Entertainment: I just want to be the boss behind the scenes

Chapter 354 "Perhaps this is the meaning of PDD's existence"

"Ding--"

A WeChat notification sound woke Xiaolin up from his work.

After taking a look at the WeChat message, he couldn't help but feel annoyed. It was this crappy Pinduoduo again that was "cutting down the price" to get the red envelope.

"Mom, I've already told you that this red envelope from Pinduoduo is squeezing social resources. It's impossible to succeed without a hundred or eighty friends. If you really want a red envelope, I'll give you 500 directly later. Let's not do this anymore..."

Xiao Lin angrily said a long string of words to the WeChat voice message, and when he was relieved, he chose to cancel the message. He sighed, obediently clicked on the link shared by his mother and chopped it down.

There is no way. There are three types of unfilial behavior, and talking back is the worst.

After I helped my mom, another page popped up on the screen, saying "Congratulations on winning a 499.5 yuan red envelope. Invite your friends to help you." There was also a -hour countdown, which made people feel that time was running out.

But Xiaolin sneered at this and closed the app directly.

He is full of resentment towards the e-commerce platform Pinduoduo.

At first, when he saw that he was only a few cents away from getting a red envelope of five or six hundred yuan, he felt lucky and asked dozens of friends to help him "cut the price", but he underestimated the platform's routine.

When it was one cent short, the unit became cents, and when it was one cent short, it became gold coins. There were diamonds under the gold coins, cards under the diamonds, and card fragments under the cards...

I made dozens of friends, but failed to get the last penny.

Of course, so far, it can only be said that this is the platform's routine. The most uncomfortable thing is that there are so many fakes on Pinduoduo.

Things like "Lei Bi", "Bai Shi Coke" and "Wang Zi Milk" are all child's play. There are also fans with blades that spin everywhere, razors that turn into spinning tops, and slippers that change color on your feet after five minutes of wearing.

Sometimes Xiaolin doesn’t understand who would buy something that is obviously nonsense.

Small household appliances that cost 9.9 yuan with free shipping and computers that cost less than 100 yuan actually have sales of thousands of yuan. If you think about it, you will know that it is impossible. It really is true that only those who dare to sell can buy.

Looking at the unfinished video on the computer, Xiaolin, whose train of thought was interrupted by WeChat, sighed and decided to watch some Tik Tok to change his mind.

I checked my account status when I went online. The data of the last video [Watching the new series of Arc Light "Zijin Chen Trilogy" in one go] was not bad. It was released for two days and received nearly 40,000 likes, which is the best performance of the video in recent times.

Sure enough, it has to be arc light!
Before last year, he had been making long videos on Bilibili, such as film and television interpretation and consultation. But with the rapid development of short videos in the past two years, he is also trying to make a transition.

Instead of starting to browse beautiful dancing girls as usual, Xiao Lin first clicked on the hot list to see if there were any new hot spots in the past two days.

"Today's hot search..." Xiao Lin looked at the top of the hot search, and was stunned.

Hot search top 1: [Perhaps this is the meaning of pdd's existence]

What is this ghost?

Xiao Lin complained in his heart, an e-commerce platform is just for selling things, what’s the point?

Although he thought so, he still subconsciously clicked on it, intending to see how this thing became a hot topic.

When he opened the video, he first looked at the statistics out of habit - more than 300 million likes and nearly 10 comments.

Before he could think about it, the background music of the video had already sounded, which was the song "The Wind Rises" that has been used so much this year. It made people realize in one second that this was probably another warm and touching video.

"A few days ago, a 38-yuan wedding dress became popular. An uncle left a message in the pdd comment area, saying that he bought a wedding dress for his disabled wife. The uncle didn't know that it was just a bustle, but he still chose the most expensive one in the store."

"He wrote in the message: My wife is disabled, and she is very happy to wear the dress if I give her a wish. In the picture, there is a bare room with a large medicine box on the table. His wife, standing in the middle of the room, is wearing a rather simple and ill-fitting 'wedding dress', but her face is filled with a happy smile."

"It was at this moment that we realized that a 30-yuan wedding dress and a 30-yuan wedding dress have the same whiteness."

"This TV costs over 100 yuan and includes free shipping, but it has sold over 100,000 copies. Many people don't understand who is buying this kind of TV. Some people even said that this 100 yuan is enough to buy a meal, so is this kind of TV really worth watching?"

"But when opening the merchant's comment section, many netizens were shocked. Along with this brand new 'industrial waste', there are also various dilapidated homes, moldy walls, and scattered medicines and bottles. If you don't really need the few dollars in cash back, who would be willing to let others see their own embarrassing side."

"Since its inception, PDD has always been labeled as cheap, counterfeit, and fake, and many people also believe that only poor people will buy things on it. We have seen too much nobility on the Internet, but these buyers in the comment section may be a reflection of reality."

"A refrigerator that costs over a hundred dollars, a smartphone that costs over a hundred dollars, a computer that costs over a hundred dollars... Behind every so-called 'IQ tax' is a smiling face that can see the wider world because of it."

"Perhaps, this is the meaning of PDD's existence."

The video was not long, just over two minutes, but Xiao Lin spent nearly twenty minutes in the comment section of the video.

Similar to the content in the video, many people are posting similar messages.

[A grandmother in the village asked me to buy her a down jacket for 20 yuan on PDD. She said it should be very warm this winter.]

[I have seen some people selling expired milk powder before. Some of the reviews said they bought it for their dogs, and some said they bought it for their babies.]

[I heard that many people buy sanitary napkins for more than ten yuan on pdd. I saw a blogger saying that you can buy good ones by saving the money for a cup of milk tea, but is it possible that they can't afford milk tea in the first place? ]

[It should be said that although there are many counterfeits of PDD, they are really cheap. And if you really buy a fake, it is easy to get a refund, so it is not as bad as many people say. ]

[Pdd doesn't think I'm poor, so why should I think it's cheap? 】

【…】

Xiao Lin himself also felt very emotional. Because his living conditions were pretty good, he always discriminated against users of Pinduoduo.

But if you think about it carefully, your attitude is not a kind of arrogance. It only took Pinduoduo three years to have more than 300 million users. Doesn't it mean that there are indeed many people who really need this kind of low-cost online shopping platform?

Although he still has some dislike for the "Kan Yidao" concept, his impression of Pinduoduo has changed a lot.

After exiting the trending search, Xiao Lin continued to watch videos. Perhaps because big data recorded his behavior just now, he pushed several different forms of news about Pinduoduo. Like [Large documentary "The Legend of 100 Yuan Mobile Phones"] [It's not that TB and JD can't afford it, but Pinduoduo is more cost-effective]...

Although the subject being described is the same, the content of each video is different.

At the same time, out of professional habit as a filmmaker, he also noticed a detail: the images of these videos all had irregular shaking, and it was obvious that most of the shots were taken by ordinary people with mobile phones.

As he watched, Xiao Lin couldn't help but think that apart from the "cutting-down" policy, which was the root of all evil, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with Pinduoduo.
-
Shanghai, Pinduoduo headquarters.

There are many new faces in today's conference room that the company rarely sees.

Huang Zheng stood at the front of the conference room, raised his hands and clapped with a smile on his face, saying, "Everyone, first of all, let us thank Mr. Meng from Qiming Venture Partners. After the videos he designed were released online, it can be said that they changed the direction of public opinion overnight and greatly improved Pinduoduo's brand value."

All the people present were representatives of Pinduoduo's investors, including Tencent, Gaorong Capital, Sequoia Capital, etc. They were also very aware of the "offline siege and boycott incident" that happened some time ago.

At this critical juncture when the company is about to go public, Pinduoduo's corporate image is still very important. Even if it does not affect the listing process, the stock price after the market opens will be directly affected by public opinion.

Several investors thought that it would take a long time to deal with the matter calmly, but they never expected that Huang Zheng told them that he had thought of another way to solve it.

It has to be said that this treatment method is much more effective than the cold treatment that takes time and reduces heat, but it is also much more difficult to operate.

The most important point is that these contents must speak for Pinduoduo, but netizens must not be able to see that they are the ones doing marketing.

This requires very delicate control over the scale and degree of content.

It was not until today, after Huang Zheng talked to them, that he found out that they had hired “god-level” professionals to do the operation.

The name "Qiming Ventures" is unfamiliar to the bigwigs in the venture capital circle. Before this, they basically knew that it was a small company that was lucky enough to participate in the angel round of financing in the early days of Pinduoduo.

It was not until they heard Meng Bai's name that many people finally realized that this was the boss of Arc Light Films.

Compared to the little-known "Qiming Venture Capital", ArcLight Pictures has quite a reputation in the capital circle.

There is no other reason. Such a company that makes money quickly and has great potential but always insists on not raising funds is rare, not to mention in the film and television industry, but also in the entire venture capital circle.

More than one investment company has conducted research on Arc Light, but the results were frustrating.

There's nothing I can do, I really don't lack money.

The company that was most impressed by this was, of course, Tencent, which rejected the 150 billion yuan acquisition offer without even considering it.

The key point is that less than a year later, the huge valuation at the time does not seem to be overestimated now.

Seeing everyone looking at him, Meng Bai waved his hand and said, "It is mainly because of the data provided by Mr. Huang that we can find these real user feedbacks. In fact, these videos are not entirely about the handling of this public opinion incident. They are more about the value of Pinduoduo itself."

Meng Bai is not too familiar with the capital circle, but he is very familiar with the entertainment circle. In a sense, the two actually have a lot in common.

Why are many celebrities keen on donating money? One reason is to avoid taxes, and the other is to buy fame.

Almost every star has a group of die-hard fans. While these fans are collecting gold coins and collecting data, they often fight with other fans. Fighting requires "weapons", and "charity" happens to be a very suitable thing.

As long as it is not a "hard charge" such as breaking the law or committing a crime, fans can use the excuse of "our brother/sister has a kind heart, if you don't believe me, just look at how much money they have donated" to criticize the many other black spots, such as being a big shot, poor acting, unprofessionalism, etc.

This is actually a means of "changing the subject". Instead of talking about other shortcomings, they use the advantage of "charity" to maintain their image.

The same is true for Pinduoduo. Some people accuse it of "weird operations", "unfriendly to merchants", "rampant counterfeit goods", etc. The most fundamental impact is actually damaging the corporate image.

Therefore, if you want to solve the problem, you only need to focus on the "corporate image".

Compared with solving the problems of the company one by one step by step, it is undoubtedly more cost-effective to spend some money to divert the topic and enhance the corporate image from another perspective.

It is based on this concept that a large number of videos have appeared in recent times.

Pinduoduo, which received its Series D financing, has no shortage of money. Plus, one of its investors is Tencent, a social giant in the domestic market, so it is easy to promote these videos across the entire Internet.

It was precisely because of so many favorable conditions that Huang Zheng was able to clear up the negative impact of the previous period in a short period of time and greatly improve his reputation.

With the public opinion resolved, all investors breathed a sigh of relief and now are waiting for Pinduoduo's application for listing.

In today's meeting, in addition to telling everyone how the issue has been resolved, the main purpose is to discuss matters related to the listing.

However, the latter part is meaningless to Meng Bai. After all, he is now a small shareholder with only 4% of the shares, and his voting rights are also delegated to Huang Zheng. The only role of Pinduoduo for him is to cash in on the added value after the listing.

But he did not gain nothing. As the core figure in the Pinduoduo public opinion incident, he also proved that the value of Qiming Venture Partners is not just about being in the early position.

By the way, he also got to know representatives of a number of investors.

In addition to Arclight Films, Meng Bai also has many other businesses. Just because Arclight doesn't need financing doesn't mean that the others don't need it either. There will still be plenty of opportunities for cooperation in the future.

After resolving the Pinduoduo incident, Meng Bai put his energy back into the Arclight project. The filming of "Hunting Crime Picture Book" has started, and Meng Bai returned directly to Blue Island from Shanghai.

This is Dai Mo's first time directing independently, and the main actors are all young actors, so this time he didn't do any fancy tricks like Wang Wei did with "Day and Night Chase", such as long shots, and just shot the film honestly according to the script.

But this is not bad. After all, the quality of Meng Bai's script itself is good enough, and it will be a success if it can be filmed in its entirety.

What's more, Meng Bai couldn't stay in the crew for long.

At the end of May, the Magnolia Award, one of the three most anticipated TV drama awards in the film and television industry, announced this year’s list of nominated works.

Arclight Films' first TV series, Peace Hotel, was shortlisted for four awards: "Best TV Series", "Best Screenwriter", "Best Actress" and "Best Art".

(End of this chapter)