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| Hail The King..? |
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A friend of mine back in Canada was telling me about the estimated billions of dollars in transactions that happened just last week as Taobao opened up its presales period for China's Singles' Day (November 11, for the 'double ones'). As it turns out, the spike was big enough to temporarily break the platform for 20 minutes, no small feat considering how much traffic you'd expect an e-commerce platform to handle. That event couldn't be mentioned without mentioning Austin Li Jiaqi, popularly known as The Lipstick King.
Soon after beginning as an underpaid if passionate and tenacious Maybelline shop assistant, the then recent grad got a break selling through Taobao's newly launched live broadcast service. Despite being largely computer illiterate, he rose to stardom for his ability to sell products through his sometimes day-long streams, thanks in no small part to the over-the-top persona he adopts (versus his normal self), his extremely detailed knowledge of all the brands he sells, and his bluntness.
Where other beauty streamers are careful to offend big players, big luxury brands are conversely scared of him: he famously roasted the $2,000, 24-shade Rouge Hermès set and thus crushed the five years the house spent preparing it. Because he's beholden to no one — even the government's recent crackdown on "effeminate" male celebrities, unless he's smoothly navigated that too — his fans continue to trust his honest testimony and that honesty sells, really well.
According to SCMP regarding that night's sales: "In a post on Weibo on Thursday, Li said his session was watched by 250 million people, or more than 10 times his regular 20-million audience. In his 12-hour live-streaming session, Li pitched about 400 products and sold 10.65 billion yuan worth of goods."
After finally putting in enough zeroes and converting, that amounts to $1.67 billion American dollars. Even if we don't necessarily envy his life (or lack thereof) given how much time he spends working and streaming, there is something to be admired about Li Jiaqi. It speaks to how even now, an individual's persona, honesty and desire to help their audience can still pierce through the noise in a crowded space — and yes, sell a lot of stuff too.
- Nate
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From The Archives
Evergreen stories from the MAEKAN Archive. |
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Erik Bruner-Yang and Foreign National
While in Chengdu, MAEKAN's Elphick caught up with rising hip-hop star, and a good friend of his, Bohan Phoenix. A relationship that started by putting beats together evolved into a friendship where Bohan Phoenix could feel comfortable talking honestly with Elphick about how owning his identity has allowed him to find a distinctive sound all his own.
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| For Your A-10-tion |
The best links from across the Internet.
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1. 🎮 The Rift NFTs Have Created Between Game Companies
While Steam banned games that involve blockchain elements, Epic Games has been open to considering NFT-based games. That said, it still remains to be seen how blockchain and the value of digital scarcity associated with it can tie into mainstream gaming without slipping into a pay-to-win dynamic, the type of which is lucrative but generally unwelcome.
“But even for platforms inclined to support blockchain integrations, there remain a number of hurdles to clear on the policy and user experience side. How and where does the buying and selling take place? Does the platform get a cut of the sale? And if NFTs do affect how the game is played, rather than simply how it looks, how does the developer ensure the game is balanced and accessible to a large number of players?”
2. 📈 The Role Of Leaders In Redefining the Career Ladder
As recent data has found Americans are leaving their jobs in record numbers and companies struggle to recruit and retain talent, it’s become more apparent that people are seeking more than just a paycheck. So these days, it’s become more important for leaders to play a role in helping employees discover their strengths and empowering them to actualize them.
“Along with creating a compelling mission and a vision and the values that help your team win, you must also provide the tools that allow your employees to develop and grow—in their careers and as human beings.”
3. 🏯 Age Of Empires IV Wants To Teach You History
The studio behind the iconic real-time strategy Age of Empires series, Relic Entertainment, is challenging itself to retain the passion for history its games instill in players without ruining the gameplay. Much of this involves balancing not just fun and accuracy, but this time also attempting to teach history in a more culturally nuanced way outside the fighting and conquest typical of the game’s genre.
4. 🚽 A Decidedly Uncommon Obsession: Restaurant Bathroom Locks
Hillary Dixler Canavan waxes poetic about her love of restaurant bathroom design — a conditional love that hinges on the effectiveness of its locking mechanisms. But, while she bemoans the ubiquity of the (frequently broken) slide-latch and the visible gap it creates, it gets more complex than that, as she writes:
“There’s a particular dance I dread that goes something like this: I squint in fuzzy light at the door handle to make sure I understand how to lock it. I push the button in the handle’s lock but can’t tell whether it worked, so I go ahead and test the handle to determine if I have now unlocked it, proving I had successfully locked it in the first place. Then I relock it, head to the toilet, wonder if I, in fact, did relock it, go back, repeat at least one more time, and then just throw all caution to the wind and hope for the best. “
5. 👀 Vox Media’s More Than This Makes Podcasts Accessible For Deaf Audiences
In setting out to create a podcast that could be experienced by deaf and hard of hearing audiences, Vox Media made an “immersive transcript” for its new show More Than This, hosted by author and 2BG founder Danielle Prescod. Far from the listed speech events we come to expect of transcripts, Vox’s lines unfold as the reader scrolls, revealing emphasized words, changes in color and images for context,
6. 🛍️ How Holiday Shopping Is Going To Look Very Different This Year
With the holidays not to far around the corner, Fashionista, looks at how inflation and supply-chain issues are going to result in smaller discounts and less availability for shoppers. This is based on Adobe’s annual online shopping predictions drawn from analyzing a trillion visits to American e-commerce sites and global transactions from over 100 countries.
“In the United States, we’re expected to spend $910 billion online — a 10% increase over last year. That may seem fairly small, but not when you think about the year we’re comparing it to: In a pre-vaccine 2020, the pandemic pushed more holiday shoppers to e-commerce than ever, and online spending grew 33% compared to 2019.”
7. 📋 The Essentials To Starting A Brand
Ana Andjelic of The Sociology of Business presents a Brand Starter Kit starting with an outline of a brand’s growth model and its product strategy, short- and long-term tasks, and both internal and external opportunities and challenges.
8. 📽️ Tragedy On The Set Of Rust Reflects The Human Cost Of Content
The on-set shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins reflects the impact of problematic industry trends that have persisted with productions matching an unsustainable demand for content. Among them is the roles suddenly being filled by less-than-qualified crew and producers, the complacency around safety that comes with constantly executing high-level productions and the increased pace at which media is being created.
9. 🧠 Peeling Away The Layers Beneath Productivity
Dan Shipper of Every looks at the psychological, biological and neurological layers to productivity. From the sense of being on top of everything to the influence of dopamine, Shipper looks beyond the external software, systems, items and frameworks that we popularly associate with the productivity movement.
10. 🔥 MSCHF Presents Museum Of Forgeries
MSCHF has taken a single authentic copy of Andy Warhol’s “Fairies” and mixed it in with 999 identical copies (all of which have sold out). In doing so and destroying the documentation that proves which is the original, the MSCHF hopes to challenge the art world and its obsession with authenticity.
“By forging Fairies en masse, we obliterate the trail of provenance for the artwork. Though physically undamaged, we destroy any future confidence in the veracity of the work. By burying a needle in a needlestack, we render the original as much a forgery as any of our replications.”
Slow Journalism releases An Answer For Everything book of infographics
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