Li Ziqi: an ‘Oriental Gourmet’
As a very famous food vlogger in China, Li Ziqi (former name: Li Jiajia) has become a successful ambassador for the promotion of intangible cultural heritage by making web videos sharing gourmet preparation process and leading viewers to traditional Chinese culture.
Her videos have accumulated more than 100 million views worldwide on platforms such as BiliBili, YouTube and RED, attracting more than 10 million overseas fans on YouTube and becoming the Guinness World Record holder for the “most subscribed Chinese YouTube channel”.
In brief, Li Ziqi creates a prominent online presence mainly in three ways:
1) A clear personal orientation
2) Effective integration with Chinese culture
3) Characteristic personal brand
A clear personal orientation
Li Ziqi positions herself as a ‘gourmet lifestyler’, showing her own process of making food in her daily life. By integrating local customs and natural sceneries to improve the aesthetics of the video, she always leaves a deep impression of both food and idyllic scenery to the audience.
Most of her videos show audiences various dishes made from raw materials that designed and cooked totally by herself, which is highly innovative. In the video below, Li Ziqi gathers ‘bamboo shoots’ as a raw material and uses it to make pickles, baked rice, buns and soups, showing the richness and variety of food that can be made from bamboo as an ingredient of Chinese specialty.
Combine with traditional Chinese culture — enhancing the cultural connotation
Li Ziqi shows many traditional Chinese cultures while making food. In this Chinese New Year video, she displays folk customs such as cutting paper, pasting window flowers and writing couplets, which makes viewers feel the charm of traditional Chinese culture and history.
Li Ziqi wears ancient Chinese costumes in most videos and tends to show the interchangeable combination of traditional culture and cuisine. In a recent video she has independently produced the ‘Goblet Curving Water Table’ and used tea as the main element in various dishes, which reverts to the custom of drinking tea and composing poetry often adopted by the literati during the Song Dynasty in China.
Create distinctive products and build personal brands
After attracting a large number of domestic and international fans on various platforms, Li Ziqi has built her own food brand with trademark— ‘Li Ziqi’. She adopted a combination of online and offline methods to sell the food products, which is conducive to building a personal brand and improving popularity.
What’s next?
Although most of her videos are accompanied by textual explanations, Li Ziqi mainly shows the food preparation process without directly speaking. A more verbal explanation, reflecting the interactivity with viewers, would be more effective in enhancing the appeal of videos. Besides, as the personal brand was built independently, the issue of brand trademark infringement has also occurred one after another. Li Ziqi’s intellectual property rights (trademark and patent rights) with her product operation company Hangzhou Weinian have aroused widespread concern among netizens which has not yet been decided. Li Ziqi would pay more attention to the protection of her personal IP in the future process of commercial operation of the products along with the brand value.
