How about blue whale selling MCN? Do junior high school students need to sign up for MCN?

Recently, the shooting of Lynne, a student who became popular in Wuhan Vlog, attracted the attention of the industry because of a video accusing the signed MCN organization of "not traveling badly".

At the beginning of the video, Lynne, a student of Vlogger, showed her situation: "I am experiencing a very serious thing."

Video screenshot.

In the video, "Lynne" tells a series of difficulties he faced after signing with MCN in the form of recording, screenshot, confession and interview, which made him "unable to continue making videos".

In a termination agreement exposed in the video, Lynne shows: "Party B shall not make any remarks against Party A, and shall not harm Party A's interests in any way, otherwise it will pay a penalty of 3 million yuan", which also means that Lynne's complaint about "traveling without bad money" may lead to the loss of its account and the company's huge claim.

After this video of rights protection was released, Lynne received support from netizens, UP owners and other parties. By the end of April, 18, the video had played more than 6.36 million in the mile, and the barrage exceeded130,000.

Screenshot from the video

In fact, there are not a few UP owners like Lynne. In the eyes of content creators, signing MCN means the guarantee of professional operation, but there are huge risks hidden behind it. It is the original intention of MCN to incubate potential content creators and provide commercial realization channels. However, there are a large number of informal MCN companies in the market, and they set pits everywhere, waiting for a prey to jump in.

The contradiction between "Linni's classmate" and "traveling without money"

Before discussing how the MCN organization where "classmate Lynn" belongs causes public outrage, let's popularize a question first. What is MCN?

In fact, MCN organization is not the product of the platform, but the abbreviation of a company. These companies rely on signing contracts and incubating network celebrities, combining PGC (professional content production) content, and with the strong support of capital, ensuring the continuous output of content, so as to finally realize the stable realization of business. Specifically, professional MCN includes a series of chain and complicated work such as network celebrity screening, incubation, content development, self-content platform technical support, continuous creativity, user management, platform resource docking, activity operation, commercialization and cooperation, and sub-IP development.

With the rapid rise of platforms such as Tik Tok and a auto faster, the MCN industry has also attracted various institutions and entrepreneurs. According to relevant statistics, in 20 19, the number of short video MCN is expected to increase to 6,800, including video entrepreneurs, brokerage companies, advertising companies, video platforms, financial investors and so on. Has all entered the game.

Formal MCN organizations need to help people continuously output content, so MCN organizations need writers and planning teams. The screenwriter and planning team of MCN organization should package and position according to the characteristics of the contracted talents, write the shooting script according to the positioning content style, and then hand it over to the talents for shooting, or assist them in shooting.

Back to the contradiction between Lynne and "traveling without bad money", it is obvious that the company has not fulfilled its obligation to help bloggers. In the video, Lynne said that since signing the contract last summer, "there has been little cooperation and no income from the company so far. All video content operations are done by him independently. "

Lynne, a single student, became a household name during the spread of Wuhan epidemic. 65438+1On October 23rd, when Wuhan was closed, Chen Lin restored the original video of Wuhan with a drone, which became the first-hand information for many people to know about Wuhan. Today, Wuhan, which is at the center of the epidemic, has been unsealed, but this video has still achieved hundreds of millions of broadcasts, and the number of fans of Lynne in Weibo has soared by more than 5 million. The soaring number of fans is followed by opportunities for business promotion. The contradiction between Lynn and MCN broke out because she refused to insert commercial advertisements into the materials related to the epidemic.

Lynne released the audio of the conversation with the person in charge of MCN in the video. The person in charge claimed that the company invested 6.5438+0.6 million yuan in each video of Lynne, and if it refused to cooperate with the business related to the epidemic, it would punish Lynne for breach of contract.

But when Lynne talked with "former employees of the company", he got different answers. He was told that the company didn't even want to recruit employees, let alone spend money to buy traffic for him. From beginning to end, the company has only one operator, but it corresponds to 60 contracted bloggers. The company even asked the contracted bloggers to spend their own money to buy fans to forward, which is euphemistically called "adjustment".

The usual methods of "empty gloves and white wolves" in MCN institutions

The popularity of short videos has not subsided, and wave after wave of new concepts has been heated up, and "MCN" has also been pushed to the forefront. In fact, as early as four years ago, the opening statement of the short video startup team was "We are a professional PGC production team, and the broadcast volume of the whole network has reached ..." Now, the opening statement has become "We are a professional MCN organization, and the registered artists have reached ..."

MCN institutions are in line with the current trend, but the current market is mixed, with many followers and speculators. They are like Luckin Coffee in short videos, and what they are good at is drawing big cakes. When Luckin Coffee raised funds in the United States in the early stage, the A round raised $200 million, and the post-investment valuation was $654.38+$0 billion. In less than half a year, the second round of financing was $200 million, and the valuation doubled to $2.2 billion. Everything is rapidly expanding in the "infinite scene" described by the merchants.

How does MCN play "Lucky Coffee"? First of all, some UP owners will seek cooperation from operating companies for long-term development, and these agency operating companies use the information asymmetry of UP owners in some third-and fourth-tier cities to point out that the video taken by UP owners is not UP to standard as "experts", and then suggest that UP owners shoot another short video according to their own instructions. Assume that the UP owner paid 2000 yuan to shoot the video, of which 500 yuan is the cost of shooting the video, and 1500 yuan is the cost of purchasing traffic on behalf of the operating company. I don't know why the UP owner saw the broadcast data and thought that the operation of the operating company was really effective, so he signed a contract with the operating company. After signing several UP owners in the same way, the agency operation company declared itself as "MCN organization". In this process, the so-called "MCN organization" can "set the white wolf" without spending a penny, except using the account in its hand to return and brush each other's bills.

The screenshot is from the video of "Void Light and Shadow".

Mature MCN companies, in addition to signing big V and artists, its efficiency is reflected in the industrialization of red star cultivation, including screening, positioning, cultivation, traffic amplification, community maintenance and so on. Help the reds see the market trend and their stop loss points. This set of specialized operations obviously does not exist in the so-called "MCN organization".

Obviously, Lynne's "not bad money travel" company is essentially a shell company covered with the shell of MCN organization, lacking resources and unable to bring commercial value to the red man.

How to prevent irregular MCN mechanism from being struck by lightning?

Many people said that after watching the video of "Lynn's classmate", they were more cautious about signing MCN institutions. "The contracting agency is too deep to sign a contract" and "signing a contract is like selling a contract, there is no freedom".

So, as an UP owner, how to prevent irregular MCN organizations? Here, we share the experience of a blogger from the top MCN organization in the industry.

First of all, when signing the contract, the UP owner must find out whether the terms mentioned by the recruiter and the short video operation department are consistent. The blogger said, "Usually, the recruiters of MCN organizations will have a large commission. If you recruit an online celebrity with 6.5438+0 million fans, you can get bonuses ranging from 6.5438+0 million to 30,000. Therefore, what the recruiter said when recruiting people is not credible. After many UP owners are recruited to MCN institutions, they will have great differences with the short video operation team in terms of ideology. "

Secondly, the UP owner should pay attention to the guaranteed salary in the contract when signing the company. Many contracts have comments on how many advertisements the UP owner must cooperate with the company to receive in order to get the guaranteed salary as scheduled. "MCN's institutions have many reasons not to provide guaranteed wages. For example, this month's advertisement does not meet the demand, and the quality of the released video is unqualified. "

It is worth noting that because of the rise of e-commerce, many MCN organizations will help shopkeepers open Taobao stores. But in fact, some MCN organizations hold the gimmick of "e-commerce". There are neither goods nor shops, only a few operators of e-commerce departments are there. Therefore, if the UP owner signs a contract with the MCN organization because of the Taobao store, it is necessary to clarify the scale of the operation team of the e-commerce department of the MCN organization.

Generally speaking, if the UP owner really needs to sign a contract with MCN, on the one hand, it depends on whether the organization can help him continuously export content and provide high-quality platform resources. For example, Weibo provides MCN organizations with fan headlines, video streams, official blog reposts, popular Weibo locations, push recommendations and red envelopes. Tik Tok will provide task packages for professional MCN institutions every month, and only need to complete the requirements of the task package, you can get the corresponding support resources. On the other hand, it relies on the liquidity of MCN institutions to help people. Personal accounts are difficult to be realized if the works are popular, because businesses take the initiative to find them. A good business operation model should be to take the initiative and have regular customers. In addition, UP owners need to pay attention to the future development direction of MCN institutions. Cultivating head IP is the top priority of MCN organization. Without the head IP, it is difficult for MCN organizations to control the service implementation.

In the future, MCN institutions will face reshuffle. The threshold for short video entrepreneurship is not low. Without capital blessing and professional team, it is difficult to go long-term As a responsible UP owner, you should not stand on the wrong side in the future development.