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By Zhao Weiwei
Source/Blue Hole Business (ID: value_creation)
At 11:00 p.m. on the weekend, Yu Minhong came out of the Diaoyin studio.
The live broadcast room of "Laoyu idle talk" hosted by him has more than 7000 people online. This is a conversation he had with Du Junli, a historian, about his new book "Details of History". In such live broadcast, every week, Yu Minhong's interlocutors are often people who are interested and thoughtful.
On the other side, there are more than 80000 people online in the "Oriental Selection" studio. The popular anchor Dong Yuhui is bringing a set of DK Natural History Encyclopedia.
Yu Minhong knew that Dong Yuhui had been popular in the past few days, "I am serious content, and there is eating, drinking and having fun". He also did not forget to thank the audience for their support of "Oriental Selection" in his live studio.
In contrast, the "New Oriental Live Studio", which was just opened by New Oriental in June, is also hard to broadcast. The products brought with him are mainly children's books and parent-child education products. Yu Minhong's expectation is to "become a good sales platform for educational products", but its popularity is not high, and even was ignored for a time.
Behind the "New Oriental Live Studio" is the old brand New Oriental Education Technology Group. "Oriental Selection" is a representative case of New Oriental Online in transition, while "Old Yu Leisure Words" is Yu Minhong's private plot, more representative of his personal interests.
The current fire is also limited to "Oriental Selection". The "Bilingual Live Broadcast" with Dong Yuhui's characteristics has boosted the popularity of "Oriental Selection". The sales volume once exceeded 20 million yuan, and the share price of New Oriental Online doubled and soared for three consecutive days.
For Yu Minhong, who has started his business for nearly 30 years, the current fire only represents the phased success of "Oriental Selection". He has grasped the straw of the twitter traffic, but only Dong Yuhui is not enough to completely move towards the live broadcast industry and make a leap to a higher level.
As the first person in charge of New Oriental, Yu Minhong is 60 years old this year. He often describes himself as the front torch on the night walk. "When the flame is there, everyone will follow. When the flame is gone, everyone will disperse in the dark".
one
The 29 year old "Dong Yuhui" has just come out of the circle.
First of all, the "generation eyes" of live broadcast with goods have lost their aura, and traffic always needs fresh faces. The Tao series anchor Weiya has been blocked for more than half a year, and Li Jiaqi, who alone supports half of the country, has also lost his voice recently. Luo Yonghao, who used to be the first brother in the audio tape industry, has also returned to the technology circle to start AR business, and has gradually left the "Make Friends" studio.
Secondly, half a year ago, New Oriental began to transform to live broadcast with goods, which was not optimistic, but it started to go high all the way. Yu Minhong founded Oriental Selection. When he started the road of live broadcast with goods in December 2021, he took the lead in selecting and selling agricultural products. On the day of the first broadcast, GMV only reached 5 million. Since then, the Oriental selection team has been constantly exploring, and Yu Minhong has also been involved from time to time, recommending goods and channeling for the live broadcast room.
Finally, of course, it is Dong Yuhui's personal talent. The theme of motivation is combined with the live style of English teaching, so that people can feel the fun of learning while buying. The cultural live atmosphere it creates is unique. If the anchors of the live broadcast with goods are basically young and beautiful, Dong Yuhui has proved that they can be among the first-class anchors without appearance and talent.
When the traffic opportunity came, Dong Yuhui bumped into him.
Dong Yuhui, previously the English manager of New Oriental Online Middle School, has participated in many thousands of school inspirational speeches during his eight years in office. The logical thinking and interesting style of these offline lectures have laid the foundation for his live delivery.
Don't underestimate these accumulations. Even Zhou Hongyi, who is famous for his boldness, said after recently trying to carry goods live, "Don't look down on how good it is for the anchor with goods to blow his own things for two hours. He keeps saying this all the time. I really can't do this".
Of course, Dong Yuhui was pushed into the spotlight by accident.
He once said that he intended to leave New Oriental. He felt reluctant and went to Sun Dongxu, the head of Oriental selection and CEO of New Oriental Online, to make a decent farewell. Sun Dongxu saw some sincere pursuits in him and kept Dong Yuhui in the conversation, "He said that when you don't know what's the use, all you have to do is trust each other to keep warm, and we will find a way out.".
But when the conversation ended, the HR teacher had already left work. Dong Yuhui said, "If the human resources did not leave work, I would sign the resignation statement on the same day. Now there is no me sitting in front of you."
Under his high reputation, Dong Yuhui still maintains his consistent modesty. He knows that his fire is accidental, just "someone who is willing to love me just saw me". Half a year ago, he was also the current style of carrying goods, but the live broadcast room was full of "can we change a good looking male anchor", "don't talk so much, we only care about the price".
At that time, Dong Yuhui was very painful. Compared with the expectant eyes of students in the classroom, what he said in the live broadcast room was the cold live broadcast machine. This gap stems from the fact that the goods in the broadcast room cannot be sold, and also from the fact that the audience did not recognize his sales style at the beginning.
The sentence he repeatedly mentioned in the live broadcast room has finally become his true portrayal: you didn't hide when the bad luck hit you, and one day the good luck will hit you.
On the evening of June 14, the number of online users of "Oriental Selection" exceeded 100000. Dong Yuhui, who had been broadcasting live for several hours, broadcast it down, and colleagues continued to broadcast it. The bullet screen in the live broadcast room was filled with feelings of retention: "class is over", "school is over", "I am reluctant to part with Mr. Dong".
two
In the morning of June 13, Yu Minhong sent a thank you message to Dong Yuhui on WeChat.
Yu Minhong is lucky under the expression of "win honor for the New Oriental". Yu Minhong will not be unaware that New Oriental once might lose Dong Yuhui, but now Dong Yuhui has become a star to save New Oriental Online.
Dong Yuhui relies on the truth in the live broadcast, and it happens that the main content of his goods is books, which is also what he is good at. He clearly realized that a professional delivery anchor must have a lot of knowledge about the products, and books are his comfort zone, and he can talk for three days and three nights anytime, anywhere.
The reason why Dong Yuhui is out of the circle is precisely because he is not a professional anchor. Even if he becomes famous, he always emphasizes that he is not a qualified anchor, and more roles are your friends who are willing to share in the live broadcast room.
Compared with most anchors who only introduce products during live broadcast, Dong Yuhui talks about words and English classes during live broadcast, and talks about his mother's hand and the old man's heart to hope his son to go home when selling iron pots. From Du Fu to Su Dongpo, from Shakespeare to The Ordinary World, literary and historical allusions come from hand to hand.
The problem is that this personal style does not have universality. Will Dong Yuhui move closer to a more professional anchor in the future? After a long period of development, when Dong Yuhang's novelty is gradually satisfied by the audience, what about "Oriental Selection"?
When Luo Yonghao first came to live broadcast with goods, he made it clear that he would not talk about jokes in live broadcast with goods. He studied the fixed script of professional anchors, and later followed the routine of professional anchors in terms of operation. He believed that what the audience saw in the live broadcast room was the anchor who seriously introduced the product, rather than a person who said jokes and chatted, even if they interacted, You can't interrupt the rhythm of introducing products.
The popularity of anchors is not enough, but the popularity of the team. This professional close-up has also allowed Luo Yonghao and the "Make Friends" studio behind him to expand rapidly, reaching 10 billion GMV in two years. The team has also grown from seven people to more than 1400 people, and the number of anchors has also expanded to more than 40 people. Now it is a live broadcast studio with goods on the head covering multiple categories of digital appliances, food and beverage, and clothing accessories.
On the other hand, "Oriental Selection" is still in the initial stage of taking goods without pit fees and a large number of samples. Its current goal is still to absorb powder, not to make money.
Therefore, just one Dong Yuhui is not enough. To reach the level of the head anchor team with goods, "Oriental Selection" obviously needs to enrich the product content and refine the core competitiveness. How to rapidly rise with the help of traffic and how to build a richer category and complete supply chain system are all questions that Yu Minhong and "Oriental Selection" need to answer.
"Oriental Selection" is obviously one of the priorities of Yu Minhong's current work. In the "Old Yu Leisure Words", the recommendation advertising space of "Oriental Selection" must be brought at the end of each time to bring traffic with his personal ability. Now, Dong Yuhui's unexpected explosion has also realized Yu Minhong's initial idea. At the beginning of designing the live broadcast delivery, Yu Minhong thought that only when the team is strong can the business continue to develop.
But he doesn't want to develop himself into an online celebrity with live broadcast and goods. "I have more important things to do."
three
Dong Yuhui's current ideal is to go to an economically underdeveloped place to support education and return to a familiar place without being affected by the "Oriental Selection" and saving enough to live.
The education industry is still the ideal habitat for Dong Yuhui, and Yu Minhong, who has been educating all his life, is no exception. He is also obsessed with children's education.
In the Thirteen Invitations broadcast last year, Yu Minhong took Xu Zhiyuan to Pu'an Experimental Middle School in Qianxinan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Guizhou Province. Yu Minhong encouraged the left behind children and sent electricity bills for heating to the school. He knew that he had no ability and environment to create a rural education system, and could only support rural children to go to college as much as possible.
At that time, every teacher of New Oriental was responsible for docking with one or two students from remote areas. There were already hundreds of children from rural high schools studying with New Oriental. In June this year, Yu Minhong said that the undergraduate enrollment rate of Pu'an Middle School in Guizhou Province in the college entrance examination had increased by more than 10%.
Yu Minhong has summed up his ideal that he should serve the children wholeheartedly, including the improvement of their overall quality, the growth of family education, the combination of science and technology and education, and promoting the balance of education in poor areas, marginal areas and cities in China.
This ideal statement was still made in 2019. By 2020, the epidemic and the Sino US trade war had caused a serious blow to New Oriental's international business, with its business declining by 70% and its international study tour business declining by 100%. At that time, Yu Minhong was lucky that one of New Oriental's priorities turned to domestic K12 education a few years ago, otherwise it would be a dead end in 2020.
Results In 2021, the "double reduction policy" was implemented, and the K12 education and training industry entered the winter overnight. New Oriental was also deeply affected by the policy. Yu Minhong once disclosed that 60000 employees were dismissed, tuition fees, N+1 employees were dismissed, and the rent of teaching sites was dismissed. The cash expenditure was nearly 20 billion yuan. At that time, Yu Minhong donated nearly 80000 sets of new Oriental desks to rural schools.
The era of teaching and training ended, so that someone commented on Yu Minhong at that time that the greatest tragedy in life was to win over all competitors but lose to the era.
But Yu Minhong's people are inspirational, and the past tragedies become his footnotes. From the titles of his published works, it can be seen that: Let growth take you through confusion, May your youth live up to your dreams, Look for hope in despair, and I have walked on the brink of collapse, all of which have the same theme, with a simple feeling like a farmer.
Yu Minhong is a wine lover. He once talked about Nietzsche's Dionysian spirit, which is a way of thinking in Greek tragedies, and also one of his deeply influenced philosophical thoughts in his college years: "Dionysian spirit is the spirit of pain and carnival, which both affirms life and rejects life."
Yu Minhong's former rival, Li Yang of Crazy English, is also teaching English live on video, but is still repeating the most basic operations - pronunciation, oral English, and selling his own courses. In contrast, Yu Minhong talked about the life code with Yin Ye, CEO of BGI in the live broadcast room, the future of AI with Li Kaifu, and poetry and emotion with Yu Xiuhua. The traffic of the times showed his broadness.
Yu Minhong is a scholar. He has already achieved success in the secular sense. But today, he and his team have grasped the straw of dithering flow, and he cannot leave the education field after all.
In the final analysis, feelings and humanistic spirit are the core of the New Oriental led by Yu Minhong, which includes the nourishment given by Peking University to Yu Minhong, and also reflects Yu Minhong's expectations for the New Oriental. Compared with the excitement brought by Dong Yuhui to the live broadcast world, the feelings and humanistic spirit behind these excitement are the core of the matter. How to let its broad branches spread, It is a more long-term problem brought by Yu Minhong.
