2003: Starting with Foreign Trade

Chapter 314 The promotion war begins!
The eight immortals cross the sea, each showing their magical powers.

After two weeks of online voting, the location for the offline meet-and-greet with the three brand ambassadors has finally been determined by FlashTech.

Driven by online trolls, the choice of cities for the spokesperson was exactly as Tan Jincheng had hoped. Apart from Yicheng, which caused some controversy, the others were not too controversial.

Perhaps because of the contract renewal offer, Licking Entertainment cooperated quite well this time and didn't create any particularly difficult problems.

Hu Xiaoyong has been quite excited these past few days. Although it wasn't his idol Jay Chou who came to Yicheng, Chun Ge's popularity is also quite high, and he has also voted for Super Girl.

Having connections makes things much easier.

Such a great opportunity fell to his brother-in-law's shop. Although Hu Xiaoyong preferred to lie down, he was absolutely dedicated to this. The aura of celebrities is still very strong in this era, and ordinary people consider it an honor to be able to get close to celebrities.

"Be careful, don't mess it up," Tan Lixin instructed.

He's been at the shop these past few days. His nephew, unaware that he had expanded the shop, gave him such a great opportunity for publicity. This year, his shop has become quite famous in Yicheng.

The celebrity endorsement is like a gift of wealth to him; this shop will definitely be a hit in Yicheng from now on. This nephew is really good at making friends; he really sides with his family when there are benefits.

"Brother-in-law, don't worry. Flashpoint Technology's marketing team is handling things. I'm just cooperating with them; I won't mess it up."

"You also need to be careful. After this event, our store will probably become quite well-known in Yicheng. You'll be very busy from now on, so you can't be so carefree anymore. You need to take things seriously."

"Okay, okay; brother-in-law, when will you have the chance to take me to visit your nephew's company? You've never been there before, have you?"

Hu Xiaoyong is now really curious about Tan Jincheng. He's incredibly impressive. Three spokespeople promoting in nine cities, all of whom are super popular celebrities. How much money must that cost?
Besides, my brother-in-law's nephew is a few years younger than me, but he's already worth a billion. I've never met a billionaire before, so I don't know what kind of life they lead.

Tan Lixin was also somewhat tempted, but this was not something he could decide. It was really not easy to see this nephew now. Maybe he could persuade Brother Lihua to go to Beicang again?
There aren't any holidays recently, so it's not appropriate for him to take leave.

"You should study business well, work honestly, and it won't be bad if you perform well." You can't show weakness in front of your brother-in-law.

"Okay, okay, I'll definitely do my best," Hu Xiaoyong said happily.

Meanwhile, in Ningbo and Shanghai, two large electric vehicle specialty stores, like Tan Lixin's, are preparing for a celebrity-sponsored on-site promotion two days later, on July 2nd. Unlike Tan Lixin, these two large stores are directly operated by Flash Technology.

The first round of celebrity meet-and-greets will be held in Ningbo, Shanghai, and Yichang; the second round will be in Hangzhou, Wuhan, and Chengdu; and the third round will be in Nanjing, Beijing, and Hunan. Each round will be held one week apart, with the three cities taking place on the same day.

The promotional efforts created a synergistic effect and also fostered a sense of competition among fans. While the fan culture hasn't become that drastic these days, true fans still care a lot about whose idol has the most prestige.

FlashTech leveraged celebrity meet-and-greets to boost regional popularity and drive fan spending, thereby stimulating electric vehicle sales during the peak season. This innovative move follows Liu Yifei's transformation into a salesperson at the Shanghai Auto Show.

Other manufacturers were not to be outdone. On June 28, Xinri launched the "2006 Xinri Electric Vehicle Sunshine Strategy: Jiangnan Chapter", starting from Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, and promoting sales throughout the Yangtze River Delta region.

Yadi also launched large-scale promotional activities in the western Sichuan-Chongqing region and the Yangtze River Delta region. Luyuan, which lagged behind in marketing and promotion, was not willing to stand still and tried to consolidate its existing market by integrating suppliers.

The most competitive region is the Jiangnan region, led by Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai. The four major brands in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, which are also the top four brands in terms of sales nationwide, invest heavily in marketing in the region.

Only brick-and-mortar business owners are relatively restrained; when selling electric vehicles, they only offer some preferential policies and promotions. But in the internet industry, where four leading companies concentrate their marketing efforts in one region, a money-burning war ensues.

Leading companies are launching massive promotions to welcome the first peak sales season since the industry's explosive growth. Other manufacturers will not sit idly by either, and they will also follow suit with their own promotional activities. Some retailers will even launch their own in-store promotions.

In industry parlance, this summer in the Yangtze River Delta region was so intense that even dogs were practically fighting tooth and nail.

Tan Jincheng also made preparations for the internet during the summer vacation.

At this moment, Tan Jincheng was in front of the computer in the CEO's office of Orange Technology, engrossed in playing with the computer.

That's right, Tan Jincheng is conducting an internal test of Kaixin.com. Cheng Hao and Gu Yanning, who are standing behind him, are somewhat nervous. Cheng Hao is nervous because Tan, as an investor, usually hardly cares about the company's affairs.

Whether Kaixin.com and Kaixin Farm can satisfy Boss Tan, and whether the products can be accepted by netizens after being launched to the market, are all things that make him uneasy.

Besides being busy with the Happy Farm project, Gu Yanning was also curious. Accompanying her "brother-in-law" Tan Jincheng was Qingqing, who was already on vacation, and a slender woman who was bundled up.

Once inside the office, the woman removed her disguise, and Gu Yanning realized that it was actually Liu Yifei. She was so excited that she almost jumped up. Now that she had calmed down a bit, she was still curious about how her "brother-in-law" had brought Liu Yifei here.

Compared to Gu Yanning, Cheng Hao is better off. On the one hand, he is already 34 years old, and on the other hand, he is a tech guy and has been a senior executive. When the pig farm was booming a few years ago, it often invited celebrities to attend its annual meetings.

Although I was amazed by Liu Yifei's appearance, I wasn't particularly excited.

"You two register too, let's add each other as friends, and then I'll test the features," Tan Jincheng said with a smile to Gu Qingqing and Liu Yifei, who were sitting on either side of him, after he had finished setting up the registration information.

Gu Qingqing didn't say anything; she was also fiddling with her registration information. Liu Yifei, however, asked warily, "You're not going to use my registration information for advertising, are you?"

Due to flight issues, Liu Yifei returned to China a day early. After arriving in Ningbo, she went over the promotional schedule for tomorrow with the marketing staff of FlashTech Technology, and then had a short break.

Not wanting to return to the hotel, she heard that Tan Jincheng and Gu Qingqing were coming to Orange Technology today to do network testing, so she curiously followed them.

Liu Xiaoli knew that her daughter had been under a lot of pressure recently, and with the intention of helping her relax, she did not stop her. She only asked Tan Jincheng to be careful not to reveal Liu Yifei's whereabouts.

"You underestimate me. I have a strong sense of contract, right? As long as you don't agree, I promise I won't expose your information. Besides, even if you fill in your real name, who would believe it? Who would believe that a celebrity would join a website that's just been put into internal testing?"

Liu Yifei thought about it and realized it was true. Although this guy liked to take advantage, he never seemed to act on his own initiative. On the contrary, she had once taken it upon herself to promote him. "You're right. I'll register and try it out to see if that friend-trading game you mentioned is fun."

Kaixin.com includes more than just Happy Farm. Friend Trading was Kaixin.com's original marketing method. In addition, there are plans for other social mini-games such as parking space grabbing.

Having just registered, Tan Jincheng, who had no friends yet, naturally couldn't experience the friend trading system. Besides Gu Qingqing and Liu Yifei, Tan Jincheng also added Gu Yanning and Cheng Hao as friends.

Gu Qingqing had some prior experience with the project team's development and got up to speed quickly. To be honest, she was a little nervous. Although she hadn't been involved in much of the work, she was still the CEO of Orange Technology and had also applied for a university student entrepreneurship project.

Her father also invested 300 million yuan. Orange Technology is not only related to whether Cheng Hao can be reborn, but it is also Gu Qingqing's first real entrepreneurial venture. The success or failure of the Kaixin.com project is equally important to her.

While Liu Yifei was completely baffled, Tan Jincheng and Gu Qingqing had already gotten the hang of it easily. Although Tan Jincheng had little experience with this project, he was someone who used to set alarms to steal vegetables in his previous life and was very familiar with Kaixin.com.

It felt like I was back in those carefree days when I had just finished selling boxed lunches and was both rich and bored.

"What is this website for? Is it just for adding friends and playing games?" Liu Yifei figured it out after a while.

The interface is simple and doesn't seem difficult to use. Liu Yifei also added Gu Qingqing and Tan Jincheng as friends, but after exploring for a while, she didn't feel that it was any different from other websites.

“Explain it to her,” Tan Jincheng said with a smile to Cheng Hao behind him, then introduced Liu Yifei: “This is our CTO, the Chief Technology Officer. He developed this website.”

Gu Qingqing also introduced Gu Yanning, and the two of them didn't dare to ask any more questions after they came in.

The boss was with his girlfriend and a big star; it just felt a little strange.

When it came to professional issues, Cheng Hao got excited and his nervousness eased a bit: "Kaixin.com's core is social mini-games. Its social attributes are different from the currently popular QQ. Although QQ also played a role in social networking among acquaintances in 2006, its main attributes were still social networking among strangers."

I chatted in various QQ groups and met a netizen I got along with in a game. We added each other on QQ and shared things that the other didn't know. We didn't know each other at all, so we could chat however we wanted.

"Kaixin001's social attributes are based on familiar social networks, allowing users to maintain close connections with friends, colleagues, classmates, and family, and expand and deepen their social circles. For enterprise users, it also provides a real marketing opportunity by enabling them to interact with their consumers."

"Socializing with acquaintances? Wouldn't that be awkward? And wouldn't it involve privacy?"

As expected of a big star, when it comes to acquaintances, she immediately thinks of privacy, pointing out the pain point of social interaction among acquaintances. Just like WeChat Moments, eventually no one posts anymore because it's all about familiar people, and it's quite awkward to post about them.

Tan Jincheng smiled and replied, "Our website is more entertainment-oriented, like playing games with good friends. As you can see, the rest is just sharing of photos, diaries, reposts, and the like. These functions are similar to QQ Space, so the privacy is relatively better."

To put it simply, it's like friends playing games together; they're acquaintances, but they don't interfere in each other's lives.

Besides, there are fewer than 2 million internet users these days, and most of those who access the internet are young people. It's not as exaggerated as it was in the later era of information explosion when older generations were lurking in WeChat Moments.

Privacy? What privacy? I'd love to bring more friends over to play together.
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Cheng Hao and Gu Yanning were deeply shocked!

The young boss really doesn't understand technology. When the computer has a problem, all he knows is to restart it; he can't even install an operating system.

But he really understands the product; he only tried it for a short while and then came up with a bunch of opinions.

“Boss, you should be able to switch careers and become an excellent product manager,” Cheng Hao exclaimed.

Could the registration process be simplified further? After the website officially launches, we'll see if we can discuss one-click login with QQ and MSN to drive traffic from these two platforms.

Another issue is whether game currencies from different games can be universally used, avoiding separate calculations of game currencies across different games. This would discourage users from trying more applications and hinder the integration of products later on.

Since the goal is to differentiate itself from other SNS products through entertainment, it is essential to have distinctive features, and all product attributes should be designed around the concept of entertainment.

The boss's suggestions were all very constructive.

In addition to offering his suggestions, the boss also showcased his marketing strategy, which is well-known in the electric vehicle industry: Kaixin.com will adopt a viral marketing approach.

Kaixin.com's main user group is white-collar workers, and its cooperation with MSN is crucial. As for QQ, that will come after Kaixin Farm is launched. Although Kaixin Farm has been completed, it will not be released all at once.

The essence of the internet is its users. First, you need a large enough user base. With enough users, you can do whatever you want. The cooperation with MSN is particularly crucial.

"We must reach a good agreement with MSN so that Kaixin001 can obtain user data through MSN. After a user registers on Kaixin001, MSN will automatically send an invitation link to his MSN friends, inviting him to join Kaixin001."

"You can be shameless. You can send out these invitations multiple times a day, dozens of links are fine. Just find a way to get him to register on Kaixin001. Once he registers, you can copy this model and become the next spread node."

Everyone present had an MSN account, and one can imagine how powerful Tan Jincheng's shameless marketing method was. Assuming each person had 50 to 100 MSN friends, even if only one friend accepted the invitation to register on Kaixin001.

The resulting fission is absolutely terrifying!

It must be said that although this marketing method is shameless and may easily arouse the resentment of some MSN users, it is really very effective.

Liu Yifei stared wide-eyed, her eyes filled with disbelief.

"This is shameless! Their hearts are black! Is this how they do marketing?"

(End of this chapter)