Chinese Entertainment Intelligence King

Chapter 399 Boss Yan's Ecological Synergy, Wu Peifu (from "The Founding of a Republic")
In June 2010, the World Cup, held every four years, was held in South Africa.

Because of a certain team's poor performance, the World Cup may not receive the same level of nationwide attention in China as the Olympics, but its influence is still considerable.

With fans, related audiences, and followers, the event has a scale of several hundred million, making it still one of the top sporting events.

A large influence and high level of attention also mean traffic.

Two months ago, several major internet news platforms began vying for exclusive coverage of the World Cup.

Tencent, Weibo, Baidu, and the three major portal websites Sohu, Sina, and NetEase are fighting tooth and nail.

In the end, Weibo, Tencent, and Baidu emerged victorious, while the three major portal websites suffered a crushing defeat.

This battle for World Cup broadcasting rights is also seen as a shift in the power of internet information discourse.

The three major portal websites that were once unparalleled have gradually been replaced by new internet giants.

With its massive user base and traffic pool, Tencent, Baidu, the search portal, and Weibo, which revolutionized the mechanism of information dissemination and sharing on the internet, have become the new dominant forces in the field of internet information.

Of course, the decline of the three major portal websites in terms of information is due to the development of the times, but it is also related to the shift in their strategic focus.

For example, NetEase has long since transformed from a portal website into a game company.

Back in 2007, NetEase's game revenue accounted for 85% of its total revenue, while its original portal website became a dispensable subsidiary business.

Sohu has been expanding its reach in various sectors, including search, games, video, and social networking. Although Sohu's portal website remains one of its core businesses, it is not so severely affected by the decline in the information sector.

Sina is the worst off.

Because of the success of its blog, Sina was the only portal website that chose to focus on its information business and then expand into social networking.

As a result, it encountered Weibo and was brutally suppressed by Yan Li, and is now at the bottom of the three major portal websites.

However, Sina still has some foundation, and it is said that it is now preparing to enter the knowledge Q&A and in-depth discussion community, as well as the vertical social field that conforms to the mobile Internet.

Both of these are meant to differentiate themselves from Weibo, a platform for the general public.

Sina has an advantage in the former case. After all, it has worked hard for so many years to build a portal website, blogs, and microblogging platforms. It is not difficult for them to find some experts and high-quality content creators.

Weibo, as a popular social platform, has the advantages of comprehensive and fast information dissemination, but its disadvantages include a lack of detail and personalization, as well as a diverse user base.

To address the shortcomings of Weibo, we will launch corresponding Q&A discussion forums and cultivate a high-quality user base, thereby competing with Weibo.

As for the latter, it was an experiment by Sina.

Among the many internet platforms, Sina is considered one of the more astute in the mobile era. It's just a pity that it encountered the unstoppable Yan Li; otherwise, the outcome would have been uncertain.

Sina believes that the new mobile era will inevitably bring about new ways of socializing.

Even if Tencent and Weibo take the lion's share, they still have the opportunity to find alternative ways to get a piece of the pie.

Sina currently lacks the capital and time to compete with various giants. It needs to recover its losses and regain the recognition of the capital market before seeking new opportunities.

Yan Li didn't pay much attention to Sina's moves. After learning that Weibo had acquired the relevant copyrights, he began to intentionally promote further cooperation and integration between Weibo and Tudou.com.

Tudou.com also secured the rights to the South Africa World Cup.

Compared to news platforms like Weibo, video websites are actually able to capture a larger share of the World Cup's traffic.

After all, watching football requires seeing the game itself. While text and image-based information platforms might grab some news attention, they can't satisfy the need to watch the game.

Of course, the television platforms that are still the mainstream for watching football games take the biggest slice of the pie.

However, television stations have limited functions, while video websites, with their on-demand, replay, and video clip services, as well as the large number of fans who are increasingly accustomed to watching games online as the internet becomes more widespread, are bound to capture a significant market share and have immense potential.

As a result, not only were several news and internet platforms fiercely competing, but major video websites also joined the fray.

Currently, six video websites, including Tudou, Youku, Ku6, and Sohu Video, have obtained the World Cup authorization.

With so many competitors, a fierce battle for traffic is expected.

To this end, Yan Li convened a joint meeting with senior executives from Weibo and Tudou.com to prepare for a joint operation between Tudou.com and Weibo.

Prior to this, Tudou.com and Weibo, although allies and strategic partners, tended to operate independently.

This is quite normal. Weibo is Weibo, and Tudou.com is Tudou.com. Although the two companies are connected, they are actually owned by two different people.

Both sides can provide each other with some support and assistance, but there is no obligation or possibility for them to cooperate deeply.

Tudou.com cannot control Weibo, and Weibo cannot command Tudou.com; the latter will not give in.

But things are different now; the two owners are the same person.

With orders issued from the same source and actions taken in unison, even if they are not as close as family and as inextricably linked, no one dares to easily disagree or be overtly perfunctory.

Previously, when the two companies cooperated, if Tudou.com didn't cooperate, Wang Wei would turn a blind eye, while Weibo would outwardly comply but inwardly defy, and Tudou.com could only protest a few words.

But now, if anyone causes trouble, the other party can directly file a complaint with Yan Li, and then Yan Li will personally deal with them.

In this respect, the level and efficiency of resource integration between the two sides are incomparable to what they were before.

This battle for World Cup viewership can be seen as a testing ground for the deep cooperation between the two sides.

Yan Li's elaborate scheme to seize Tudou.com was not for the purpose of going public and cashing out, but rather to build his own industrial chain.

In his vision, Weibo and Tudou.com will continue to deepen their integration in the future, building a powerful ecosystem of content + social interaction, so that the two billion-dollar internet platforms can achieve a synergistic effect of 1+1>2.

This kind of in-depth cooperation cannot be accomplished in just a few words. Both parties need to continuously cooperate and experiment to explore and discuss an effective and accurate mechanism.

Even in Yan Li's heart, the idea was not only to explore the cooperation mechanism between the two companies, but also to push for the two companies to merge into one when necessary.

This would not only be more beneficial to the development of both parties, but also protect his personal interests.

Yan Li's foundation at Tudou.com is still a bit shallow.

If Tudou.com and Weibo were to be further integrated, his personal shares in both companies and the overlapping shares in the companies would form a more complex and stable equity structure, with each having elements of the other, making Yan Li's position unshakeable.

Of course, this is just a hypothetical scenario.

Yan Li has just taken over Tudou.com and is currently focused on company development. He does not want to have conflicts with shareholders for the time being. He will consider other things after he has fully established himself.

Yan Li was quite satisfied with the outcome of this joint meeting between the senior executives of Weibo and Tudou.com.

Putting everything else aside, just the fact that the accounts are connected, content is shared, and data is coordinated is enough to keep Tencent's CEO, Taotao, and the head of Youku up at night.

Account integration allows users to log in to Weibo and Tudou accounts with a single click, which not only brings users of the two platforms closer together but also attracts a large number of new users.

People who use Tudou.com are not necessarily Weibo users, and people who use Weibo are not necessarily Tudou.com users. By linking the two accounts and using backend data, you can accurately attract new users.

Content sharing: Content from Weibo and Tudou can be seamlessly shared to another platform.

In this way, it not only provides relevant content for Weibo, but also brings a large amount of traffic to Tudou.com, and further realizes the linkage between the two platforms.

Data collaboration establishes a unified data state, analyzes user behavior across both platforms, and builds a more comprehensive and accurate database.

This allows for more accurate content recommendations and ad placements for users, improving user retention and maximizing resource utilization.

With these three moves, Weibo gained much from its improvements and additions, while Tudou.com, with its inferior traffic and user base, clearly benefited greatly.

After the meeting, several senior executives from Tudou.com were so happy they were grinning from ear to ear.

Hello Mr. Yan!

Chairman Yan's arrival is wonderful!
Even Chairman Yan arrived a little late!
Many people even secretly regret that former boss Wang Wei had opened up Tudou.com earlier and cooperated deeply with Weibo, thus reaping the benefits and enabling Tudou.com to experience explosive growth, instead of being suppressed by Youku.

Wang Wei knew he had to resort to swearing, but did he not know the benefits of being deeply integrated with Weibo?
The key point is that this way, Tudou.com and Weibo are now inextricably linked, making them vulnerable to Yan Li's manipulation and leaving him in a passive position. Sooner or later, Tudou.com will belong to Yan Li.

Now that Tudou.com is owned by Yan, there's no longer that concern, so they can comfortably enjoy the benefits.

This can be considered a gift that Yan Li brought to Tudou.com after taking over, and also his trump card for controlling Tudou.com.

In addition to the general cooperation between the two platforms, the meeting also discussed joint operational plans related to the World Cup.

Both platforms have their own roles. Weibo acts as a topic engine and traffic pool, generating topics, sparking interaction, and gathering traffic.

Tudou.com serves as the content production center and user experience hub, providing professional, fast, and diverse video content. It leverages the traffic generated by Weibo and then feeds that traffic back into Weibo discussions, creating a virtuous cycle.

If Weibo only focuses on discussion and lacks user experience, it risks losing the hard-earned traffic to other platforms. Tudou, on the other hand, has content but no traffic, so it won't get much of the pie.

Now the two companies complement each other, one creating momentum and attracting traffic, and the other showcasing their accumulated experience. They are interdependent, sharing traffic and advertising revenue, which is simply wonderful.

By the way, Yi An can also get a share of the pie; her content team, celebrity resources, and advertising business resources are all things that both sides need.

Full-chain marketing, full-chain interaction, full-chain profit generation!

Yan Li wondered how well Jia Yueting, the founder of LeEco, was figuring out his ecosystem strategy.

But he's already able to start telling the capital market the story of Mr. Yan's ecosystem.

Yan Li's ecological story may not be as wonderful and powerful as Jia Yueting's, but the key is that he doesn't have a sore neck or feel suffocated, and he can make money steadily.

...

Beijing, Yi'an Film and Television

Since taking over Tudou.com, Yan Li has come here once every two weeks.

In some ways, he seems less responsible than Wang Zhongjun of Huayi Brothers.

However, no one in Yi'an expressed any dissatisfaction, including Yi'an's shareholders and stockholders; they even worshipped Yan Li.

The reason is simple: although Yan Li doesn't come to the company, he took over Tudou.com, which played a decisive role in promoting Yi'an's future development.

Since Yan Li announced his takeover of Tudou.com, Yi An's stock price has soared in the past two weeks.

Moreover, it's enjoyable not only in the short term but also in the long term.

Most film and television stocks are asset-light, high-risk, and have large price fluctuations, so many people don't like to hold them for the long term.

Now that it is deeply integrated with Tudou.com, Yi'an has an additional terminal platform to back it up, greatly improving its ability to withstand risks.

Given its existing cinema assets and business, even if Yi'an experiences some unfavorable performance and its stock price fluctuates, the fluctuations will be far lower than those of other film and television stocks.

If a company's stock is more stable and secure than its peers, it will attract more investors to buy it, and with more buyers, the stock price will rise.

For this one achievement alone, let alone Yan Li being a hands-off boss, even if he took the company's female artists on trips every day, everyone would still say that Chairman Yan is a man of taste and knows how to enjoy life.

Moreover, Yan Li wasn't completely hands-off; he handled some business online every day.

Back at the company, I had a short meeting with several senior executives, listened to a brief report, and was just about to have a one-on-one chat when my secretary reminded me.

Third Master Han is here!
Yan Li gave a wry smile and led the other man into the office: "Third Master, is it really necessary to come all the way to the company to ambush me?"

Third Master Han fiddled with the teacup on Yan Li's coffee table: "It's not that I'm blaming you, but you suddenly went back on your word after we made a deal, so of course I'm not going to do it."

The two were talking about the patriotic film "The Founding of a Republic" to be released next year. At the time, Master Han had some concerns and arranged for Yan Li to help with the arrangements.

As a result, Yan Li was busy with Yi An's listing and now he's sorting out Tudou.com, so he's planning to cancel the movie. Han Sanye tried to persuade him over the phone but failed, so he had to go to his door in person.

"Third Master, it's not that I stood you up, it's just that I made it in time."

"If it weren't for Tudou.com, I would definitely have cooperated, but now I really can't spare the time. I even have to squeeze in time to go home and see my kids."

It was no secret to those who cared, and it was naturally not kept from Master Han either. Master Han even sent a gift when Young Master Yan celebrated his one-month birthday.

Now Yan Li is also using this as an excuse, saying that there's no time for father and son to reunite, so you can't force me any further.

Even Master Han was at a loss.

Yan Li is no longer the young Yan he once was. He now owns three companies worth tens of billions of yuan, ranks among the top ten richest people, and is a representative figure of entrepreneurs.

Yan Li respectfully addressed him as Third Master, which was out of respect for China Film Group and because of their long-standing friendship.

If he truly considers himself Third Master and tries to manipulate Yan Li, then he's just senile.

"If you're really busy, you don't have to make any arrangements, but just show your name and make a few appearances to help me out, that should be fine, right?"

Master Han made a new suggestion, and Yan Li hesitated for a moment before nodding in agreement.

He and Master Han had a relationship; Master Han had helped him a lot, and now that Master Han needed his help, it wouldn't be right for him to ignore it.

Actually, if he hadn't been so busy, he wouldn't have stood up Master Han.

Despite Yan Li's current arrogance, it doesn't mean he can disregard China Film Group.

China Film Group itself can control Yi'an's film business, not to mention the behemoth behind it. Han Sanye is self-aware, and so is Yan Li.

We had a brief chat about "The Founding of a Republic". The script is finished, and the main actors specializing in certain roles have been selected.

Among the main actors, Yan Li's only objection was that Yuan Shikai had chosen Chow Yun-fat.

The latter's acting skills are fine, but Yan Li feels that his appearance doesn't quite fit the bill.

However, after Yan Li learned about the proposed actors for the Beiyang warlord role, he felt that using Chow Yun-fat was also acceptable.

With that star-studded lineup, anyone without Jay Chou's status wouldn't be able to command the stage.

After chatting for a while, Master Han asked Yan Li if he wanted to play a cameo role.

Anyway, Yan Li has to go visit the set and make an appearance; he shouldn't go for nothing. He should play a role and help boost the box office.

In the previous film, "The Founding of a Republic," Yan Li played a minor role, which Yan Li felt was a pity. If he were to act in the film this time, he would make sure to give him a significant role.

"You can pick any suitable role you like. How about Cai E? His role and image are both good."

"I doubt I'll have that time."

Yan Li had read the script for "The Founding of a Republic". Cai E had a significant role in the early stages, second only to Yuan Shikai. Filming would take at least a week.

He recalled the script, focusing on roles that were small in number but substantial, had independent storylines, few scenes with other characters, flexible schedules, and that Yan Li personally didn't dislike.

"How about I play Wu Peifu?"

In the script, Wu Peifu appears during the National Protection Movement, where he, as a key member of the Beiyang warlords, suppresses Cai E.

At that time, Wu Peifu was around thirty or forty years old. Yan Li could easily wear a beard, and his personal image was also suitable for playing this kind of tough soldier.

Although Wu Peifu was a warlord of the Beiyang Army, he did not lose his national integrity, and Yan Li personally had some goodwill towards him.

"Wu Peifu".

Master Han thought about it and agreed that the image was suitable and the weight was sufficient, but the role was a bit small.

However, if there are too few scenes, more can be added. The period when "The Founding of a Republic" was made happened to be the period when Wu Peifu was active.

For example, during the May Fourth Movement, unlike the widespread resentment and suppression within the Beiyang government, Wu Peifu was one of the few warlords who openly supported the students. Historically, he even drafted a telegram in support, which at the time shocked the entire nation.
Of course, Wu may have had the idea of ​​winning people's hearts and minds and attacking political enemies behind this, but the movie can incorporate that.

"Third Master is quite something, he can rattle off anecdotes from the Republican era with ease."

Yan Li looked at him with newfound respect, but Third Master Han waved his hand and said, "This person was originally an important figure of that era. The information and plot were designed, but it was later cut due to length constraints."

Films like "The Founding of a Republic," with their grand backdrop and numerous characters, have many subplots and storylines.

Originally, the script featured a lot of scenes with Yuan Shikai and the Beiyang warlords, as well as the Tongmenghui (Revolutionary Alliance). However, it was later discovered that the scenes were overshadowing the main plot, so many scenes were painfully cut.

Even so, in the current script, the Beiyang warlords, besides Yuan Shikai, Duan Qirui, Feng Guozhang, and Li Yuanhong all have their own storylines, and Zhang Zuolin also makes an appearance.

When the time comes, these people's scenes will be filmed, but it's unclear how many will be included. In that case, we wouldn't mind giving Wu Peifu some more screen time.

Yan Li did not refuse. The two scenes that Master Han mentioned earlier were independent in plot and he didn't have much screen time.

Adding more clothes is fine; it's just a matter of changing clothes a couple more times and moving between venues. It won't take long.

Besides Yan Li, Han Sanye also had his eye on Yi An artists such as Fan Xiaopang and Deng Chao.

The main characters in "The Founding of a Republic" are Tang Guoqiang and Zhang Guoli, so it's not easy for them to perform. "The Founding of the Party" has more characters and uses more stars, so Han Sanye is just picking people out of nowhere.

Yan Li had no problem with it; he was already personally involved, so there was no need for him to ask his artists for help.

Yi An was the second producer of "The Founding of a Republic," so the box office success benefited her...

(End of this chapter)