Through cute and story-telling stickers, Line allows users to spend more and more money. This Japanese instant messaging software operates and monetizes emoticons as IP, and ultimately achieved success.

On July 14 this year, Japanese chat application Line was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In this IPO, Line raised a total of US$1.3 billion, with a market valuation of over US$7 billion, making it the world's largest technology IPO after Alibaba's initial public offering.

Like China’s WeChat and South Korea’s Kakao Talk, Line’s main revenue has three parts: communications, content, and advertising. However, in addition to this, he also relies on the emoticon sticker business, and around the emoticon economy, total revenue last year reached US$268 million.

According to data, one out of every 10 messages sent by Line is an emoticon sticker. At a time when super IP has become a new trend, around the popular emoji package, how Line can make users willing to pay money is a topic of concern to everyone.

The emoticon package is a light IP, but its ability to attract fans is very heavy

Line started late in the instant messaging software and was only officially launched on the market in June 2011. Its Chinese name is "Even me". For most Chinese, the first time they were introduced to Line was through the 2013 hit Korean drama "My Love from the Star", which served hot beer and fried chicken. This Line. Although it has Korean roots, 70% of its annual revenue comes from Japan, and nearly half of the Japanese have become Line users.

From the perspective of Japanese users, what really attracts them to Line is not the instrumental use of text and voice interaction anytime and anywhere when data traffic is activated or connected to wifi, but the expressionless Brown in the application. Bear and the almighty and ever-changing Connie Rabbit.

This is actually just an emoticon package function that is often used in user communication. Compared with animation and literary IPs that have their own story systems, just an original emoticon can only be regarded as a light IP. But under the operation of Line, it has become an industrial chain.

The source of the industry chain is users paying to download emoticon packs. Brown Bear and Coni Rabbit are cute and distinctive chat emoticons officially designed by Line. They attract users to pay for them and exchange emoticons when chatting with friends. In 2015, the sales of emoticons alone accounted for a quarter of Line's annual revenue, and the number of users who purchase stickers or games for a monthly fee is very stable, remaining at around 8 million.

In the past, the usual interpretation of this emoticon payment situation was mostly summarized in one sentence - Japanese two-dimensional users have the habit of paying for original animation, and paying for emoticons is just a child's play.

Is that all? One fact is that products with expressions are indeed easy to become popular. In the communication era before Line, in the Japanese market in 1995, the operator NTT launched a pager with different emoticons, which was deeply loved by young people. This pager has since gained nearly 40% of the market share. In the Line era, due to the Great East Japan Earthquake that caused the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant leak in March 2011, Line, which was only launched in June of that year, took advantage of the fact that Japan's telecommunications system infrastructure was severely damaged and communication services were interrupted in many places. , popular among Japanese users, with 4 million users using it in just a few months. But the real breakthrough point was in October 2011. Due to the addition of the "stickers" function, Line brought 1 million users in two days.

The power of emoticons to attract fans can be seen from this, even if it is a paid experience.

Being cute creates real needs and spreads typical Asian characters

Line, which has more than 400 million registered users, currently has about 218 million monthly active users, two-thirds of which are from Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand and Indonesia. At the same time, Line users send an average of 398 million paid and free emoticons every day, accounting for 9% of the total user chat content data.

One of the reasons why the spread of emoticon data is so high lies in the unique label Line puts on its own emoticons - cute and cheap. Especially in Japan, where cuteness culture is prevalent, Line’s painstakingly launched series of emoticon packs such as Brown Bear, Coni Rabbit, and Mantou Man can be said to be suitable for all ages. This situation also occurs in Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia where Line users are highly covered.

Regarding the popularity of emoticons, a staff member of the WeChat emoticon team believes: “The social culture of Asian countries is conservative and traditional. They usually look serious, but they are actually very wild at heart. Emoticons are very good. "But in Line's view, this kind of emotional expression portrait is obviously not appropriate enough. To be more precise, in the entire Asian cultural circle, the best way to express emotions is through acting cute and a bit mean. Presented in this way, it can be both wild and subtle at the same time. Especially for Japanese people who are used to holding back, suppressing and hiding their emotions. On the contrary, Koreans with more exposed and intense personalities are not very keen on Line.

One of the best examples of this would be one of Line’s iconic cartoon characters, Moon, who hits rock bottom while looking for a new job. After his bank balance went to zero, Moon cluttered his home and passed the time watching some porn, even trying to befriend a cockroach.

This book is also where the two-dimensional culture with cuteness as its important label originated and grew in Japan. But how can we make users willing to pay? Simply saying that Japanese users don’t mind spending about 12 yuan per set of emoticon packs is obviously not enough to explain.

IP, iteration and cost, the secret of payment

As long as you look at Line’s emoticons, it is not difficult to find a feature, that is, in addition to a batch of cute characters it has created In addition to emoticon IP, whether it is Sanrio’s Hello Kitty, Lazy Dandan and other Japanese national animation characters, or Disney’s “Zootopia” and “Super Marines”, or “One Piece”, “Gintama”, “ For current popular Japanese comics such as "Attack on Titan", you can find corresponding theme stickers on Line.

In Japan, where intellectual property rights are strictly protected, such super IP emoticons not only have a powerful effect in attracting fans, but can also effectively ensure exclusivity. In order to better use their beloved images, users Go communicate and pay willingly.

Of course, in order to allow users to better keep up with the trend, as long as an image is popular, Line will be introduced immediately to meet users’ expression needs as quickly as possible. This exactly reflects the rapid iteration of thinking.

All the emoticons you need are sold here and will be delivered as soon as possible. This is Line’s emoticon sales logic. Even without the endorsement of intellectual property protection, the pop culture produced under strong IP has formed a kind of "no two brands" effect due to its extremely rich emoticon library and rapidly iterative popular elements.

This is very different from domestic emoticon pack strategies such as WeChat and Momo. Although there are also emoticon packs authorized by super IPs such as Doraemon and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, most of them are just to cooperate. It is impossible to choose a paid model for a commercial promotion-style release based on the release of a major movie.

Furthermore, WeChat officials have been absent from the emoticon layout. Although there had been sporadic emoticon development before, the emoticon department was not established until May 2015, and the WeChat emoticon open platform was released in July. This made the company that has been operating for many years On WeChat, the overall number of emoticon packages is too scarce, and the choices available to users are also too low. Most users have long been accustomed to using various free, self-propagating emoticon packages to express their emotions. Users’ usage habits are difficult to reverse. This is the key reason why domestic instant messaging applications find it difficult to copy the paid emoticon route.

According to the "2015 China Social Application User Behavior Research Report", the mention rate of activities such as "buying goods on the site" of domestic mainstream social applications is only 26.6. Even for WeChat and Momo, emoticon revenue only accounted for 8.4 and 18.8 of their respective total revenue, which was originally weaker than Line.

At the same time, at the end of 2013, the Xiyanhui emoticon customization service was officially launched, and the related application emoticon me was also officially launched in 2014. The specific rules of this application are that users take a profile picture, and then use the former to DIY a variety of emoticons that can be used directly on WeChat and QQ. Different from this model of personalized expression customization, the Mengdao platform, which has gathered more than 400 expression creators, more than 1,200 domestic expressions, and about 20,000 foreign expressions, places its hopes on enterprises in order to pass Enterprise-level customized emoticons can trigger self-dissemination by users, thereby forming advertising and marketing effects and making profits. But at present, it seems that these two models have failed to form a real user explosion, and are even further away from benefits.

The truth about payment is that 12 yuan is not the key, but the cost (including time cost) that users need to spend to find free emoticons of the same level when they get what they want. When it is higher than 12 yuan, Users will choose to pay.

Line has successfully achieved this goal, but this is not the real success of its emoticon library.

Super IP materialization, derivative chains are the main battlefield

Line has a rich emoticon library, but the most famous one is the combination of Line friends. According to the official introduction, the main members of this group include Uncle, Coni Rabbit, Mantou Man, Brown Bear, James, Sally, Jessica and other seven members, relying on each other to form a world system.

After becoming famous in the emoticon pack, Line is not satisfied with letting these light IPs just serve as emoticons. The super IP must be materialized. To this end, Line has developed a series of comics, animations, peripherals and offline experience stores for it.

Japanese female illustrator and cartoonist Kanahei, as one of the most popular emoticon artists on Line, is the beneficiary of this derivative experience. In addition to the possibility of receiving at least one high popularity figure every year In addition to earning approximately 36.8 million yen from the sticker series, the emoticon character she created was also made into a mobile game called "Kanahei's Carrot" by game developer United in early 2016.

This is just a small fragment of the materialization of Line’s various emoticon IPs. In China alone, the group Line Friends not only sells peripheral products such as dolls, mobile phone cases, notebooks, small wallets, etc. with the group's image on Tmall, but also opens cafes and cosmetics with different styles in Shanghai and Dalian. shop. There are 44 Line friends theme stores around the world, with products spanning life, stationery, toys, accessories, fashion, electronic products, medicine and books, etc., with more than 7,000 products in more than 400 categories.

In addition, Line also plans to open a Line theme park. Customers can have fun in the theme park with the story of Line Friends as the background, browse attractions, appreciate exhibits, and taste delicious food, including multimedia interactions and exhibitions. , retail, entertainment equipment (3D cinema), etc. With government support in individual cities, Line friends will also integrate different businesses such as hotels in outdoor theme parks.

This is actually a Line version of the Disney-style IP derivative industry chain creation model. Currently, paid downloads of IP images and related derivative product revenue have accounted for 40% of Line’s total revenue, and derivative revenue has also It is obviously close to the level of paid downloads accounting for 22% of the total revenue. Such physical consumption of IP will also usher in the "second battlefield" of industrial value-added for Line emoticons, which have already entered the revenue bottleneck stage.

A light IP with cute and cheap expressions, a big blue ocean that attracts deep fans and generates economic dividends for fans is unfolding, which is no less powerful than the strong IP fan system under the Marvel-style powerful story universe.

An industrial chain derived from emoticons like this has also sprouted in China. According to official data released by WeChat, in November 2015, emoticons related to "Daily Kaomoji" were sent more than 100 million times.

Although the volume of sending is staggering, unfortunately, none of the five sets of emoticon packages with long grass kaomojis on the WeChat emoticon store is free of charge.

Although the use of emoticons is free, Changcao Kaomoji, which has begun to take shape in the super IP paradigm, has also begun to explore derivatives and materialization roadmaps. It cooperates with some brand merchants to make the original Changcao Kaomoji The image is combined with offline brands to customize a cultural and creative image. Based on the original image, many cultural and creative products have been derived, including cultural household items, dolls, etc. It has even reached cooperation with relevant entertainment programs of Hunan Satellite TV to provide them with a variety of series of emoticons for a long time to enhance the entertainment and fun of the program.

Similarly, there is another popular domestic emoticon package "My Emperor Ten Thousand Sleeps", which is also gradually exploring a profit model for comics, mobile phone themes and cultural and creative peripheral products. However, these explorations are currently only at the stage of "little fuss".

On the contrary, an "unexpected" cultural and creative IP has emerged in China. Earlier, through "cuteness", some cultural relics became popular on the Internet through animated pictures and became widely spread emoticons on social networks. The Palace Museum took advantage of this opportunity and launched 8,683 cultural and creative products of the Palace Museum in Beijing with the design concept of "cute", such as palace dolls, earphones, emperor folding fans, flower feather umbrellas, etc., and the sales of cultural and creative products of the Palace Museum also increased from 6 in 2013 to 6,000 in 2013. billion increased to nearly 1 billion yuan in 2015.

Taking this opportunity, Tencent, which has a huge social network, jointly announced the establishment of a partnership with the Palace Museum on July 6 this year, using the "NEXT IDEA Tencent Innovation Competition" as a platform. Based on the classic IP image of the Palace Museum or related traditional cultural content, we will cooperate around the two competitions of "expression design" and "game creativity" to explore the activation practice of traditional cultural IP.

Obviously, this Chinese emoji IP road will be the same but different from the Line model, allowing the light IP of emojis to become thicker from the traditional cultural level, forming a completely differentiated "emoticon experience" ……