Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 660 The Crazy Zhiyun Advertisement
Xu Shenxue, Huang Jianian, and other senior management of the internet business held a small meeting that lasted two or three hours. They listened to reports on some core businesses and also had discussions together.

In particular, Xu Shenxue is quite concerned about cultural export and international e-commerce issues.

Huang Jianian presented their respective plans.

In the field of cultural export, Huang Jianian's plan is both complex and simple: to continue the successful strategy of the past few years, with a series of short video products centered on ByteDance Video... But Yihai Technology Group is not just about ByteDance Video.

Globally, thirteen out of the top twenty short video apps by monthly active users are directly or indirectly owned by Yihai Technology Group…

Besides ByteDance Video, the second-ranked short video app in the US market and the number one in the Indian market, ostensibly belongs to a Silicon Valley company, but this Silicon Valley internet company is actually a subsidiary controlled by Yihai Technology Group through offshore capital.

In many countries, the number one short video social product is often TikTok, while the second or third place is also a product under Yihai Technology Group.

Otherwise, how could Yihai Technology Group be considered the dominant player in the short video industry?
Once you have these short video-centric traffic products, you can expand into many fields, from e-commerce to traditional instant messaging, photo-sharing platforms, content Q&A platforms, internet news platforms, and so on.

Yihai Technology Group directly or indirectly controls a large number of various internet content products, both domestically and internationally—several hundred in total. Of course, this is not an exaggeration, as Yihai Technology Group is a multinational internet company targeting the global market. It adopts different business strategies for different countries and often diversifies its investments.

Many subsidiaries of Yihai Technology Group, both domestic and overseas, have their own products.

However, ByteDance's reputation is so great that it overshadows the presence of other content products... to the point that people think Yihai Technology Group only has ByteDance as a social content and information product.

By leveraging its vast product matrix of social content and information products, Yihai Technology can acquire massive traffic... This traffic is usually used for sales, which is why its advertising revenue is so high!
One of Yihai Technology Group's core monetization methods is selling traffic, in various ways.

At the same time, Yihai Technology Group will also use these massive traffic resources to incubate its other products and drive the growth of other businesses.

The same approach is taken in the field of cultural export, where Yihai Technology Group leverages its massive global reach to provide traffic support for key cultural export projects.

Yihai Technology Group's recent global rollout of short-drama services exemplifies this model.

Before that, there were some traditional TV dramas, online movies, etc. TikTok has a long video sub-channel where users can watch TV dramas or movies.

Among them are some film and television works with extremely strong advertising characteristics, such as the S-level TV series that is known as the annual advertisement of Zhiyun. Yihai Technology Group promotes it to audiences around the world every year... and it doesn't even require a membership to watch, it is directly pushed to them for free.

Even other platforms can obtain free playback rights with just a simple application.

In short, just put it anywhere.

Commercials, of course, want everyone to see them, so they won't be restricted by mere copyright issues.

This year, as in previous years, Yihai Technology Group, together with a series of sister companies such as Zhiyun Group, Hailan Auto, and Weiku Electronics, as well as some other high-tech companies in China, has prepared a large number of online TV series projects, online movie projects, and online variety show projects for overseas markets.

And then there's the new support project: short dramas!
Every single one of the projects that Huang Jianian could mention was a cultural export advertisement, uniformly set in modern cities or science fiction backgrounds, highlighting modern Chinese life and high-tech products from Chinese companies!

Yihai Technology Group's entertainment and culture division doesn't need to worry about losing money on these commercials, because all production costs and even advertising costs will naturally be borne by top companies like Zhiyun Group that pursue overseas markets...

For example, a large and well-established company like Zhiyun Group wouldn't be short of the project costs for your advertisement.

If these advertising projects are effective and can increase Zhuyun Group's overseas revenue by a few percentage points, Zhuyun Group's senior management will be laughing all the way to the bank!
Given the size of Zhuyun Group, even a slight increase of just a few percentage points in sales would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars.

So, the commercials produced by Zhiyun Group every year are actually quite outrageous...

In order to achieve better dissemination results, the key projects mentioned by Huang Jianian will basically be free to watch, and some will be licensed to other platforms for free... Everything is centered on maximizing viewership and advertising reach, rather than pursuing revenue like other commercial films and television dramas.

After all, these are all commercials... used for advertising and selling products.

As for the money earned from film and television dramas themselves, it's too small to be of much significance!
For example, driven by Yihai Technology Group's strong promotion last year, the short drama market as a whole has seen a major boom. However, the domestic short drama market is only worth a few tens of billions of yuan, not even reaching the threshold of 100 billion yuan... This is the total revenue of a large number of short drama platforms and production companies.

If we're talking about the profits from short dramas, then it's even less... This amount of profit is simply insignificant for a company of Zhiyun Group's caliber.

Instead of wasting time on this, you might as well bring more virtual reality devices and robots!
Of course, Zhiyun Group mainly produces commercials for advertising, but they also make money from other investments in short dramas, and with Yihai Technology's global push, they've made quite a bit.

Starting this year, a large number of domestic film and television professionals have switched to shooting short dramas, and Yihai Technology Group is promoting it globally, because this year, a large number of foreign actors have appeared in major film and television bases across the country.

While the model is still the same as the domestic model, it is still very necessary to localize it appropriately for overseas markets. Short dramas in languages ​​such as English and Spanish are filmed with foreign actors and then released to the corresponding overseas markets.

After all, if you want to make money from foreigners, you can't just use a bunch of domestic actors. Using foreign actors makes things much easier...

The sudden explosion of the short drama market globally fully demonstrates the powerful traffic-driving capabilities of Yihai Technology Group's various traffic-generating apps.

This kind of thing wouldn't have such a good effect on other internet companies, even companies like Facebook and Google.

However, Yihai Technology operates on a social content information traffic model centered on short videos, and it covers the global market... its traffic-generating ability is top-notch.

Of course, Yihai Technology, for its own business needs, will not conduct large-scale traffic generation specifically for these commercials. They are usually mixed with numerous commercial films and television dramas, and then traffic is distributed.

After all, these commercials are high-budget, high-quality productions, and they are mainly offered for free, making them suitable as content to drive traffic to film and television businesses.

Therefore, they complement each other... It's not that Yihai Technology unilaterally provides expensive traffic for separate support.

This year's projects are also operating in a similar model!

Huang Jianian said, "This year, we will combine our virtual game IP, Doomsday Battle, to shoot a doomsday-themed online movie and a matching online TV series. This is a project led by our Yihai Technology Group, and our sister companies, such as Zhiyun Group, Hailan Auto, and Weiku Electronics, will also join in for product placement."

"Because it's a post-apocalyptic sci-fi film, it's well-suited for global distribution. So, our production will be primarily international, featuring domestic, Western, and even Japanese and Korean actors, and we'll be promoting it globally... Although we won't be using a free streaming model, a membership-based model will still reach a significant audience!"

"After all, our virtual game, Doomsday Wars, has a relatively large influence. Although the total number of users is not very large, as a hardcore virtual game, it has a very large market share in the fields of virtual e-sports and virtual game live streaming!"

"In addition, a modern workplace drama series, a top-tier production led by Zhiyun Group, has already begun post-production special effects work and is expected to be released in August to coincide with Zhiyun's autumn press conference!"

"Moreover, this S TV series will be based on Zhiyun Group, creating a fictional workplace background of a top high-tech company. It will focus on the perspective of a newly hired technical employee, along with other supporting characters to form a team. Through the work, life, and relationships of this small team, it will showcase the style of a top global high-tech company to the world."

"This includes the company's research culture, efficient management, good compensation and benefits, its emphasis on top talent, and its respect for international diversity!"

"This workplace drama will showcase the strengths of Zhiyun Group to the world in all aspects!"

"At the same time, in order to reach the global market and allow consumers from all countries to find common ground, we will also focus on internationalization, with some foreign actors and storylines featuring overseas subsidiaries!"

Huang Jianian also showed Xu Shenxue the basic project proposal briefly... After all, this annual Zhiyun advertisement was a bit different from the past, directly using the Zhiyun Group as the backdrop, and in a way it could be considered a documentary about the Zhiyun Group... Of course, there would definitely be a lot of fiction and embellishment! Such an advertising project involving the Zhiyun Group itself still needed to be briefly reviewed by Xu Shenxue.

Otherwise, if things go wrong, it could easily damage the reputation of the Zhiyun Group... After all, anyone who has watched this TV series knows that the company behind it is based on the Zhiyun Group!
After all, apart from Zhiyun Group, there is no other company on Earth that is so special and awesome... No matter how fictional it is, the audience can tell at a glance that it is talking about Zhiyun Group.

Xu Shenxue took it and glanced at it briefly. The project itself was a planning proposal from the public relations and publicity department within the Zhiyun Group, but the specific production and subsequent publicity were all handled through Yihai Technology Group.

The purpose of this proposal is simple: to promote Zhiyun Group itself... which is also something that Zhiyun Group's public relations and publicity department likes to do.

Rather than promoting a particular product of the Zhiyun Group, they prefer to promote the Zhiyun Group itself, and then some things that seem to have nothing to do with the products, such as the past habit of holding flashy but impractical technology launch events to release some new technologies that look impressive at first glance but are actually useless.

They also particularly like to promote their R&D investment, their various investments in the technology field, and their generous treatment of talent.

In short, it's about telling consumers worldwide: My Zhiyun Group is incredibly awesome! We spend hundreds of billions of dollars on R&D every year, have the most and top-tier technical talent in the world... and then we've created the world's most amazing high-tech products, including a series of smart terminals, semiconductor products, smart robots, virtual reality devices, and more!

However, this is the first time that a TV series has been made specifically to promote the concept of Zhiyun Group... In the past, it was more of a pure product placement.

However, since the public relations and publicity department thinks it's feasible, let's do it... it won't cost much anyway.

After Huang Jianian finished talking about several key cultural export projects, he didn't forget to mention his own personal projects, or rather, Yihai Technology Group's own commercial projects!
Producing these advertising blockbusters was a core task assigned by Xu Shenxue. However, it didn't actually bring any benefits to Yihai Technology Group. On the contrary, it caused a lot of trouble, and sometimes, if not done well, it could even lead to Yihai Technology losing money on these advertising projects... After all, Yihai Technology Group also has costs for publicity and distribution.

As for some of Yihai Technology Group's own projects, they are more purely commercial projects... Of course, these projects are very important to Yihai Technology Group's own cultural and entertainment business division. As for Huang Jianian, he doesn't really care whether film and television dramas make money or not, but he cares about the traffic and monetization that these cultural and entertainment products bring to the game business.

So what Huang Jianian brought along today was his own personal offering: a web movie based on the virtual game "Mortal"... In a sense, this "Mortal" web movie is an advertisement for the virtual game "Mortal"!
Xu Shenxue wasn't interested in these things and didn't pay attention to them, but Huang Jianian was somewhat concerned... After all, the virtual game business is now the most important new core business in Yihai Technology Group, and with the continuous increase in the number of virtual devices, the revenue and profits it brings are also increasing at a very high rate.

Many analytical institutions, and even analysts within Yihai Technology Group itself, believe that within three years at most, the market size of virtual games will surpass that of mobile games, reaching over 600 billion yuan.

Even analysts within Yihai Technology Group believe that its market size could reach over one trillion yuan in five years... What does this figure mean? Excluding virtual games, the current global PC console and mobile game markets combined are only a little over one trillion yuan in size.

Faced with such a large market, Yihai Technology Group naturally attaches great importance to it... Not only Zhiyun Group, but also other internet companies with a bit of ambition are paying close attention to it. A number of domestic internet companies, as well as overseas companies like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, are all involved in virtual games.

Yihai Technology seized the technological advantage and captured the early market share through three large-scale virtual games: Doomsday Battle, Kingdom of the Peak, and Mortals.

Currently, the "Ordinary People Virtual Game" is the virtual game with the largest market share, the most users, and the highest revenue.

The senior management of Yihai Technology Group, including Huang Jianian, attaches great importance to the virtual game "Fanren"... after all, the game business accounts for one-third of Yihai Technology Group's revenue and profit.

Huang Jianian told Xu Shenxue about the project. Although Xu Shenxue had never been interested in projects with an ancient background that couldn't be advertised, he expressed his approval since Huang Jianian had mentioned it.

All Huang Jianian wanted was a word of approval!

After Huang Jianian and other senior executives from the internet company left, Xu Shenxue rested for a while and then met with several other senior executives, mainly about investment matters. However, these matters were quite complicated, and there hadn't been any investment projects that Xu Shenxue needed to pay close attention to recently.

Therefore, Xu Shenxue simply listened to the report and then mentioned that the investment department should continue to pay close attention to various innovative companies and the emergence of new technologies around the world... Once a promising innovative company or technology appears, it should be seized decisively.

After a day of multiple meetings, Xu Shenxue finished his work and left the company by car around 4 p.m.

Today, Xu Shenxue did not go directly back to Zhihai Garden, but instead went to the seaside villa to visit Xi Wanqing and the son she bore for him.

At the beginning of the year, Xi Wanqing, who was ten months pregnant, gave birth to a healthy baby boy smoothly without any problems. Both mother and child are healthy.

Since the birth of his child, Xu Shenxue has been coming here more often.

Today, in addition to a formal visit to Xi Wanqing and her child, he will also give Xi Wanqing and her child a gift.

A gift that even someone as discerning as Xi Wanqing would care about: a trust fund worth 15 billion!
"This is a growth fund established in multiple locations, with a total injection of 15 billion yuan, which is enough to ensure that he will live a worry-free life for the rest of his life!"

When Xi Wanqing heard this, even though she was mentally prepared, she still couldn't help but get excited... She knew that Xu Shenxue was very rich and had given her a lot of money, but she never expected that her child would have 15 billion so soon after birth!
Before this, she had received money twice. The first time was when she first started dating Xu Shenxue, when she received a seaside villa and stock assets worth hundreds of millions of yuan.

Later, after becoming pregnant, she received assets totaling approximately 3 billion yuan from Xu Shenxue and his mother in several installments.

This was her personal savings... and it wasn't an isolated case; basically, every woman who bore children for Xu Shen had one.

Those who received even more included Secretary Li, who had always been favored by Xu Shenxue. Xu Shenxue was very generous to her financially, often giving her extra money in private, which added up to a considerable sum. In particular, Secretary Li had converted most of this money into shares of Zhiyun Group.

The stock of Zhiyun Group has risen quite a bit over the years... and Secretary Li is the most successful in managing money among Xu Shenxue's group of women; her private savings have multiplied several times over.

And besides Lin Yaxian, the official wife, she's the richest one...

Secretary Li's brother, with his sister's financial support, has already opened five companies.

The reason it was held five times is because all five companies had gone bankrupt.

He has no real skills but always dreams of starting a company and becoming a big boss. Every time he starts a company, it goes bankrupt... Fortunately, he has some self-awareness, so he doesn't invest too much each time he starts a company, and he's not the type of spoiled brat.

Secretary Li's older brother really wanted to make a name for himself. He made extensive preparations every time he started a company, and after the company was established, he devoted himself to his business and was extremely busy.

Well, the attitude was fine, but the ability was lacking, and the luck was also a bit off...

Compared to Secretary Li's substantial personal savings, women like Xi Wanqing, who only started studying with Xu Shen later, had far less!
Besides the 4 billion yuan of her private savings, Xi Wanqing also receives about 2 million yuan in living expenses every month... This is actually not worth mentioning; it's just pocket money.

And now, with the child only born a short time ago, they can receive a trust fund of 15 billion yuan. Even with Xi Wanqing's perspective, she thinks it's quite a lot... That night, she mustered her energy to serve Xu Shenxue for most of the night, and even did many things that she would not have wanted to do in the past.

Xu Shenxue giving the child money made Xi Wanqing even happier than giving her money directly!

Xi Wanqing was unaware that the trust fund for this child was also shared among all the children of the concubines, and the amount was actually the same... Xu Shenxue treated all the children equally in terms of their treatment.

Of course, this does not include Lin Yaxian's three children!

Xu Dongsong, Xu Shenxue's eldest son, is still in elementary school this year, but he already owns various assets worth over 100 billion yuan.

There is a huge difference between a legitimate child born in wedlock and a child born out of wedlock; they cannot be generalized!

(End of this chapter)