“ I’m Papi Jiang, a woman possessing both beauty and talent.”
a catchphrase from one of the most influential online celebrities in China, Papi Jiang.
Jiang Yilei, better known as Papi Jiang, has accumulated 81 million followers across multiple platforms to date. She made her name through her unique opinions, professionalism and pointed roasting of trending topics.
Papi Jiang started her journey to fame in 2015 after filming her first video, which received 30k likes and 20k shares on Weibo (a trending social media in China), and her follower count exceeded 10 million within 4 months. By now, Papi Jiang is still the leading content creation influencer in China, maintaining a fan base of 80 million across the internet. How has Papi remained invincible in this highly competitive online environment?
Unique content and presentation
The consistent style of Papi Jiang’s videos is highly concerned about life, the public and hot topics, which is one of the major reasons why Papi Jiang’s original videos have garnered widespread attention and shares.
In terms of the selection of subject matter, Papi Jiang does not actively showcase her extravagant life like other internet celebrities, but instead, she starts with topics close to the public’s psyche to gain attention. Papi Jiang’s videos thus become a sounding board, interpreting the inner language of the public. In the process of watching, liking and sharing the video, the public finds a sense of emotional belonging and identity.
In addition to the distinctiveness of the content, Papi Jiang has also created a very personal language style and video style. In Papi Jiang’s work, there is a “Taiwan dialect+ Northeast dialect” and a “Shanghai dialect + English + Japanese”. The use of voice changers and speed multipliers in her videos has also made her language style more recognizable. Papi Jiang’s videos are often edited, either with one person playing two roles or one person playing multiple roles, making the videos more vivid and interactive, and enhancing the narrative of the videos. This has contributed to Papi Jiang’s characteristic video style.
From Influencer to Influencer maker
In 2016, Papi Jiang rode on the wave of short-form video, she and her friend Yang Ming established a Multiple-channel Networks (MCN) company, Papitube. In the past 7 years, Papitube has signed and incubated more than 150 outstanding short video creators, with over 500 million fans across the internet and nearly 200 billion cumulative views of short videos.
Papitube and Papi Jiang are mutually beneficial. The fans’ fondness for Papi Jiang will largely increase their fondness for the creators of her company. The same is true in reverse. People will also pay more attention to Papi Jiang herself as Papitube’s influence increases.
What’s Next
The challenge Papi Jiang may face is that Papi has gradually transformed from an internet-only influencer to a genuine public figure. However, the distance between Papi and her fans is likely to grow at the same time. She may need to increase her digital engagement with her fans to a greater extent in order to maintain her popularity, for example by replying to their comments and updating her interactive and personal posts with them.
Also, whether Papitube can manage its creators well enough to avoid scandals that could affect the development of their IP. The issue of copyright is also inevitable for Papitube. With the development of Chinese MCN companies, there is bound to be competition for copyrights of background music in the future, after all, the video industry is closely related to the music industry.
