The same black-framed glasses, the Polo shirts that change in color,
the Rolex that you glance at casually, the pigeon-toed with exaggerated movements.
With all kinds of "greasy" faces with paralyzed smiles,
And the sentence -
"The happiness of rich people is so simple Unpretentious and boring”.
The whole character reveals elegance in the earthy flavor,
This is what we see of Zhu Once.
01 From "Gen" to "Once"
Zhu Yiyi's real name is Zhu Gen. He was born in Zibo, Shandong in 1983. His family was wealthy since he was a child. In his own words, "I have never been short of money since I was a child."
In 2001, 18-year-old Zhu Gen was sent to study abroad by his parents and completed 4 years of study in New Zealand. At that time, the average annual tuition fee was 150,000 (RMB). ).
After returning to China, Zhu Gen, with his impressive resume, did not choose to "work" but started a business and established his own company.
To this day, it is known that Zhu Gen has 11 companies under his name, 3 of which are not in business. In addition, he has also invested in major online movies, but he has been losing money. He only got back 3 million invested in it. 20,000, always at a loss.
Since 2016, with the rise of the live broadcast industry, the "Internet celebrity economy" has also been developing in full swing, and it was already 2018 when the "Internet celebrity economy" spread to the third-tier city Zibo .
Short videos suddenly emerged in 2018. Zhu Gen, who favors "content entrepreneurship", and his friend Wang Xingyue opened a company called Guangyao Liansheng Media in Zibo and began to enter the content field, preparing to seize this wave of dividends.
Even if you are born with a golden key in your mouth, you will still be beaten by the magical society.
After working for a whole year, Zhu Gen tried to create many types of Internet celebrity products, including maternal and child products, comedy, etc., but failed to make any waves in the video field.
This state continued until he recruited a young man from the countryside.
02 Bole Xiangma
Chuck was born in a small business family in Liaocheng, Shandong. His parents sold cold drinks in the summer and slaughtered sheep in the winter.
Later, his parents bought two shops in the county. Chuck grew up here since he was a child. In the shop, he watched people coming and going in the noisy market. Some customers were fussy, and some were careless. Cheating and cheating.
Zhang Ce majored in veterinary medicine in college. After graduation, he did not engage in related industries. Instead, he started making short videos and turned his hobby into a job.
In Zhu Gen's company, he provides an ideal environment for employees to create freely, and everyone's ideas will be supported and tolerated to the greatest extent. At the same time, Zhu Gen has rich resources and can provide equipment and environment for video shooting.
Under such conditions, at the end of 2018, Chuck began the creation of his first video series "Block C 802", which mainly tells the stories between employees and bosses in the workplace, as well as between colleagues.
It’s just that this drama has always had a mediocre response and has fallen into obscurity in the huge content market.
03 "Block C 802" to "Zhu Yiyi"
The life-changing "Zhu Yiyi" is here.
Zhu Gen himself also made a guest appearance in the short drama "Block C 801". In the first episode, he played his true character as the boss. In the May issue of the short drama, Zhu Gen's office scene appeared , at this time the word "亘" has been divided into "Once".
As for the origin of the name "Once" (GQ report) is this - Chuck often sees Zhu Gen playing Xiaoxiao on his mobile phone. Boring, he thought. Chuck stared at the boss, with a round face, a slight beer belly, and a pair of round eyes behind thin-rimmed glasses. His eyes were calm, half-smiling, and occasionally a little hollow. Somehow, Mr. Zhu from a parallel time and space appeared in Chuck's imagination: rich, free, and living a boring life. He separated the word Gen: once.
So there was the first trial version of "Zhu Yiyi's Boring Life" - firing the top ten employees. At first, Zhu Gen was worried that the video would damage his image, so he changed his Douyin account before posting it.
Unexpectedly, once it was released, it became popular!
It gained 200,000 followers in 3 days and exceeded 10 million followers in half a year. It was shortlisted for the Weibo Celebrity Festival and became one of the top 100 up owners of Bilibili in 2019. It was even called the Four of Bilibili by fans. One of the great villains.
“A slap in the face, delivery to Africa”, “Fire warning, Africa warning, Rolex warning”, “Boring and boring”, etc. have also become popular memes that are popular all over the Internet.
This feature of describing the story from the perspective of a wealthy person is refreshing to the audience, and some of the black humor contained in the story breaks the original rational beauty with absurdity and irregularity. After combined with the current social reality , reconstructing a sense of disorder and absurdity.
During this time, Zhu Yiyi’s videos are also trying to diversify, including short plays, charity, costume dramas, etc., such as Zhu Yiyi’s love story, costume drama Zhu Yiyi, and Zhu Yiyi sends baby Xu Xu to Africa to be the first Waiting with red eyes.
During the Spring Festival, "A Rolex's Road Home" can be called Zhu Yiyi's "God-like work." Using masks as the entry point, it reflects the humanity behind the masks, is in line with current hot topics, and inspires Netizens’ crazy discussion, using Zhu Yi’s iconic Rolex as the main prop, deepened the irony, and attracted countless viewers of Station B to “protect” with barrages.
From that video to today, “Dare to say. "Truth" Zhu Yiyi's fans have doubled again. "Ling Dan's Wish", which is being updated now, is also a series of short dramas, telling the story of the encounter between the overbearing president and the cleaning lady, which is refreshing.
Now that Zhu Yiyi is popular, Zhu Yiyi has also moved from behind the scenes to the front of the stage
04 "Behind the scenes" to "in front of the stage"
With the story of "Zhu Yiyi's Boring Life". Due to the popularity of IP, Zhu Gen's company has already turned a profit, and the advertising fees for shooting videos are now more than five times that of the "C Tower 801" period.
And "C Tower 801" has also started to increase in popularity at the beginning of the year. With the relocation of the company, the IP created around Zhu Gen is also being incubated.
Zhu Gen originally only wanted to be an actor, but now he has stepped onto the stage as the core. The live broadcast started in October last year, and he was able to connect to the microphone and bring goods. Everyone also discovered that the "boring and cold Zhu Yiyi" was just a setting in the play, but in reality Zhu Gen is a "down-to-earth" businessman.
He is clearly a domineering president who owns more than a dozen companies, but he is actually able to make jokes with the fans and viewers in the live broadcast room. He even sang "Learning to Meow" during the live broadcast, which made countless viewers express "I'm scared, I'm torn apart." This contrast has amazed netizens and gained countless good impressions.
In 2020, Zhu Gen will continue to expand the scale of the company. In addition to building his own IP, he will also test the "e-commerce + live broadcast" of the Internet celebrity economy. Mode.
As an audience, we also hope that Zhu Yiyang’s unpretentious and boring life can bring us more surprises.