Why did bloggers become strimmers?
The striming format, when the brand shows the product and talks about it live, appeared on the Tabao Live platform in 2016. The idea of stripping from the vendors did not take off on the marketplay until 2020. More than 90% of the Taobao brands were broadcast at least once in 2020, each second product was sold via video. In the same year, more than 60% of China's people said they had bought it live. In other countries, this trend is still cautious, but it can easily become popular.
The increased availability of mobile Internet and its improvement, the emergence of smartphones in the majority of the population help to develop strimming. Many already have an inexpensive smartphone that supports video forms, often even HD or Full HD. Social media stimulates the development of social shopping. When a person buys not because of a brand or a particular store, but because a living person with whom he or she coincides for his or her interests, values, shows and recommends a product. Through a smartphone screen, there is a relationship that stimulates action.
Striming is a part of this social shopping, and it combines shopping and entertainment. A new term has already been developed in rhyme: "shopping," or "shoptainment: from shopping and entertainment. Because shopping with the increase in the number of shopping centres has ceased to be just shopping. People are going to shopping centres to spend time, to sit in foodcorts, to watch movies, or to go to a playroom with a child.
Striming continues the idea of chopping: a man sits at home, has nothing to do, goes to a marketplace, an Internet store, and sticks in an interesting video with a charismatic host, and he takes pleasure in watching videos like YouTube and buys them.
This process can be called a new store on the couch -- when you have to buy it now, when you're live to get a discount -- it's an idea that plays on human greed, whether you want to save or you want to spend money.
Why Brands Should Pay Attention to This Instrument
Many Russian companies went to strimming: OZON launched a video tape; Yandex Market has direct sales broadcasts; only Wildberrys have yet to come from large sites.
The advantage of strimming for business is to increase media coverage and recognition. The format of the video clearly conveys the brand message. For example, if the store is on a marketplay, there are thousands of vendors, and it's very difficult to separate from competitors, especially if it's about a new company that doesn't know very much. Striming helps build positioning and increase recognition: brand shows, for example, how it was created, why it made the goods exactly what values it put in them.
For a buyer plus strimming, it's a display combined with entertainment, emotion like going to a store with a friend. It's only possible to do that when the video is well filmed, it's set up, it's got an interesting, thoughtful script. It's fascinating to take off almost everything -- even like lightning on a leather jacket.
How do you make a popular stim?
In order for the video to pick up the viewer and hold it on the screen, there must be several elements. The first is game, entertainment. It's not a monotonous story about what the company created: it needs an interactor. The second element is unpredictability: so that the viewer can't figure out what's next in the script.
People don't want to watch long videos, and the minute videos on YouTube collect 15 billion views a day. This is related to the popularity of TikTok and video thinking.
Many businessmen think that for strimming, you have to take the studio off and invest in production. A beautiful picture attracts a look, but sometimes it works very well on a simple UGC-content. For live shows, good sound is more important than a clear image. If the sound is bad, it is uncomfortable to watch and listen. And with a good sound, a pixel image doesn't really affect the number of viewers.
Who and how she mimics the video
The most common way to make strims is to create an influencer. It's convenient for a brand that they already have a loyal audience that can become potential buyers. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, the marketing of influence is the main advertising strategy of more than 90% of companies. The contacts from bloggers work more efficiently than from the brand itself. But influencers do not guarantee the success of sales.
But an influenzaer is not the only option. There are briefcases where just a charismatic host made very good sales -- and even better than bloggers. The most popular Chinese case is with Austin Lee, "the king of lipstick," and former consultant L'Oreal. He sells 15,000 lipsticks on air in five minutes, even though he has never been a professional host. At 12:00 in 2012, Austin Lee sold goods for $1.7 billion. So business needs to be experimented.
How Striming Developments in Russia
In the next 10 years, strems will become more technological -- for example, with VR and AR. There is a growing demand for digital clothing, meta-humans, and this will affect purchases. Perhaps over time, the virtual 3D content will become more powerful than the video content. And it will also become a way of communicating between people, a way of demonstrating, a way of finding inspiration. Because often people buy not just because they need something, but under an impulsive desire that comes from an attractive image.
Striming will be more active for products of impulsive demand: clothing, shoes, cosmetics, accessories, electronics, and conversion will increase with visuality, but let's not forget that strimming as part of shopping is not a panacea for everything, but only one way to interact with the audience.