an announcement on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, stating: In view of the recent public opinion turmoil, Mr. Sun’s change in position reflects his recent mismanagement of the company’s brand and reputation. It has been resolved on December 16, 2023 to remove Mr. Sun Dongxu from the position of CEO of the company and remove him from the position of executive director of the company, effective immediately.
But there are also many dissatisfactions and speculations from all parties.
For example, in the live broadcast of Dong Yuhui and Yu Minhong on December 16, Dong Yuhui said that he would most likely continue to be selected in Dongfang and did not want to become a sales anchor. However, some viewers after watching the live broadcast thought that Yu Minhong only talked about promises, but did not talk about specific treatment and other issues.
On December 17, the Oriental Selection live broadcast room resumed live broadcast, but Dong Yuhui did not appear. In the live broadcast room, there were also many comments asking, "Where is Dong Yuhui?" and "When will Yuhui be broadcast?" At the same time, some comments explained, "Dong Yuhui will not broadcast today."
Now, the live broadcast preview of Oriental Selection, as well as Dong Yuhui's status as "Senior Partner of Oriental Selection", may bring this turmoil to a satisfactory end for all parties.
But if Dong Yuhui is left behind, will Oriental Selection have a smooth road ahead? The answer is not necessarily.
The storm is beginning to settle
This controversy caused by "whose composition was written by Dong Yuhui, the host of Oriental Screening", has been going on for more than ten days.
On December 5, Oriental Selection released a warm-up video on its Douyin account for the upcoming Oriental Selection Jilin trip that will start from December 8th to 10th.
The next day, a comment posted by the editor of Oriental Selection was pinned to the top of his account, "Some netizens are curious about who wrote the copy? We are a team! Every time a short composition is produced, the anchor is in front of the camera, and behind the scenes are the friends from the copywriting team, the shooting team, and the editing team."
On December 17, Jingguantai saw on Oriental Screening’s Douyin account that the video that caused the dispute had disappeared. But under another video, some users posted screenshots of the video and the editor's comments.
If the event stops here, it is just a simple working explanation. But after that, the editor replied to netizens twice, saying, "Anchors sometimes write...so most of them are indeed written by the copywriting team." and "Mr. Yu is away from home every day and really doesn't know the details of the business."
Later, on December 10, Dong Yuhui, who was originally scheduled to live broadcast from 15:30 to 18:30 pm, did not appear in the live broadcast room on time. On December 12, Sun Dongxu, the then CEO of Oriental Screening, threw his phone in the live broadcast room and claimed that Dong Yuhui’s annual salary was more than tens of millions of yuan as reported online, which pushed the incident to a climax.
Picture/Comments under the video in the Douyin live broadcast room of Oriental Selection
Source/Screenshot of Mirror Observation Station
There was a lot of discussion for a while.
Xiaotian has been watching this incident from the beginning and raised her own doubts, "The editor also works part-time. It is impossible to go crazy in the comment section because of personal grudges, unless the editor is led by Teacher Dong or someone authorizes the editor to do so. Otherwise, as an editor, he does not have such great rights, unless he wants to go crazy and vent his anger if he doesn't want to do it anymore."
Public opinion also began to develop in an uncontrollable direction.
Dong Yuhui's "mother-in-laws" left the show one after another, either speaking out in the live broadcast room, or rushing to the "competing" Gaotu live broadcast room. They said, "Because Dong Yuhui came to the Gaotu live broadcast room." Or, "You and I have no chance, it all depends on Dong Yuhui."
After the "mother-in-law" defected, Oriental Selection's live broadcast room viewing volume and number of fans also dropped rapidly.
According to upstream news statistics, as of 14:00 pm on December 16, the number of Douyin fans of "Oriental Selection" dropped from 31.086 million on the 12th to 28.557 million, with more than 2.5 million fans lost in 4 days. At the same time, Dong Yuhui’s personal account soared from 13.066 million on the 12th to 18.241 million, with an increase of more than 5 million followers.
As of 23:30 on December 17, the number of followers of Dongfang Selection's Douyin account was 28.782 million, and the number of followers of Dong Yuhui's personal account was 21.156 million, which is further close in size.
Oriental Selection’s share price is also fluctuating.Data shows that since December 8, Oriental Selection’s stock price has continued to fall. As of December 15, it closed at HK$26.25, with the stock price falling by 21.99% in the past five trading days..
Faced with losses, Oriental Selection is also trying to save the situation.
On December 13, Dong Yuhui published a long article explaining the incident. On December 14, Yu Minhong issued a statement on this, and Sun Dongxu also apologized on the evening of the same day.
But it was not until December 16 that Oriental Selection announced on its Douyin account that Sun Dongxu had been removed from the position of executive director and CEO of Oriental Selection. On the evening of the same day, Dong Yuhui and Yu Minhong appeared in Yu Minhong's Douyin live broadcast room, and the matter came to an end.
When the Dongfang Selection Douyin account announced the dismissal of Sun Dongxu, a "mother-in-law" forwarded the message and said, "It's really cool. With a monthly salary of several thousand yuan, you have to take advantage of people with an annual salary of tens of millions of yuan, and you have to stand in line. But this is not supporting a person, it is supporting the only remaining value of knowledge and the only remaining 'intellectual decency'."
Has it been planned for a long time?
Behind the turmoil, there are also voices pointing out that Oriental Screening has a long-standing plan to "de-evolutionize Dong Yuhui".
At the end of 2021, New Oriental transformed into live streaming and launched the live streaming platform "Oriental Selection". But it was not until June 2022 that Dong Yuhui's live broadcast full of humanistic connotations became popular overnight, and the Oriental Selection live broadcast room gained more attention.
Data shows that during the days when Dong Yuhui was live broadcasting, Oriental Selection gained nearly 5 million followers, with average sales of 13.477 million yuan per game.
According to statistics from Haitong International Securities, from August to December 2022, Dong Yuhui had a significant driving role in increasing the number of views and GMV of Oriental Selection. By March 2023, Dong Yuhui's average number of daily viewers was 9.5 million, an increase of 31.6%; the average GMV was 17.45 million yuan, a growth rate of 35.8%, which was significantly higher than Dong Yuhui's GMV on non-live broadcast days.
To this day, many viewers of Oriental Screening say they were "moved by Dong Yuhui's words."
However, the outstanding personal IP style is also a "double-edged sword" for live broadcast e-commerce companies..
Judging from the trends in the live broadcast industry in recent years, de-personalizing IP has become an industry trend. After all, for live streaming e-commerce companies, having a strong personal IP can indeed be of great benefit in attracting fans and traffic. It can be called "gold medal sales", but too strong personal IP attributes also have risks.
For example, when the company Jiufeng failed to seek listing for the first time, there was a market view that it was because personal IP as a goodwill asset was not stable for listed companies.
This is also a common problem that most MCN institutions face when seeking capitalization.
After that, I made a friend and untied Luo Yonghao, and successfully went public through a backdoor listing. I also signed a large number of anchors at the same time and cultivated my own anchor matrix.
In addition, if a big anchor is tied too deeply to the company, the risk of backlash due to the big anchor will be greater. A slip of the tongue or sudden resignation may cause irreparable losses to the company.
Picture/December 17, the audience in the Oriental Selection live broadcast room asked "Where is Dong Yuhui?"
Source/Screenshot of Mirror Observation Station
Therefore, some analysts also pointed out that the "de-evolution of Dong Yuhui" of Oriental Selection has already begun.
For example, in terms of live broadcast time, reports pointed out that in November 2022, some people discovered that Dong Yuhui had less and less live broadcast time, and withdrew from the prime time of 19:00-22:00 in the live broadcast room.
In addition, in January 2023, Dong Yuhui was not mentioned in the year-end review video of Oriental Selection; in September, about 2,000 accounts with Dong Yuhui’s avatar and name suddenly appeared in Oriental Selection’s “Slice and Delivery”, but Dong Yuhui said in the live broadcast that he had not received an authorization notice from the company, and reminded everyone not to be fooled.
In order to avoid over-reliance on a single head anchor, anchor matrixing is also the next development direction of the industry..
During this turmoil, Oriental Selection mentioned in its response to the media that the recent public opinion crisis also exposed the conflict between Oriental Selection's internet celebrity model and product line model. Among these two models, Oriental Selection stated that sticking to the product line is the best choice to respond to doubts.
In other words, the company does not want to rely on big anchors all the time.
In addition to Dong Yuhui, Oriental Selection has also trained some well-known anchors including Shi Ming, Dundun, YOYO, Xiaoqi and so on.
But compared to untying the head anchor, it is not easy to cultivate a new head anchor. Today's Dongfang Selection is probably not ready to lose its head anchor.
Internet analyst Ding Daoshi said bluntly: "Which of China's leading MCNs is not strengthening personal IP. Without building personal IP, it will be difficult for a company to become the industry leader. Why should we abandon our superior resources and turn to an uncertain future? It is better to strengthen personal IP and learn more to avoid overturning."
It is not easy to peel off the head anchor.
"Anyone can leave the current Dongfang Selection, but Dong Yuhui cannot. Today, the struggle and debate between the two sides is not a competition between right and wrong or old and new forces, but the key to the survival of the company. Oriental Selection is a company praised by consumers. Consumers will decide the life or death of this company. For consumers, Dong Yuhui is definitely more important." Ding Daoshi pointed out.
What’s the road ahead?
From the current point of view, the turmoil is over for the time being. Dong Yuhui has obtained the position of "senior partner" and will soon appear on the live broadcast.
Earlier on December 17, the entry "Oriental Selection resumed live broadcast and ranked first in the overall list of goods delivery" also rushed to the Weibo hot search.
But the turmoil seems to be only calm on the surface.
As for Sun Dongxu, a key figure in the turmoil, Oriental Selection has issued an announcement to remove him from his post. But in the live broadcast on December 16, Yu Minhong also said, "Although Xiao Sun has stepped down from his position, he will still continue to contribute to Oriental Selection in other positions."
And even if the trump card of Dong Yuhui is retained, the road to Dongfang Selection can hardly be said to be smooth.
Oriental Selection's latest financial report is the 2023 fiscal year report released on August 25, 2023 (for the year ending May 31, 2023). Financial report data shows that in fiscal year 2023, Oriental Selection’s revenue from continuing operations was 4.51 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 651%.
Among them, the live broadcast business contributed a lot. Oriental Selection’s 2023 fiscal year report shows that the GMV of live broadcast e-commerce business in fiscal 2023 reached 10 billion yuan.
However, competition in the live broadcast e-commerce industry is also becoming increasingly fierce. Moreover, in addition to relying too much on a single IP, Oriental Selection also has the trouble of relying too much on a single channel of Douyin..
In its 2023 fiscal year report, Oriental Selection bluntly stated that GMV from Douyin accounts for the vast majority of its live e-commerce GMV. In fiscal year 2023, the total number of paid orders for third-party products and self-operated products on Douyin was 136 million.
Perhaps it is for this reason that Oriental Selection decided to go solo, launched an independent APP "Oriental Selection", and launched it on the "Oriental Selection" APP.
It's just not that easy to fly solo.
Now, the "Little Composition Controversy" has brought to light the shortcomings of Oriental Selection's over-reliance on Dong Yuhui's single IP. It remains to be seen whether Oriental Selection’s road to bringing goods is going well, and whether capital will continue to be optimistic.
Photo/On December 16, Yu Minhong and Dong Yuhui appeared together in Yu Minhong’s live broadcast room
Source/Screenshot of Mirror Observation Station
In order to "walk on many legs", Dongfang Selection is now focusing on cultural tourism in addition to live streaming..
One month after Oriental Selection divested its education business, the company launched cultural tourism products on its own APP, which were broadcast live in Sanya, Lijiang and Jilin.
Oriental Selection has already shown signs of cross-border cultural tourism. At the end of 2022, Oriental Selection quietly launched the "Oriental Selection Sees the World" account. On July 21, 2023, New Oriental also announced a new development direction, in the official account "Start a Business Again!" New Oriental Culture and Tourism! "The article mentioned that New Oriental will focus on operating education, life, and cultural tourism in the future.
Yu Minhong also said: "I do cultural tourism because I want to play and like to travel. Maybe in the process of playing, cultural tourism will be completed."
At present, with its ability to carry goods, Oriental Selection has also achieved certain results in cultural tourism.
According to data, on December 10 alone, the sales of Oriental Selection cultural tourism products reached 16 million yuan, far exceeding expectations. At the same time, Oriental Selection revealed that more than 100 wine and travel companies have reached cooperation with it and will put travel packages, attraction tickets, hotels and other cultural and travel products on the APP.
Eastern Selection also has greater ambitions.
The then CEO Sun Dongxu once said: "I hope that in the future, Oriental Selection will be a product technology company on its left hand and a cultural communication company on its right hand."
But the "little composition controversy" has caused waves. Eastern selection will also receive more attention and questioning.
All this is just a temporary lull. Xiao Yang, an Internet fan, lamented, "Dong Yuhui seems to have stayed at Dongfang Selection, but his relationship with his colleagues and his leadership has become more subtle and on fire. For Dongfang Selection, it seems that the situation has been temporarily stabilized, but it will be a matter of time before Dong Yuhui leaves, which also exposes problems with the company's strategic goals."
As of now, the turmoil has come to an end. Under the preview of the live broadcast on December 18, some comments said, "From 8 to 10 pm tonight, I think it will be the live broadcast room with the most people online at the same time in the history of Douyin selling goods!"
But it may be difficult to say whether the future of Dongfang Selection will be smooth.