The next day.
Pei Qian sent a document to Lü Mingliang.
“Follow this.”
Pei Qian was quite confident in Lü Mingliang’s obedience.
Since the beginning of the development of “Game Producer,” Lü Mingliang had always faithfully executed Pei Qian’s requirements. He even did voice acting when Pei Qian asked him to.
Pei Qian was very satisfied with this particular trait of Lü Mingliang.
An employee who doesn’t cause trouble is good!
Lü Mingliang opened the document Pei Qian had sent him. It mainly covered three parts.
They were: which video creators to approach for promotion, the script for promotion, and the promotion costs.
It was quite detailed, to say the least.
Lü Mingliang read through it from beginning to end.
“Oh no, I can’t understand Mr. Pei’s intentions at all!”
Lü Mingliang was a bit panicked. Previously, he could somewhat guess Mr. Pei’s intentions, but now he couldn’t understand them at all!
Every sentence in this script was very clear, but when combined, why was it so difficult to understand?
First, which video creators should they approach for promotion?
Lü Mingliang took a look. These video creators were all over the place, from various fields, and even beauty section creators were included!
However, all these video creators were the type that weren’t particularly popular—not a single famous one was on the list!
Among them, the most famous one related to gaming was “Qiao Laoshi” Qiao Liang, the one who had previously criticized “Lonely Desert Highway.”
But Mr. Pei had specifically noted that this video couldn’t be posted in the “Trashing Garbage Games” series, but in the “This Month’s New Game Recommendations” instead.
On the surface, this was a reasonable request.
Because “Trashing Garbage Games” was full of terrible games, using that series for advertising would probably have the opposite effect.
So Qiao Liang had specifically created a column called “This Month’s New Game Recommendations” for monetization purposes.
But looking at the popularity of these two series, the problem became apparent.
“This Month’s New Game Recommendations,” which was specifically used for monetization, had less than one-tenth the views of “Trashing Garbage Games”!
With such a huge difference in popularity, even if they advertised there, what effect would it have?
The other video creators were even more ridiculous—lifestyle section, beauty section, technology section… these random section creators, even if they advertised wholeheartedly, how many real players could they bring to “Game Producer”?
Advertising is about conversion rates.
Viewers of the gaming section videos are mostly players. If they see a good game introduction, they might search for it to play. If one person out of a hundred views plays the game, that’s still decent.
But other sections, like the beauty section, might have viewers who are mainly girls who love makeup. Even if they think the game is good, they probably won’t search for it. What good would a million views do? If only one in ten thousand people ends up playing the game, that would be very stiff.
So, looking at the list of random video creators, Lü Mingliang felt a bit exhausted.
But what was more exhausting was yet to come.
Next, how to promote.
Generally, these video creators have very distinct personal styles when creating videos.
Some like to critique, some like to use memes, some are good at adding storylines, special effects, and so on.
So when a sponsored video opportunity comes along, they usually fully respect the creator’s creative intentions, providing only the necessary materials and letting the video creator express themselves freely in terms of content.
Of course, as the service provider, the video creator would inevitably rack their brains to meet all the requirements set by the client.
But no matter what, they should at least respect the video creator’s creative autonomy, which is a win-win situation.
The document Mr. Pei sent over contained a universal video commentary script.
Whether it was for the gaming section, beauty section, technology section, or digital section, all video creators had to follow the same script to produce videos!
Even this alone would have been fine.
The key was that this commentary script gave Lü Mingliang a headache. He had never seen such a script that mixed Chinese and English, with requirements for tone and even oral techniques…
For example:
“Wow, this is my exclusive moment, right?”
“It’s so freaking cool!”
“Slurp slurp slurp… (sound of licking lips and swallowing saliva)”
“Awesome!”
“What a beautiful game start screen! Just this start screen, I think it’s worth… three thousand yuan, right?”
“OK, I’m trying to treat this as a normal running action, don’t overly glorify it… Don’t praise it too much.”
“Wow×14 (say it consecutively)”
And so on.
After reading this commentary script, Lü Mingliang fell into deep self-doubt.
Has my intelligence… deteriorated so much?
This video commentary script seemed like an extreme insult to the video creators, no matter how he looked at it.
This kind of Chinese-English mixed way of speaking was already quite annoying, but what’s worse was that it even had requirements for onomatopoeia, and even demanded saying “wow” 14 times consecutively, not one less???
Was this meant to make video creators lose followers faster?
Finally, there was the pricing.
According to different follower counts, there were different prices, but overall, these prices were all very, very generous!
Moreover, Pei Qian had prepared an additional sum of money specifically for raising the price!
Obviously, Pei Qian had anticipated that some video creators might refuse this sponsorship request (mainly for reasons of dignity or face), despite it being higher than the usual rate.
If they refused, that was fine—just offer them more money!
Of course, the additional money wasn’t unlimited; it would max out at twice the original price.
These prices were probably difficult for these video creators to refuse, because Pei Qian had found creators who weren’t that popular, people who were struggling to make ends meet, and relatively less concerned about their reputation.
But for Tenda, this seemed like a lose-lose situation.
The video creators would be cursed by their followers, losing followers and credibility; Tenda would spend a lot of money without achieving the desired promotional effect, losing money…
Just thinking about these consequences was depressing.
“Stay calm.”
“Mr. Pei must have a deep meaning behind this.”
“If you don’t understand, don’t take matters into your own hands; just faithfully execute it.”
Lü Mingliang had no choice but to contact each video creator on Pei Qian’s list across various video platforms.
……
……
In a rental apartment in the capital.
Qiao Liang looked dejected as he ate a bowl of instant noodles.
A bowl, not a cup.
Because he couldn’t afford cup noodles anymore, he could only afford the packet ones.
Business had been bad lately!
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to work hard, but there hadn’t been any good game material recently—no good games, and no outstanding silly games either!
In short, he couldn’t ride on trends, nor could he create his own.
And recently, there hadn’t been any paid advertisements coming his way either, which had put Qiao Liang’s life in a difficult situation.
Qiao Liang was even thinking about changing careers.
Look at how popular “Mr. Pei’s Daily Life” had become!
Qiao Liang was green with envy. With so many views, they must be getting more sponsorship offers than they could handle, right?
Qiao Liang was eating his instant noodles while idly browsing the web.
Suddenly, he noticed someone had sent him a private message on the Banana Potato Network backend.
“Hello Qiao Laoshi, I’m Lü Mingliang, the executive lead strategist from Tenda Games. I’d like to discuss a business cooperation with you. Would that be convenient?”
Qiao Liang didn’t read the content carefully; his eyes were fixed on the words “business cooperation.”
Is it convenient?
Of course, it’s convenient, very convenient!
I’m about to starve to death, just waiting for this opportunity!
Qiao Liang was completely in a state of desperation, and as soon as he heard there was money to be made, he immediately perked up.
They exchanged contact information and added each other at lightning speed.
“I wonder how much money they’ll offer.”
“How much should I charge? 1,500? Is that too high…”
Qiao Liang was hesitant.
Unexpectedly, the guy called Lü Mingliang spoke first.
“Qiao Laoshi, 3,000 yuan for one video, is that okay?”