June 3rd, Sunday.
After a series of operations on his laptop at home, Meng Chang leaned back slightly, carefully examined the fruits of his day-long labor, and then nodded with satisfaction.
Good, absolutely perfect!
Of course, this so-called “perfection” was a conclusion that could only be drawn from his perspective.
To celebrate, Meng Chang deliberately opened a can of soda, allowing himself a moment of happiness.
Although Meng Chang’s living situation wasn’t great, this laptop was provided by Tenda for work purposes, with all specs maxed out, making it more than capable of handling this simple task.
This high-end laptop was equipped with a 10-bit color, true-to-life 2K high refresh rate screen, which would be more than sufficient even for professional film and video experts.
But now, only a simple Photoshop program was open on this computer, and the image inside had a solid color background, with the main content consisting of many blocks of text pieced together, looking rather disorganized.
It contained information like this: “Eternal Cycle” highest site-wide ranking: 24th place, Fantasy section top five, total recommendation tickets reaching 370,000…
The achievements of other books from the Inspiration Class were also prominently listed.
There were seven books in total, along with the achievements of these books.
This content was spread across the poster in a disorganized manner, like a tangled mess, intertwined and complex.
It couldn’t be called ugly, but it certainly wasn’t outstanding either.
Meng Chang, of course, understood poster layout quite well.
Generally speaking, the fewer words on a poster, the better, because large, simple graphics would be more conducive to creating visual impact.
The more text there was, the smaller the font would need to be, making it difficult for viewers to read, or they simply wouldn’t want to read all that text—naturally diminishing the promotional effect.
Of course, there were some unavoidable situations. For instance, many museum posters often needed to use a lot of text to introduce certain exhibits. In such cases, designers would deliberately make some adjustments when designing posters, such as adjusting the size of the text, font combinations, layouts, etc., to make the overall layout of the poster more comfortable.
Meng Chang understood this, but he deliberately chose not to do it.
He just dumped all the content onto the poster and made some relatively simple adjustments.
Although most people could clearly see the content on the poster, it definitely couldn’t be said to have any aesthetic appeal.
The reason was very simple: why make the poster look beautiful? Wouldn’t that go against the goal of reverse promotion?
A simple touch-up to make the poster look passable was enough.
The content of the poster was also finalized by Meng Chang after careful consideration and understanding of a lot of relevant knowledge.
The achievements of these works from the Inspiration Class weren’t particularly impressive.
Site-wide ranking in the twenties, category ranking in the top five, total recommendation tickets of only 370,000… Even within the Endpoint Chinese Network, these couldn’t be considered outstanding figures; they seemed rather pathetic.
If someone unfamiliar with web novels saw these figures, they might think they were good, but anyone with even a slight understanding of web novels would know these figures were quite poor.
This created an effect of seeming to praise while actually disparaging.
Most crucially, people would think that the person who made this promotional plan “didn’t understand the web novel industry,” that they were an outsider, rather than suspecting they had deliberately sabotaged the promotional plan.
This way, Meng Chang’s goal would be achieved.
To prevent leaks, Meng Chang had gone to great lengths. When doing research, he had disguised himself and gone privately and discreetly, without being seen by anyone. He had also created the plan secretly at home, without asking Endpoint Chinese Network for any internal data, instead collecting some publicly available data from the Endpoint Chinese Network app.
Even the promotional poster was personally photoshopped by Meng Chang.
When he went to work on Monday, Meng Chang would hand this poster directly to the Advertising and Marketing Department, asking them to immediately put it up, unchanged, at bus stops, subway stations, and on websites in various cities.
This way, even if Mr. Pei had planted spies or moles in the Advertising and Marketing Department, they wouldn’t have time to change his promotional plan. It would even greatly increase the difficulty for Mr. Pei to secretly sabotage it!
The more Meng Chang thought about it, the more he felt his plan was perfect and flawless.
He saved the poster, took a couple more sips of his soda, and then prepared to go downstairs to get something to eat.
Feeling good about recent events, Meng Chang decided to walk a bit further and go to the nearby food court for an all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ meal.
Although Tenda’s work meals were delicious, all delivered from Slackin’ Delivery, they were, after all, too healthy. Sometimes when he wanted to reward himself, he needed something a bit more sinful.
“Would you like to learn about a new interactive fitness experience, sir?”
As Meng Chang was humming a tune on his way to the food court, he suddenly heard a familiar sales pitch, and a hand appeared in front of him with a flyer.
He instinctively wanted to avoid it, but then suddenly realized that today’s gym promotion slogan seemed somewhat different from before.
Previously it had always been: “Interested in swimming and fitness?”
But today it had changed to: “Would you like to learn about a new interactive fitness experience?”
The difference seemed quite significant!
Meng Chang reached out to take the flyer and saw that the content was also different from traditional gyms.
The flyer featured many characters from “Fitness Battle,” striking either cool or charming poses, along with a rendering of a Smart Fitness Clothes Rack.
Below were a series of promotional texts, mainly introducing the Smart Fitness Clothes Rack and the “Fitness Battle” game.
The back of the flyer had the name and logo of “Starbird Fitness,” as well as the specific location of their nearby branch at the food court. It also mentioned that there was currently an 85% discount on membership cards, which was very attractive.
Meng Chang was confused.
“What’s going on?”
“Isn’t the Smart Fitness Clothes Rack a Tenda product?”
“Tenda’s own gym is called Tuoguan Fitness, not Starbird Fitness, right?”
“Could it be… a business partnership?”
Although this matter had nothing to do with Meng Chang, he still coincidentally went to the basement level of the food court and found the location of this Starbird Fitness.
It was absolutely bustling with people!
Previously, Meng Chang didn’t have a strong impression of this Starbird Fitness, but he was absolutely certain that this gym hadn’t been so popular before.
But now, looking from a distance at the entrance, he could see that several Smart Fitness Clothes Racks had been placed in the main area of the hall, with many members trying them out and quite a few people watching.
Several client managers were moving back and forth, introducing this new equipment and how to use it to new customers who had been attracted by the flyers, and taking the opportunity to promote membership cards.
Meng Chang couldn’t help but secretly sigh: Mr. Pei really knew how to make money!
He had created the promotional plan for the Smart Fitness Clothes Rack, so he naturally understood this product very well.
But Meng Chang had always thought the Smart Fitness Clothes Rack was a home fitness equipment.
He never expected that Mr. Pei had successfully sold this equipment to other gyms as well, expanding from home use to commercial use!
Once this market opened up, it would generate a very substantial income.
Just one gym would buy more than a dozen units, and with so many gyms across the country, how large would this market be?
All that could be said was that Mr. Pei’s vision was truly extraordinary!
Meng Chang had always considered himself a business genius, but compared to Mr. Pei, he was still far behind.
Although he didn’t want to admit it, this was an indisputable fact.
Just then, Meng Chang suddenly saw a familiar figure.
“Mr. Li?!”
Meng Chang quickly stepped aside to avoid being discovered by Li Shi.
Fortunately, Li Shi was chatting with Che Rong, the owner of Starbird Fitness, and there were many people in the gym, so he didn’t notice Meng Chang.
Judging from the smiles on both their faces, they were obviously very satisfied with the current state of Starbird Fitness.
“Sure enough, Mr. Li is behind this again!”
Meng Chang couldn’t help but have an “as expected” feeling, and realized that his previous failure with the Smart Fitness Clothes Rack promotional plan was absolutely not a coincidence, but inevitable!
Projects associated with Mr. Li were definitely key projects that Mr. Pei valued, with an extremely high chance of success!
If he had known earlier that Mr. Li was also involved in the Smart Fitness Clothes Rack project, Meng Chang would absolutely not have done this promotional plan.
It could only be said that Mr. Li had hidden his involvement too well.
If Meng Chang hadn’t had the impulse to come to this food court to eat, he wouldn’t have run into Mr. Li with the owner of Starbird Fitness, and wouldn’t have known about Mr. Li’s connection to the Smart Fitness Clothes Rack.
“It seems I need to establish a principle for the future: Three Avoidances!”
“Any Tenda project that Mr. Li is involved in, absolutely must be avoided.”
“Any Tenda project with a high correlation to games, absolutely must be avoided.”
“Any Tenda marketing project that burns money to give benefits, absolutely must be avoided.”
“As long as I firmly remember these three avoidance principles, I can avoid most high-success-rate projects!”
“Looking at it this way… the failure of the Smart Fitness Clothes Rack promotion shouldn’t be a coincidence, but an inevitability.”
“In the future, as long as I strictly follow the three avoidance principles for screening, the probability of filtering out the correct answer will definitely greatly increase.”
“The Inspiration Class plan this time should be fine and won’t be affected.”
Meng Chang was delighted, thinking he was one step closer to completely unveiling the mysterious veil of Tenda and Mr. Pei, and one step closer to steadily earning his commission. So he happily went to eat his Korean BBQ.
Inside Starbird Fitness, Li Shi was chatting with Che Rong.
The day before yesterday, the Smart Fitness Clothes Racks had gradually arrived, and after yesterday’s setup and promotion, today’s customer flow had already shown a significant increase!
This made both Li Shi and Che Rong smile with joy, because it meant that their direction was correct, and the new model adopted by Starbird Fitness indeed had great potential!
Li Shi said, “I’ll discuss with the other investors and invest another sum of money in Starbird Fitness to open more stores. We must firmly grasp this opportunity and differentiate ourselves from other gyms in Jingzhou.”
Che Rong quickly nodded: “Thank you, Mr. Li! But… opening branches on such a grand scale, will Mr. Pei really not be angry?”
Li Shi smiled: “Don’t worry, Mr. Pei won’t even have time for such small matters. As long as Chang You, the person in charge at Outu Technology, gives his approval, it’s fine.”
“Chang You is very supportive of our plan, and I’ve already arranged priority supply with him. The success of the Starbird Fitness model means he can sell Smart Fitness Clothes Racks to more gyms, which will certainly make him happy as well.”
“If you’re really worried…”
“How about this, I’ll talk to Chang You or the person in charge at Dream Fulfillment Investment and transfer some of Starbird Fitness’s shares to Tenda. Wouldn’t that solve everything?”
Che Rong was very pleased: “That would be great! It would put my mind at ease too.”
Li Shi continued: “Looking at it now, our previous plan was too conservative. A dozen or so Smart Fitness Clothes Racks are far from enough; many people can’t even get to use them.”
“When we open new stores, let’s just get rid of all those equipment that hardly anyone uses, and place Smart Fitness Clothes Racks in 70% of the gym’s area, ordering thirty or forty units at once! Then create a special membership card that can only be used with the Smart Fitness Clothes Rack and treadmills, offer a discount, and include several items from ‘Fitness Battle’ as bonuses…”
As Li Shi and Che Rong walked further into the gym while talking, pointing here and there, a grand blueprint seemed to be gradually unfolding.