The shooting set was very simple—just a large green screen.
The male actor stood in front of this green screen, wearing a high-tech-looking bodysuit and a specially customized VR headset prop, making some inexplicable movements.
It was evident that this actor had professional integrity, as he was trying hard to make these obviously ridiculous movements appear less ridiculous.
However, his efforts weren’t particularly effective.
Meng Chang kept reassuring him from the side: “Don’t worry, just perform freely. We’ll add various special effects later, and once those are added, it’ll look great. The final product definitely won’t be as awkward as it seems now.”
“Alright, that take was good. Let’s shoot a couple more supplementary takes, and then we’ll officially start editing and adding the pre-made special effects. It needs to be released before tomorrow night.”
For Meng Chang, what did it matter if it was awkward or not?
After all, this promotional video was called “VR Era Concept Promotional Video.”
The VR headset in the video wasn’t the actual Doubt VR headset product, but rather a very futuristic, ultra-thin dummy prototype.
This couldn’t be considered false advertising, because the video wasn’t called “Doubt VR Headset Promotional Video” but rather “VR Era Concept Promotional Video.”
Concept, understand?
The video was meant to showcase a possibility for the future—it was conceptual, not meant to be real in the first place.
Although Meng Chang had almost finished filming the video, he still marveled at how shameless Mr. Pei was for coming up with this idea.
What a unique way of thinking!
According to Mr. Pei’s plan, this video was meant to elevate players’ expectations while further deepening the impression that Chi Xing Studio wasn’t very reliable.
Now the filming was almost complete. They would rush the editing and special effects over the next two days, and release the promotional video tomorrow night.
The tight schedule didn’t matter—after all, no one truly cared about how effective the video would be.
Seeing that the filming was almost done, Meng Chang found a place to sit down at the set and took out his phone to post on Weibo.
Logging into Weibo again, Meng Chang felt a bit nostalgic.
Back in the day, when he founded Cold Face Girl, he commanded attention on Weibo with grand pronouncements—it was such a spirited time.
His current following of several million fans was mostly built through his intensive marketing efforts back then. Although some were purchased bot accounts, most were real people, which was testament to his influence on the internet at that time.
But after Cold Face Girl’s failure, Meng Chang hadn’t logged into Weibo for a long time.
His last Weibo post remained forever stuck six months ago, when he was still angrily denouncing those spreading rumors about Cold Face Girl’s impending bankruptcy, assuring everyone that “Cold Face Girl is doing very well.”
In the blink of an eye, half a year had passed. Cold Face Girl had already gone bankrupt once and was now experiencing new life under Mr. Pei’s leadership.
It gave him a sense that everything had changed.
Opening his private messages, he found them full of unread notifications. Scrolling back, many were cursing him as a fraud—there were so many he couldn’t reach the end.
But later, the insults stopped. Clearly, attention on the internet comes quickly and goes just as quickly. After Meng Chang had disappeared from public view for six months, most people had forgotten about him.
But today, this Weibo account would be fully revived to serve its purpose!
Meng Chang was quite looking forward to it.
If Mr. Pei’s method worked, it would prove that even his bad reputation had its uses.
If Mr. Pei could use it, then surely he could use it too!
Meng Chang was already eager to test just how powerful his bad reputation was, so he immediately composed a Weibo post, reviewed it for errors, and published it.
“Life restarts, dreams persist.”
“Since the failure of Cold Face Girl, I haven’t found an appropriate opportunity to communicate frankly with everyone. This time, I want to share with you my sincere apologies and gratitude, as well as my promise for the future.”
“Although my entrepreneurial experience was brief, it could be described as intense. An undeniable responsibility is that I am the primary person responsible for Cold Face Girl’s failure. I deeply understand that Cold Face Girl’s failure caused many people to suffer losses. Here, I express my most sincere apologies to everyone.”
“Entrepreneurship is a high-risk activity—some succeed, naturally others fail. I have no intention of blaming the failure on various external factors; I will bear all losses myself.”
“In the future, I will provide marketing and promotional plans for various companies. Through this form of work, I will pay back my debts and shoulder my responsibilities.”
“I will be collaborating with Chi Xing Studio, and I’m very honored to create marketing and promotional plans for their new product, the VR headset. I hope we can achieve mutual benefits and a win-win cooperation. I also hope everyone will support this groundbreaking VR product and join me in embracing the future!”
After reviewing his Weibo post once more, Meng Chang nodded with satisfaction.
This post appeared very sincere on the surface but was actually full of lies—it would definitely provoke everyone’s antipathy!
Although the purpose of this post was to provoke people’s dislike toward him, Meng Chang couldn’t make it too obvious.
For instance, he couldn’t directly post: “I’m not going to pay back anything, what can you do about it?”
While such a post would be effectively provocative, it wouldn’t match Meng Chang’s consistently hypocritical persona, and such an inexplicably bizarre behavior would easily arouse suspicion.
Therefore, the Weibo post had to convey genuine emotion, blending truth and falsehood to be more deceptive.
Just like his current post—first offering a sincere apology and expressing his willingness to take responsibility, then abruptly shifting at the end to advertise for Chi Xing Studio.
Would people believe that Meng Chang was genuinely remorseful?
Of course not!
Instead, it would more easily provoke widespread antipathy, and it was done very naturally, leaving no trace of manipulation.
Meng Chang’s Weibo account had several million followers after all, so shortly after the post was published, there was an immediate flood of responses.
“Risen from the dead?”
“Damn, you scammer still have the nerve to show your face?”
“Seeing Cold Face Girl doing well under Tenda Group, you dare to come out and seek attention again?”
“The way you wrote this Weibo can be described in four words: thick-skinned and shameless!”
“Exactly, it’s full of empty talk. There’s absolutely no sign of remorse. On the surface, it’s an apology, but in reality, it’s promoting your new project. Trying to use this Weibo account with millions of followers to scam money again!”
“Chi Xing Studio actually hired Meng Chang for promotion? Have they lost their minds?”
“Haha, they’re not stupid. In the internet era, a bad reputation is better than no reputation. We could already see from their attempt to ride on Tenda’s popularity that this Chi Xing Studio will stop at nothing for attention—they’re perfectly matched with Meng Chang.”
“Forget it, we can already pronounce this VR headset dead. Anything associated with Meng Chang can’t possibly be a good product. It’s doomed!”
Looking at everyone’s comments, Meng Chang couldn’t help but smile slightly.
Although many of the comments were insulting him, Meng Chang wasn’t angry at all—on the contrary, he was very happy.
Because this proved that his bad reputation was indeed useful, and the effect was instantaneous!
One Weibo post was enough to make everyone curse Chi Xing Studio as well—this kind of collateral damage effect was unparalleled.
Mr. Pei’s plan had succeeded yet another step!
Seeing that his Weibo was full of insulting comments, Meng Chang was finally reassured. The next step was to finish editing the promotional video and release it online with exaggerated praise, further intensifying the players’ disgust!
Of course, the video editing would be handled by professionals; Meng Chang didn’t need to do it personally.
He had more important matters to arrange now.
For this promotional campaign, Mr. Pei had already informed Chi Xing Studio and asked for their full cooperation. According to the previous plan, Chi Xing Studio had already sent 100 production units of the Doubt VR headset to the advertising and marketing department.
In fact, the Doubt VR had already entered mass production, and the production capacity was definitely not limited to just this small amount.
But Mr. Pei only requested 100 units.
The reason was to deliberately create an artificial scarcity marketing effect in the early stages, provoking players’ antipathy.
Moreover, these VR headsets weren’t meant to be sold but rather to be given away for free to some digital and gaming content creators with notorious histories of paid promotions. Along with these headsets, they would be given some “marketing funds” to lavish praise on the VR headsets.
If these 100 headsets were to be sold, they would indeed be too few—not even enough to satisfy a fraction of the demand.
But if they were distributed to content creators, they would be more than sufficient, with some to spare. Even small creators with just a few thousand followers might be able to get one.