China is a fast-changing country: young people’s aspirations are changing quickly, many of them aspire to be social media celebrities. What makes this career so appealing?
Every morning, Yuetong Guo catches the bus at 8am for the 30 minute drive to work in downtown Jinan, in Shandong province. It’s just long enough to log on to the web and check out the latest video from her favorite beauty blogger. The chaotic noise fill in the bus, and Yuetong wear headphones and turned video up to full volume.
Yuming Yang is young and beautiful with big eyes, sharp chin and slender limbs, and in today’s video she’s showing her 57,199 followers how to apply the perfect eye shadow. Warm copper-bronze eye shadow is blended into rose-gold to give what Yuming describes as a ‘modern and contemporary look’.
The bus is very crowded during rush hours, Yuetong can only use one hand to operate the phone. With a quick click of the sponsored link in the information box, Yuetong finds herself on Taobao, China’s biggest online shop, and it was founded eight years after Amazon. It has nearly 500 million users and it sells up to 48,000 items per minute. And just before her bus pulls into its final stop, she has bought two types of eye shadow and a lipstick.
Yuming has just added 50 Yuan to her bank balance, her commission for each purchase is 10 per cent of the product. It may not sound like a lot, but if just 5 per cent of her followers make a similar purchase each week that could make her 142,997.5 Yuan that is enough to buy a premium Toyota Corolla in China.
“There are some public relations products that the brand sends to me. They want to sell products through my platform, the more followers, the higher the promotion fee,” explains Yuming. “On the one hand, we will receive advertising fees paid by the brand. On the other hand, we will receive benefit from every consumption of the audience,” said Yuming.
She is one of a growing number of social media celebrities making money from selling products online. China has nearly 2 million social media celebrity.
The annual income of a well-known social media celebrity is shocking, such as Dayi Zhang. She is the first generation of social media celebrity in China, and her company became a listed company in the United States in March this year. In 2015, her annual income was $46 million, which is not only twice that of famous Chinese movie stars, but also more than American reality TV show star Kim Kardashian. According to the latest data released by Forbes, Kim Kardashian’s revenue last year was $45.5 million.
Big brands in China are increasingly aware of the power of these young social media celebrities, and are increasingly willing to show their younger styles to audiences. Therefore, social media celebrity also plays the role of a communicator in the context of “youth” in many cases, helping to build a bridge between brands and audiences.
With social media stars exerting more influence than many traditional media sites, brands are finding ways to use their celebrity to sell their products.
“Under the trend of social media celebrity economy, many brands tend to choose social media celebrity as the spokesperson,” said Xiaotong Luo is the director of a social media celebrity training company.“Firstly, it is more targeted, such as, a new game will be promoted by e-sports players. Secondly, the cost of cooperation with celebrity endorsements is high, and cooperation and communication are very difficult, ” said Xiaotong.
And not all the promotion activity happens online. Many foreign brands who want to get into the Chinese market will invite social media celebrities to participate in launch events. Maybelline New York, a popular beauty brand held a new product launch in Shanghai in 2016 and invited 50 social media celebrity people to do the live streaming. Within two hours, it sold 1,0060 lipsticks, which is equivalent to about 1.42 million Yuan.
While the celebrity endorsements that happened in the 80s and 90s came through broadcast channels, talking to wider audiences, social media influencers allow brands to target their message. They talk to focused groups of people who can be divided by age and interest. This means the message can have much more impact.
“I usually take cosmetics promotion, and the price is medium. Because most of my followers are students who are just starting out with make-up and working people who don’t make much money, ” said Yuming.
It’s not all about focus. Some of the today’s influencers have more followers than the celebrities of yesterday.
“For a new product that needs to be promoted, the most important thing is the exposure, and now many followers of social media celebrity are much higher than the stars,” said Yuming.
With the emergence of social media celebrity, it attracts a large number of young people to start trying this job. According to statistics released by Xinhuanet in 2017 titled “The Post-95 Generation’s Strange View of Employment”, 48% of post-95 generation chose to be unemployed after graduation. Among those who choose to employment, 54% of them are most eager to pursue employment is social media celebrity.
For some people it can be remarkably easy to get started as a social media influencer. Dan Xu, 23 years old, a lively and cheerful girl from Hubei Province. She enjoyed the work of social media celebrity very much. In just one and a half years, she changed from a free streamer to a video game streamer work on a famous game platform with tens of thousands of followers.
“I think it is good to be a social media celebrity, because it earns more than other professions and I can control my working hours. What’s more, I feel great satisfaction when I receive thumb up and support from the audience,” said Dan.
However, some elders cannot accept such work. Most of parents were born in the 1970s. When they were young, it was a great honor to be a teacher or a civil servant, because they or their parents thought that such work was decent and stable.
Shuyao She didn’t tell her parents what she did. “My parents only knew I was doing work related to the Internet, but they didn’t know I was doing social media celebrity. I didn’t have the courage to tell them the truth, because they wouldn’t agree, ” explains Shuyao. “I was born in an ordinary family and my parents are traditional post-70 generation wage earners. In their minds, it is the best choice for a girl to take a traditional and stable job after graduation, such as a teacher, nurse or civil servant, ” said Shuyao.
Earning a lot of money is one of the most important factors to attract young people.
Not everyone can head online and make millions every year. Except for these well-known social media celebrity, other ordinary social media celebrity income is also very satisfactory, and there is no pressure for tens of thousands of monthly income. Furthermore, this is a cost-effective career, because people who work in this job only need to consider two aspects: income risk and technology.
Dan Xu is far from wealthy but managed to start making a reasonable income quite quickly. “In fact, I came into contact with this industry by accident and there were not so many people doing social media celebrity. Many people like watching me play games and listening to my songs. Their thumb up and support can be exchanged for cash on the platform. At that time, I broadcast live for 20 days every month, and I could earn 4000 yuan, which is twice the salary of part-time job in the store，” said Dan.
First of all, the income risk of social media celebrity career is very low, because as long as people have a small amount of followers, they can guarantee a basic living income, which is much easier than the traditional job. Secondly, social media celebrity also has low technical requirements, because it does not require practitioners to have a degree, nor does it require them to have a lot of knowledge. As long as practitioners can attract the attention of the audience, they can become a high-earning social media celebrity. Moreover, social media celebrity also has a variety of fields, such as singing, dancing, playing games and chatting. Compared with the high demands of traditional occupations, this kind of work that makes money from entertainment is more attractive to contemporary young people.
It’s symptomatic of a fast changing country. As China’s economic success continues, young people in the country today want to widen their horizons. For social media star Yuqian Wang, there was a desire to explore other options before settling down.
“I didn’t want to start a professional life right after graduation. It’s too boring,” she explains. “And then, I’m an only child in my family and my parents have always been my problem solver, so I don’t think I have enough skills to solve problems in my professional life as well as I may not be able to adapt to a very hard job,” said Yuqian.
Contemporary Chinese young people are very picky about their careers. Many employers believe that the current job seekers are very different from the past. They are not only lack of enthusiasm for work, but also lack of innovative spirit. Moreover, they are always satisfied with what they have and only do what they are supposed to do.
“I don’t tend to recruit fresh graduates or the post-1995 generation, as most of them are only children and are spoiled by their parents at home, making it hard for them to accept the cruelty of society. Moreover, they not only have a poor ability to deal with emergencies, but also lack the momentum like a beast and lazy every day, ” said Mr. Jia, a director of Landscape Engineering company.
According to the “survey report on the working life status of post-90 generation young people”, most of post-90 generation working young people tend to take interest as the first consideration when they choosing jobs, and then consider the development prospect of work. However, 37.9% of the post-90 generation working youth will work overtime in most cases, especially in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and then the workplace pressure mainly comes from they do not know how to coordination of work, life and self-study time.
Secondly, the ease of work is also a major factor to attract young people.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the average weekly working hours is 49.5 hours in China, equivalent to 9.9 hours per day, which 1.54 times for Britain.
In China, the basic working hours of traditional careers are 9am to 5pm, and overtime is also a common thing. Additionally, most of people work in the form of 996. 996 means working from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm and they need to working six days a week. At the same time, they also need to enhance relations with their leaders and colleagues. For the young people who just step into the society, it is hard to accept the high-intensity work, because in their eyes, relaxation and freedom are more important.
Yuming Yang gave up her traditional job and chose to work in social media celebrity. “When I was a senior, I used to work as a trainee at an architectural design company. This internship was a nightmare for me, because I need to worked overtime and held meetings every day,” explains Yuming. “My life was completely dominated by work and I felt exhausted. Although work at a social media celebrity also is a hard work, I can control my working hours at will and make many friends who have the same interests as me,” said Yuming.
On the other hand, social media celebrity is another way to achieve star dreams.
As everyone knows, it is very difficult to be a movie star. Firstly, they must get into excellent universities. In China, a series of institutions of higher learning such as the Beijing Film Academy and the Central Academy of Drama are the places that many young people with star dreams yearn for, because they always produce famous movie stars in the country or even in the world, such as Li Gong. Moreover, these schools also require high examination results. Secondly, in order to attract a large number of followers and stand out in the highly competitive entertainment industry, they need to constantly enhance their strength in the learning process.
However, with the growing popularity of the social media celebrity industry, a part of them have begun to develop in the direction of stars, for example, they try to participate in variety TV shows, acting and singing. Moreover, there are more and more media platforms beginning to value such a group of people. Compared to traditional stars, they do not need high academic qualification and excellent acting.
Xiaotong Luo seized this opportunity. “I would recommend social media celebrity which has a lot of followers in my company to the entertainment companies, because it not only increase their exposure, but also increase the click rate of the show,” said Xiaotong.
Although social media celebrity has become a popular career, some people still hold objections.
“Social media celebrity misleads young people’s views on employment. They create an illusion for young people that they can earn more money without hard work. While, successful social media celebrity is very rare,” said Long Jia, Professor of Qilu Normal University.
With the sound of bus stop announcemen, Yuetong’s thirty minutes came to an end. In this short thirty minutes, she not only appreciated her favorite beauty blogger’s makeup video, but also bought some new cosmetics.
