How can you become a star without money?

Chapter 139 Little Thunder Dance Troupe [10,000-word update, please subscribe]

"The key to this model is attracting merchants. If I were to attract merchants myself, the communication costs with the platform would be very high. But if the platform attracts merchants and places orders for me, it would save a lot of trouble. I'm doing this for efficiency," Wang Yao explained, noticing Gong Yu's confusion.

"Purchase price range?" Gong Yu seemed to understand after hearing this.

"It's charged per minute, 1 RMB per minute, divided into three types: 5/15/30 minutes, to match different types of advertisements. 5 minutes is enough for everyday outfits, but for 3C products, cars, or even insurance, a full 30-minute short drama may be needed," Wang Yao explained.

"This price isn't cheap; it's almost as expensive as a TV series," Gong Yu said, frowning.

No wonder they went through a procurement partnership; they were asking for an exorbitant price. Some top-tier TV dramas in China now cost less than 10,000 yuan per minute.

“Customized products are naturally more expensive, but they are still cheaper than TVC advertisements. President Gong can use this advantage to attract investment.” Wang Yao smiled.

Compared to traditional TVC advertising, Wang Yao's model not only allows for a direct view of conversion data, but also amplifies conversion rates by purchasing traffic from Baidu, making it very attractive.

"Can I directly purchase the program 'Campus Belle'?" Gong Yu asked with a smile.

"Campus Belle currently has 52 episodes, released 4 times a week, totaling 200 episodes a year. It has millions of fans and generates over a million in sales. If President Gong wants to buy it, the cost will be considerable. This season alone will cost at least 1500 million, considering it's already a well-established program," Wang Yao said with a smile.

"The price is indeed not cheap," Gong Yu clicked his tongue.

The episode of "Campus Belle" is less than 5 minutes long, and the price is far higher than the average, but there's nothing that can be done because the show is already established and therefore entitled to a premium.

“The show ‘Campus Belle’ has the value of being a case study.” Wang Yao smiled slightly, “This program can be used to directly attract clients in the clothing and accessories categories.”

"What price would I have to pay if I wanted to have an exclusive partnership with an interest-based e-commerce platform?" Gong Yu asked again.

“We can’t discuss exclusive models because they’re easily copied and impossible to patent. Ultimately, it’s about content quality, so prices fluctuate. The only thing I can guarantee is that, given my company’s current size, our annual production volume should be less than 20,000 hours,” Wang Yao thought for a moment.

Luo Hongming's team consists of 8 people, and they can produce about 30 minutes of videos per week. As long as the quality is guaranteed, it should not be a problem to promote 10 teams at the same time. In addition, with the cluster effect of other execution positions in the company, both costs and sales can be improved.

Gong Yu gasped.

This is essentially forcing iQiyi to sign a 2 million yuan annual cooperation agreement!
If too few contracts are signed, the excess output will go to other platforms.

And the worst part is that he can just bear the price!

“Okay, I understand. I expect to get a response regarding the procurement cooperation in the next couple of days. In the meantime, I have a favor to ask: Mr. Wang, could you please refrain from contacting other platforms?” Gong Yu said with a smile.

“I had a very pleasant conversation with President Gong, no problem.” Wang Yao laughed heartily.

"President Wang is someone who can make friends." Gong Yu was overjoyed.

Afterwards, Gong Yu showed Wang Yao around the various technologies of Kiwi Fruit Company. He is a tech enthusiast and has always believed that technology can change the world.

It must be said that compared to other platforms, iQiyi was ahead in many aspects in its early stages.

While Wang Yao's collaboration with iQiyi appears to offer them significant strategic value, neither copyright nor interest-based e-commerce can generate profits in the short term.

The industry's development is driven by the giants, and Wang Yao naturally doesn't have the ability to drive it. His priority is to ensure that the resources he has can circulate quickly. Copyright is a high-quality asset, which can only be pledged for a short period of time and cannot be resold.

However, while interest-based e-commerce sounds promising at first glance, it hasn't actually taken off in the short video era and currently lacks the necessary conditions for survival. The "Campus Belle" model only benefits from the seeding effect, while the real driver of consumption is the secondary seeding on Mulan Street.

Therefore, even if this logic is applied to iQiyi and Baidu, they will only be heading down a dead end.

Because Baidu is not going to give up on the e-commerce field for the time being, and they are about to invest heavily in the group buying war in an attempt to break through, Wang Yao hopes to use Gong Yu's words to attract Baidu's attention to this model. In this way, during the later group buying war, a lot of fresh hot money may flow to Wang Yao.

This is actually a poisonous fruit, but it tastes unusually sweet to people over 1000 degrees.

Moreover, the advantage of partnering with iQiyi is that in the early stages, they rely heavily on content and will direct all their high-quality traffic to procurement projects like "Campus Belle".

But in reality, the two most important parts of this project are still in Wang Yao's hands.

One is the artist; no matter how much traffic is poured into them, the artist in front of the stage will ultimately benefit.

Secondly, for Mulan Street, video conversion relies on traffic generated from the comment section. Only by redirecting to Mulan Street for secondary product seeding can a sale be made. The conversion rate based solely on redirects will be very low, as it is general traffic.

It's like Baidu poured a lot of traffic into the project, ultimately benefiting Xinghuo's artists and Mulan Street.

Even if Baidu is aware of this problem, it has no choice but to accept this poisonous fruit in order to support the new model of kiwifruit.

After all, having something to eat is better than having nothing to eat at all.

This is the power of a model, and this is why PowerPoint presentations can make money.

Giants have always valued novelty and probability in their investments, because businesses that can guarantee profits can be directly copied from developed countries, but when it comes to replicating locally, novelty is what matters.

Wang Yao declined Gong Yu's invitation to dinner and went to check out Miao Miao's newly choreographed dance drama.

The Beijing Geological Auditorium, as one of the first cultural venues to undergo market-oriented transformation, is very famous in Beijing's arts and culture circles.

After several expansions and renovations over the decades, it is now a three-story theater with a building area of ​​5000 square meters. It has a main theater with 1300 seats and three smaller theaters with 100 seats each, equipped with professional lighting and projection systems, which can meet the needs of medium and large-scale performances and film conferences.

Before 07, this place mainly focused on movie screenings. In recent years, with the revival of some small theater industries, it has gradually developed towards theater rental and small concerts. The most famous of these is the Kaixin Mahua Theater Troupe, which has been able to book the main theater's box office almost every week for the past two years.

To ensure the quality of the dance drama, Miao Miao rented a small hall next door that could seat a hundred people at her own expense, which shows how much importance she attached to it. When Wang Yao arrived, they were still preparing for the final rehearsal and adjustments.

Because the original story of "The Matchmaker" was too grand, the cost of adapting it was very high. Miao Miao extracted a part of it and then asked Xiao Yang and the others to help adapt it into a short story, which mainly tells the story of three girls with different personalities after they joined the team.

Wang Yao glanced at it and found it somewhat reminiscent of the early stages of "Youth," though this was also a common feature of most song and dance troupes.

The dance drama has no dialogue and relies entirely on physical performance and lighting. Miao Miao certainly couldn't afford a professional lighting and props team.

It is estimated that the performance can only rely on physical tension. According to Ni Ni, this dance drama has also received support from Peking Opera teachers. In addition to Miao Miao, Jin Chen and Li Yitong, there are some other Peking Opera teachers participating, with a scale of about twenty people.

Wang Yao had only made the idea on a whim, thinking that Miao Miao would just put on a solo dance to please the eye, but he didn't expect her to take it so seriously.

Many of my colleagues came to watch, and there were even a few unfamiliar faces.

"Mr. Wang, this is Zhang Chen from Kaixin Mahua. Mr. Zhang helped a lot with the stage lighting this time," Ni Ni introduced him to a long-haired, bespectacled man.

"Mr. Wang, I've long admired your name and we've known each other for a long time," Zhang Chen said with a smile.

"Hello, Mr. Zhang, thank you for your help." Although Wang Yao didn't know much about the situation, he still exchanged a few pleasantries first.

When people mention Kaixin Mahua, most people's first reaction is Shen Teng, Ma Li and others, but people in the industry pay more attention to Zhang Chen. As the leader and even savior of the offline theater industry, his status is equivalent to Guo Degang in the crosstalk world.

He single-handedly not only saved the almost defunct offline comedy stage play, but also indirectly changed the direction of comedy films and the comedy industry.

What's most absurd is that Zhang Chen, like Yi Xiaoxing, started out as a civil engineer, but Zhang Chen's expertise lies more in operations and marketing.

He combined traditional stage plays with musicals and other genres, creating a unique Mahua-style format. He also used an industrial standard operating procedure (SOP) to integrate creation, performance, derivatives, and actor incubation into a four-in-one industrial chain model, steadily supplying talent and content to theaters and the comedy circle.

The four-stage review system and the A/B role system further ensure fair competition within the organization.

The success of Kaixin Mahua is not the success of a particular person or subject matter, but the success of an industrial thinking paradigm. This person is definitely a rare talent.

"Mr. Wang, you flatter me. It was just a small favor. If we hadn't been pressed for time, we could have presented the stage even better. I've been paying close attention to Kanpianer.com. Is Mr. Wang planning to get into offline theater ticketing?" Zhang Chen has a typical businessman's mindset; he can deduce the cause from the phenomenon.

“How can we compete with DaMai.com in this field? I’m personally interested in dance dramas and want to see if there’s a market for a dance variety show.” Wang Yao smiled. “However, we have many offline theaters and stage infrastructure. If Mr. Zhang has theater needs in the future, we can cooperate with him.”

Kanpianer.com currently has over 300 partner cinemas, many of which are converted from old theaters, making them ideal for offline theater collaborations.

“That’s great! We’ve just expanded to 20 cities across the country this year and are preparing to tour our new play ‘Daydream.’ I wonder if we could promote it through the Kanpianer.com forum and get some advance tickets?” Zhang Chen said readily.

"A tour of more than 20 cities? That's quite a scale." Wang Yao raised an eyebrow slightly.

He didn't know much about the offline theater industry and didn't expect that they already had such a large market base at this time.

“These are all fans we’ve built up over the years. If you have time, Mr. Wang, we have a rehearsal tonight, why don’t you come and join us?” Zhang Chen extended an invitation. “Sure, I’ll take them to learn from their advanced experience,” Wang Yao readily agreed, and continued to inquire about information regarding the opening of a new twisted dough stick restaurant.

You wouldn't believe it until you ask around, and what you find out is astonishing: last year alone, the film "Somali Pirates" grossed over 1800 million yuan, and the company's total box office revenue for the year approached 4000 million yuan.

Wang Yao estimated that the profit margin was around 20%, which was more profitable than many film and television companies of similar size.

Most importantly, there is a high repurchase rate, which is based on the old-to-new model. As long as the script quality is good, the growth is basically stable. No wonder people who perform crosstalk and stand-up comedy are so rich.

Moreover, small theaters have the advantage of being a small, private circle, allowing for more private projects to be done and more opportunities to validate creative direction and market value.

After chatting for a while, Miao Miao and the others were almost ready. Ni Ni went on stage and even acted as the host for a bit before the performance officially began.

A 20-minute program doesn't really reveal much depth, because it relies on grand scenes to deliver a visually impactful experience.

Especially on a big stage, it's either a solo dance that focuses attention or a group dance that offers a wide perspective; otherwise, if you want to create content through clothing, you really can only rely on camera language and stage lighting.

However, it must be admitted that Miao Miao did put in a lot of effort. At least the solo and duet dances of the three main actors were quite wonderful. However, Li Yitong's basic skills were obviously much weaker and she was not as outstanding as the other two.

Small-scale dance dramas do fall short in terms of expressive tension compared to spoken dramas with dialogue.

After the performance, Wang Yao praised Miao Miao and the others before going next door with Zhang Chen to watch a play by Kaixin Mahua.

"Nini, is President Yao satisfied or dissatisfied with this reaction?" Miao Miao asked Ni Ni anxiously after Wang Yao left.

"I really can't tell, but I think it looks pretty good. The stage design is a bit lacking, but it's good enough for a rehearsal," Ni Ni comforted her.

But based on her understanding of Wang Yao, the fact that he didn't give out a 'reward' on the spot after the performance most likely means he was still considering it.

Wang Yao is quite efficient in his work, and he usually expresses his support for projects he likes as soon as possible.

"So, that's not good, is it?" Miao Miao's face was a little pale.

She was under a lot of pressure during this period. Although she had signed a contract to become a C-level artist, she was not very interested in acting and lacked confidence in other aspects. For a while, she felt somewhat lost.

"Don't worry, there are bound to be some projects that suit you among all the company's projects. Let's go watch a show next door." Seeing that she was a little disappointed, Ni Ni pulled her next door, planning to find out Wang Yao's thoughts later.

Today, Kaixin Mahua rehearsed "Daydream," which is more like an Indian musical, with singing and dancing, switching between folk and rock music. But I have to say the atmosphere was really good and it was easy to get into the performance.

Excellent small theater performances do indeed possess an extraordinary magic.

Even after watching it, you might feel a sense of detachment from the inside out.

Kaixin Mahua is still in the early stages of a "big family" model where members stick together for mutual support. Even during rehearsals, most members of the troupe come to watch and learn, and share their thoughts and opinions.

Wang Yao saw familiar faces such as Shen Teng, Ma Li, and Wang Ning, who hadn't yet become overweight due to middle age; at this point, they hadn't fallen out.

It must be admitted that humans are strange creatures; they can share hardship, but it's difficult for them to share happiness.

"The atmosphere in the Kaixin Mahua troupe is really great," Wang Yao praised.

"We were all like-minded people who didn't have any acting opportunities at the time, so the atmosphere was naturally harmonious," Zhang Chen said with a smile.

"For such a large team to maintain such a great atmosphere, Mr. Zhang deserves a lot of credit," Wang Yao praised. "Mr. Zhang, would you like to invest?"

Zhang Chen was taken aback by the question. Even though Kaixin Mahua has already generated tens of millions in revenue, no investors are optimistic about it so far. The general consensus is that no matter how well a live theater is done, it is difficult to scale up because the requirements for personnel, venues, and content are all higher than those for the film and television industry.

Because live performance is the most difficult, just as stage plays are always the highest stage of performance, and film is always the art of light and shadow editing.

The closer you are to the audience, the farther you are from capital.

This is a common understanding within the industry.

Even those who love performing so much and have stage performances every year sometimes prefer to give up opportunities for live performances in order to get one or two insignificant shots on television or in film crews.

Offline theaters have always been on the fringes of the entertainment industry.

“Mr. Wang, offline theaters may not be as profitable as you think. They require continuous investment every year, and there are no dividends.” Zhang Chen explained after regaining his composure.

"If the industry is full of people who pump water and not people who add water, then the industry is not far from dying. I am very interested in small theaters, whether it is stage plays, dance dramas, or even crosstalk, Errenzhuan, and stand-up comedy. Compared to the cold screen, the fourth wall of the stage has at least a bit more warmth."

I currently have theater resources and online distribution channels, which can bring more convenient and affordable services to offline theaters in the future. In addition, I can also help negotiate co-branded adaptations of some film and television copyrights.

"If it's a good script, it might even be made into a movie. Mr. Zhang, you could consider it." Wang Yao chuckled.

Zhang Chen unconsciously swallowed. Theaters and publicity have always been his weaknesses. If he had his own theater as a base, the effect of stage creation would be improved several times over, and most importantly, publicity would be much better.

Why can opening a new twisted dough stick shop be profitable?

The reason he didn't invest too much in marketing and promotion wasn't because he didn't want to, but because he didn't dare to. A single marketing campaign could use up all the profits of a project, making it impossible to guarantee subsequent expansion. So he could only wait for the market to mature.

Even many excellent scripts within the troupe can only be screened in a queue due to insufficient theaters and weak promotion, because offline plays cannot cultivate an audience market without a year of repeated tours.

If someone can solve these two problems and release multiple shows simultaneously, the development speed will definitely take another step forward.

Moreover, if the script could actually be made into a movie, it would be an absolutely huge thing for the entire theater troupe.

"Xiao Chen, what are you thinking about? Everyone's leaving, and you're still not done talking?" Shen Teng's cheeky voice woke Zhang Chen up.

"Old Shen, do you want to make a movie?" Zhang Chen asked, snapping out of his reverie.

"What? I want to go to the moon! Stop trying to fool us with empty promises. I'd be grateful if you just let me on stage," Shen Teng retorted, rolling his eyes.

After watching the play, Wang Yao took everyone out for a late-night snack.

During the process, I noticed that Miao Miao's eyes were red, as if she had been crying. I thought she was moved by the play, but when Wang Yao showed concern for her, she cried even harder.

It turns out that after seeing Wang Yao's high praise for Kaixin Mahua's program, she thought of her own program and felt that she had let down the trust and help of her colleagues.

“I praised them because the show was really good, and they’ve been a professional team for almost ten years. You can’t compare to them,” Wang Yao said, trying to comfort them.

"I've been dancing for almost ten years now." Miao Miao felt even more ashamed after hearing this.

"You danced well, and the choreography was good too. It's just that this format isn't really suitable for a small theater. I was oversimplifying things before. Dance dramas need to be performed on a large scale, or as solo performances," Wang Yao said, patting her shoulder to comfort her.

"Ni Ni also told me about your situation. Don't rush into acting; your modeling income should be enough to support you. We'll continue preparing for the dance variety show."

I'm planning to set up a dance troupe, with Ni Ni as the director. She'll be responsible for all creative and execution work related to dance elements within the company. Although dance dramas aren't our style, dance elements are still very important in the film and television industry, and you can still shine in your professional field.”

Hearing that Wang Yao hadn't given up on his dance plans because of her mistake, Miao Miao's sorrow instantly turned to joy. "Really?"

If she were to become the leader of this dance troupe, she wouldn't dare to be happy. As a newcomer, it would be too easy for people to misunderstand if she were to become the leader of an internal dance troupe. But the fact that Ni Ni is the leader indicates that this is a legitimate project.

“Of course it’s true. I’ve already come up with a name for it: Little Thunder Dance Troupe,” Wang Yao said with a smile.

"This name is strange," Ni Ni said, frowning.

"It's taken from a five-character quatrain, which describes a pair of sister mountains and expresses the poet's sentiments through imagery. The name is 'Big Thunder and Little Thunder,'" Wang Yao said with a smile.

"That sounds quite charming," Miao Miao blinked.

"Then why not call it the Big Thunder Dance Troupe?" Ni Ni asked, puzzled.

Wang Yao glanced at her and chuckled softly.

"Because of Da Lei, I have someone else in mind."

(End of this chapter)