Meet the clout chaser

It is the average people that turn into influencers who are the most important forces, the most typical being Zheng Jianpeng and Yan Zhen. The couple got married in 2011 and have two lovely daughters. Since making their debut on Douyin in 2018, they have garnered 50 million fans. In October 2018, their video "Bored with housework, a former dancer dances while cooking, but gets beaten by his wife" was trending on Douyin. At the end of the same year, they signed a contract with Wuyou Media, a multichannel network to create more tailored and professional content to video platforms and, since then, their career path to becoming influencers has been smoother.

Along the way, this pair from Guangdong province, who claim to be just ordinary folks, have been creating extraordinary on-screen comedy personas that have brought unlimited joy to fans. They work on both live broadcast e-commerce and funny short videos to support what they call a "reciprocal growth".

"We recommend a lot of high-quality and low-cost goods for our fans, and often give gifts to them. The steady income helps us sustain our creation, but we firmly believe that we must be worthy of everyone's trust when doing promotions," Zheng says.

The couple have won praise from fans for their heartwarming behavior. After the heavy rain and flooding hit Henan province in July, they actively donated 300,000 yuan and 10 million yuan worth of sterilization materials to the disaster-stricken areas.

According to the 2021 Douyin E-commerce Ecological Development Report released by Douyin E-commerce in conjunction with Trend-in-Sight, a data analysis provider, in May this year, in the second half of 2020, gross merchandise volume increased by 588 percent year-on-year compared with the first half of 2020; as of January 2021, the number of presenters who have earned steady e-commerce revenue has exceeded 1 million.

Based on the mechanism design recommended by big data, content providers have been supporting more amateur creations, and cultivating talent to "realize their new and real self".

"We are supporting influencers behind the scenes. Helping them become e-commerce professionals to achieve self-worth and career success is one of our most important responsibilities. We will continue to walk side by side with them for greater success," says Gao Yaxuan, who is in charge of content operation for top-tier creators at Douyin E-commerce. They just had their 2021 e-commerce influencer summit on Friday in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, in a bid to provide better service and capability support for future influencers.

Contact the writer at zhanglei@chinadaily.com.cn