Tik Tok online celebrity Fei Qiming’s Star Nirvana Road

Wen Miao Wen zai

Who is Fei Qiming?

In the latest reality show "The Flower Road of Youth", which was launched by iQiyi, in addition to Adam, THEO, Boogie, imp and Azora Chin, members of NINE PERCENT, who were the products of the first year of idols, and After Journey, a rapper who is well known through "Hip Hop in China", Fei Qiming is also known as one of the "Top Ten Male Gods in Tik Tok".

This is not the first time that Fei Qiming has served as a regular guest of variety shows. Between amateurs and stars, online celebrity Fei Qiming has become a fresh blood of the entertainment circle and a C-side traffic representative with a short video platform as a springboard. How irreplaceable can Fei Qiming, who came out of the online celebrity-style star-making model, be?

Between Amateur and Star: online celebrity Fei Qiming’s Transformation Road

Since 2017, short video content has successfully filled the public’s leisure time with the advantage of fragmentation, and its users are also on the rise. The China Commercial Industry Research Institute initially estimated that the number of short video users reached 353 million in 2018, and in 2019, it is expected that this scale will reach nearly 500 million.

At the same time of the increase in users, a number of short video celebrities who have been recognized by the public with high-quality content have emerged on the Internet, and Fei Qiming is one of them. In the early days of the development of Tik Tok, a short video App that has become an "explosive manufacturing machine", Fei Qiming was called "the face of national first love" by netizens in Tik Tok with a clean and refreshing appearance. One of its contents was "If your ex-boyfriend and current boyfriend fall into the water at the same time, then shall I be your boyfriend?" The vibrato video made him successfully out of the circle and reached tens of thousands of forwards on Weibo. Fei Qiming’s Tik Tok also got the attention of 16.37 million fans, saying that it was not an exaggeration to say that it was the top traffic of the voice coil at that time.

Fei Qiming’s transition from Yingke live broadcast to vibrato short video was just when the live broadcast industry was a little tired and the short video industry was singing all the way. It was Tik Tok that pushed him to the public and gave him more opportunities to go deep into the entertainment circle.

After becoming a celebrity in Tik Tok, Fei Qiming received an invitation from the national variety "Happy Camp". Because of the high exposure of Happy Camp, Fei Qiming was chosen by the crew to appear in the first online drama with the leading role in his life-"I will wait for you in the future", and cooperated with actor Li Guangjie and officially entered the entertainment industry through this drama.

Although he has an actor status, Fei Qiming has not completely got rid of the prefix of Tik Tok online celebrity at this time, and he is still in an embarrassing zone between amateurs and performing stars in the public mind. What really brought Fei Qiming a breakthrough in transformation was his performance in various variety shows.

In September 2018, Fei Qiming participated in the children’s documentary education experimental program "Super Kindergarten" launched by iQiyi, and worked as an intern teacher with Allen, Ham and others. At the same time, he also appeared in the lineup of Tencent video "Prince of Lipstick" as a fixed guest, which once dominated the variety market in September. Until now, he once again joined the reality show "Flower Road of Youth" to travel with other idol artists, and Fei Qiming showed his charm in various types of variety shows.

The appearance of Fei Qiming in the reality show makes people more clearly understand the complete appearance of this boy who originally appeared in short videos with specific content. The reality show is an opportunity for Fei Qiming to present his personal character and a transformation test to make the characters more three-dimensional.

Starring in an online drama, releasing a single, and becoming a regular guest of a reality show … Fei Qiming completed the diverse development of entertainers in a short time. With the subdivision of the content form of short video, short video with life style such as VLOG has emerged as a popular culture, and short video with characteristics such as ASMR has also accommodated more personalized users for short video platforms.

It can be said that the low threshold of the short video market makes its homogeneous content begin to flood, and KOL is dazzling everywhere. Therefore, the phenomenon of "overnight explosion" of short video platform gradually disappears under the aesthetic fatigue of the audience, and the probability of the birth of explosion online celebrity is lower.

The weight of the short video "online celebrity" has increased and it has become a variety show.

With the rise of short video, its KOL has also gained a lot of attention. Through the accurate and rapid spread of short video, the popular elements of short video such as "seaweed dance", "meowing like a cat" and "face killing" led by KOL have successfully invaded the variety market. Many variety shows are also well aware of the influence of short videos, and add short videos KOL to the variety show lineup for fresher content presentation.

Among them, Zhang Xinyao is also one of the veteran "heroes" of Tik Tok App, and his "Do you want to be my girlfriend" has triggered a long-term imitation craze in Tik Tok. Taking Zhang Xinyao as an example, young people control the current fashion trends, and at the same time use their own creativity to reprocess popular elements and have their own diehard fans.

Moreover, Degula K, who once became a major IP signboard in Tik Tok, was also invited to the stage of Happy Camp to interact with the cast of "Liangsheng, can we not be sad" in Tik Tok pop dance teaching. Nowadays, Liu Yuning, a modern brother whose popularity is rising rapidly, has entered the mass variety market because of their popularity accumulated in short videos, from singing live on YY platform to stepping on the stage of "Singer" kick-off competition through nationwide recommendation.

Similarly, variety shows are also increasing the exposure for online celebrity artists, and the two are mutually beneficial. The audience of "Flower Road of Youth" is mainly young women aged 18-24. Judging from its lineup of idol+rap talent show+short video online celebrity, the addition of short video online celebrity seems to be a strategic layout made by the program in popular, attracting more audiences through online celebrity culture. For the audience, online celebrity is closer to people’s life, and it is a cost-effective way to promote the spread of variety shows through its popularity among young people.

Source: Yien data

According to the Weibo hot topic data derived from Flower Road of Youth provided by Yi En Data, Fei Qiming’s topic data ranks closely behind popular idol players Adam, Boogie and THEO. Fei Qiming’s participation in The Flower Road of Youth also broke people’s inherent impression of online celebrity, and won the audience’s love with his personal characteristics and appropriate sense of variety.

Nowadays, the popularity of many online celebrity can even suppress many second-and third-line actors and idols. Even if they are not "trained", variety shows are willing to choose these online celebrity people with 18 kinds of martial arts to attract young audiences and echo the fashion trend.

The short video platform opens a new entrance to the entertainment circle. Who can be the next Fei Qiming?

If participating in the idol draft is a quick book for young people to enter the entertainment circle, then the short video platform is a broader platform for star shaping. It seems easier and easier to become a star by creating short video content and then transforming it into an actor or singer.

Nowadays, Song Weilong, an actor who has appeared in various TV dramas, such as Phoenix Prison Phoenix and I Love Cats, was once a little-known online celebrity of Aauto Quicker in Dalian, Liaoning Province. Later, because of his outstanding appearance, he was discovered as a signing artist for entertainment TV.

The short video is the fresh blood for the entertainment circle, which is inseparable from the behind-the-scenes operation of the team, and the online celebrity Incubation Team is derived from it. In addition to the Hangzhou Ruhan Company established by Zhang Dayi to cultivate e-commerce in online celebrity, many online celebrity incubation teams have focused on self-media production and idol cultivation.

Jiashang Media is a typical incubator in online celebrity. It is good at finding potential new people to cultivate in short video platforms, and is committed to transforming short video KOLs into artists. In Tik Tok App, Chen Heyi and Chang Youhao, who have many fans because of their handsome appearance and juvenile sense, were successively signed into their agent names, while artists Ye Helin and Ke Qinming, who had already signed into their company, were also sent to idol cultivation platforms such as Youth with You for the next round of artist transformation after training.

"We didn’t define them as a red man from the beginning, but regarded the Internet as a cultivation platform, using content on the Internet to precipitate fans for artists, and these fans will push them to a bigger stage." As Wang Chengrui, founder and CEO of Jiashang Media, thinks, many online celebrity’s training goals are artists themselves, and short videos or other forms of Internet are just a new entrance to the entertainment circle.

Fei Qiming’s success, in addition to catching up with the good time of short video, also has its uniqueness to fill the entertainment circle’s pursuit of fashion trends. Fei Qiming seems to be a representative of short video online celebrity culture.

However, with the proliferation of short videos and KOL everywhere, it is not easy to give the audience more fresh stimulation, and the distance between online celebrity and artists cannot be crossed overnight. When everyone takes a fancy to the short video platform as an artist’s window, the market competition becomes more and more fierce, and under the saturated online celebrity training output, it is difficult to maintain the popularity even if it is outstanding in a short time. The next Fei Qiming may still be on his way.