Through cute and story-telling maps, Line makes users pay more and more money. This Japanese instant messaging software operated and realized emoticons as IP, and finally achieved success.

On July 4th this year, Japanese chat application Line was listed on the new york Stock Exchange. This IPO, Line*** raised 1.3 billion US dollars, and the market valuation exceeded 7 billion US dollars, making it the largest technology IPO in the world after Alibaba's initial public offering.

Like WeChat in China and Kakao Talk in South Korea, Line's main income consists of three parts: communication, content and advertising. However, in addition, he also relies on the emoticon sticker business, and around the emoticon economy, his income last year reached 268 million US dollars.

according to statistics, one of every 11 messages sent by Line is an emoticon sticker. At the moment when super IP has become a new outlet, around the explosion of expression packs, how Line makes users willing to save money is a topic that everyone cares about.

emoticon pack is a light IP, but its powder absorption ability is very heavyweight.

Line started late in instant messaging software, and it was officially put on the market in June 2111, and its Chinese name is "Lian Me". For most Chinese people, the first time they met Line, they relied on the 2113 hit Korean drama You from the Stars with hot beer and fried chicken. In the play, the daily communication tool of Professor Qian Songyi and Professor Du is precisely this Line. Although it has Korean descent, 71% of its annual income comes from Japan, and nearly half of the Japanese have become users of Line.

In the eyes of Japanese users, what Line really attracts them is not the instrumental use of text and voice interaction anytime and anywhere under the condition of data traffic or wifi connection, but the expressionless Brown Bear and versatile Kony Rabbit in the application.

In fact, this is just an expression pack function that is often used in user communication. Compared with the animation and literature IP with its own story system, only an original expression can only be regarded as a light IP. But under the operation of Line, it has become an industrial chain.

the source of the industrial chain is that users pay to download emoticons. Brown Bear and Coney Rabbit are cute and distinctive chat emoticons designed by Line, which attract users to pay for it and send emoticons to each other when chatting with friends. In 2115, the sales of emoticons alone accounted for a quarter of Line's annual income, and the number of users who bought emoticons or games at a monthly fee was very stable, maintaining at around 8 million.

In the past, the situation of paying for this emoticon pack was mostly summarized in one sentence-Japanese secondary users have the habit of paying for original cartoons, and paying for emoticons is just a matter of pediatrics.

that's all? One fact is that products with expressions are really easy to be popular. In the communication era before Line, in the Japanese market in 1995, NTT, the operator, introduced pagers with different emoticons, which were very popular among young people. Since then, this pager has gained nearly 41% market share. In the Line era, due to the Great East Japan Earthquake that triggered the Fukushima nuclear power plant leakage in March 2111, Line, which was released in June that year, was popular with Japanese users because of the serious damage to the telecommunications system infrastructure in Japan and the interruption of communication services in many places, and it was used by 4 million users in just a few months. But the real explosion point was in October, 2111. Due to the addition of the "mapping" function, it brought 1 million users to Line in two days.

The powder absorption energy of emoticons can be seen from this, even if it is a paid experience.

selling cute creates just-needed, typical Asian personality communication

Line with over 411 million registered users now has about 218 million monthly active users, two-thirds of whom are from Japan, Taiwan Province, Thailand and Indonesia. At the same time, users of Line send 398 million emoticons including paid and free emoticons every day, accounting for 9% of the total chat content data of users.

One of the root causes of such high data dissemination of emoticons lies in the unique label that Line puts on its emoticons-cute and cheap. Especially in Japan, where cute culture prevails, Line painstakingly launched a series of expression packs such as Brown Bear, Keni Rabbit and Shantou, which can be described as "all ages". This situation has also appeared in Taiwan Province, Thailand and Indonesia, where Line users are highly covered.

With regard to the popularity of emoticons, the staff of the WeChat emoticon team thought: "The social culture of Asian countries is conservative and traditional. They usually look serious, but their hearts are actually wild, and emoticons are a good way to express their emotions." However, in Line's view, this kind of emotional expression portrait is obviously not appropriate enough. More precisely, in the whole Asian cultural circle, the best way to express emotions is to present them by selling cute and a little embarrassing, so that they can be both wild and subtle. Especially for the Japanese who are used to holding, suppressing and hiding their feelings on weekdays. On the other hand, Koreans with more exposed and intense personalities are less keen on Line.

One of the best examples to express this meaning should be one of Line's iconic cartoon characters, "Moon", who fell into the trough of his life while looking for a new job. After the bank deposit became zero, Moon made her home messy, then passed the time by watching some pornographic content, and even tried to make friends with a cockroach.

This book is also the place where the secondary culture with the important label of selling Meng originated from Japan and grew. But how can we make users willing to pay? It is obviously not enough to explain that Japanese users don't mind spending about RMB 12 per set of emoticons.

IP, iteration and cost, the secret of payment

As long as you look at the expression package of Line a little, it is not difficult to find a feature, that is, in addition to a batch of budding expression IPS made by Line, whether it is Japanese national anime images such as Hello Kitty and Lazy Eggs in Sanrio, Zootopia and big hero 6 in Disney, or One Piece, Silver Soul and Attack.

In Japan, where intellectual property rights are strictly protected, such super IP emoticons not only have a powerful effect of sucking powder, but also can effectively ensure that users are willing to pay for their love images in order to better communicate with each other.

Of course, in order to make users better follow the trend, as long as an image is popular, Line will be introduced immediately to meet the users' expression needs as quickly as possible, which just reflects the rapid iterative thinking.

all the expressions you need are sold here and delivered as soon as possible. This is Line's emoticon package sales logic. Even without the endorsement of intellectual property protection, the popular culture made under strong IP has formed a kind of "no difference" effect in extremely rich expression library and fast iterative popular elements.

this is quite different from the emoticon package strategies in China, such as WeChat and Momo. Although there are also emoticons authorized by super IP, such as Doraemon and Teenage Ninja Turtles, most of them are just for commercial promotion release to match the released big movies, so it is impossible to choose the payment mode.

moreover, wechat officials have been absent from the expression layout. although there was sporadic expression development before, it was not until may 2115 that the expression department was established, and the wechat expression open platform was released in July, which made the number of overall expression packs on wechat, which has been in operation for many years, too few for users to choose from. most users have long been accustomed to using various free and self-propagating expression packs to express their emotions. The user's usage habits are hard to reverse, which is the key to the difficulty of copying the paid expression route in domestic instant messaging applications.

According to the Research Report on User Behavior of Social Applications in China in 2115, only 26.6% of domestic mainstream social applications mentioned activities such as "shopping in the station". Even for WeChat and Momo, the expression income only accounts for 8.4% and 18.8% of their total income respectively, which was weaker than Line.

At the same time, at the end of 2113, the facial expression customization service was officially launched, and the related application expression me was officially launched in 2114. The specific rule of this application is that the user takes an avatar, and then DIY a variety of emoticons that can be directly used on WeChat and QQ. Different from this customized expression model, Mengdao platform, which has gathered more than 411 expression creators, more than 1,211 domestic expression images and about 21,111 foreign expression images, will pin its hopes on enterprises, with a view to customizing expression packages at the enterprise level and triggering users to spread themselves, thus forming an advertising marketing effect and making profits. However, at present, these two modes have failed to form a real user detonation, which is further away from the income.

the truth of payment is that 12 yuan is not the key, but the cost (including time cost) that users need to spend to find the same level of free expressions when they get what they need. When it is higher than 12 yuan, users will choose to pay.

Line has successfully achieved this goal, but this is not the real success of its expression library.

super IP materialization, derivative chain is the main battlefield

Line has a rich expression library, but the most famous combination image is Line friends. According to the official introduction, the main members of this group include Uncle, Keni Rabbit, Steamed Bread Man, Brown Bear, James, Sally and jessica, relying on the world system formed by each other.

After becoming famous in the emoticon pack, Line is not satisfied with letting these light IPS just act as an emoticon. Super IP must be materialized. To this end, Line has developed a series of comics, animations, peripheral and offline experience stores for it.

kanahei, a Japanese female illustrator and cartoonist, as one of the most popular emoticons on Line, is the beneficiary of this derivative experience. In addition to earning about 36.8 million yen from at least one popular digital map series every year, her emoticons were also made into a mobile game called "kanahei Radish" by game developer United in early 2116.

this is just a small fragment of IP materialization of Line expressions. In China alone, the group Line friends not only has peripheral products such as dolls, mobile phone cases, notebooks, small wallets and other products printed with the combined image on Tmall, but also has opened cafes and cosmetics stores with different styles in Shanghai and Dalian. In the world, there are 44 Line friends theme stores * * *, whose products span life, stationery, toys, accessories, fashion, electronic products, medicine and books, with more than 411 categories and 7,111 items.

In addition, Line also plans to open a Line theme park, where customers can have fun, browse scenic spots, enjoy exhibits and taste delicious food, including multimedia interaction, exhibitions, retail and entertainment equipment (3D cinema). With the government support of individual cities, Line friends will also integrate different businesses such as hotels in outdoor theme parks.

This is actually a Disney-style IP derivative industrial chain building model of Line. At present, the paid download of IP image and related derivative products have accounted for 41% of Line's total revenue, and the derivative income is also close to the paid download level accounting for 22% of the total revenue. Such IP materialized consumption will also make the Line expression pack that has entered the revenue bottleneck stage usher in the "second battlefield" of industrial value-added.

A big blue ocean of light IP, deep powder absorption and rising fans' economic dividends with cute and cheap expressions is unfolding, which is no less than the strong IP fan system in the Marvel-style powerful story universe.

an industrial chain derived from emoticons like this has also sprouted in China. According to the official data released by WeChat, in October 2115, the expressions related to "Long Cao Yan Wen Daily" were sent more than 1 billion times. Although the sending volume is amazing, it is a pity that there is no charge for five sets of emoticons in the WeChat emoticon store.

although the emoticons are free to use, Changcao Yanzi, which has already begun to take the form of super IP paradigm, has also begun to explore the road map of derivatives and materialization. It cooperates with some brand merchants to combine the original image of Changcao Yanzi with offline brands to customize its cultural and creative image. According to the original image, many cultural and creative products have been derived, involving cultural household items, dolls and so on. Even, it has reached a cooperation with Hunan Satellite TV's related entertainment programs, providing them with various series of expressions for a long time to enhance the entertainment and interest of the programs.

Similarly, there is another popular emoticon package "My Emperor Sleeps" in China, which is gradually exploring to become a profit model for comics, mobile phone themes and cultural and creative peripheral products. However, these explorations are still only at the point of "tinkering around the edges".

On the contrary, an "unexpected" Wenchuang IP has risen in China. Earlier, through the way of "selling Meng", some cultural relics became popular on the Internet through animation, and the Palace Museum also became an expression pack widely spread on social networks. Taking advantage of the design concept of "Meng", it launched 8,683 kinds of cultural and creative products of the Forbidden City in Beijing, such as palace dolls, pearl earphones, emperor folding fans and hualing umbrellas.

Tencent, which has a huge social network, also took this opportunity to jointly announce the establishment of a partnership with the Palace Museum on July 6 this year. With the "NEXT IDEA Tencent Innovation Competition" as the platform and the classic IP image of the Palace Museum or related traditional cultural content as the prototype, Tencent cooperated around the two events of "Expression Design" and "Game Creativity" to explore the practice of activating traditional cultural IP.

obviously, this China emoticon IP road will be the same as but different from the Line mode, so that the light IP of emoticon can be thickened from the traditional cultural level to form a completely differentiated "emoticon experience" ...