After arranging matters with the animation studio, Pei Qian returned to company headquarters.

As soon as he entered the elevator area, he saw that the newly purchased advertisements had already been deployed. The display screen was playing the documentary about Suffering Travel.

Many office buildings had small display screens serving as advertising spaces. These screens were generally placed in lobby elevator areas, inside elevators, or other high-traffic areas, targeting ordinary office workers with promotions.

Similarly, on buses and subways, there were also small display screens used to play advertisements for various products.

The advertisements played on these screens were generally quite brainwashing in nature, such as recruitment ads, second-hand car sales, wedding photography, apartment rentals, moving services, and so on. There were also some travel agency advertisements.

However, despite their different types, these advertisements were all similarly boring and even somewhat tacky.

Of course, there were reasons for this situation.

On one hand, these small screens targeted commuting office workers, and these businesses’ highest quality target customer groups happened to be office workers.

On the other hand, because the screens were too small and sometimes the sound wasn’t clear, producing a high-end, prestigious video wouldn’t be very effective. They could only make an impression through intuitive visuals and repetitive, brainwashing slogans.

Over time, advertisements in such places all became similar in type: dull, boring, brainwashing, and even somewhat tacky.

Pei Qian inevitably had to take elevators when commuting to and from work, inevitably subjecting himself to this mental pollution.

Although the small screens in Shenhua Luxury View’s elevator areas had been muted, some advertisements reached a level where: silence was more powerful than sound.

Some brainwashing advertisements only needed to be heard once. The next time, even if you couldn’t hear the sound and only saw the images, those sounds would automatically echo in your ears.

It was pure mental pollution.

But now, this mental pollution had been completely swept away.

Because all the advertising spaces in the Shenhua Luxury View building had been replaced with the Suffering Travel documentary!

Not just Shenhua Luxury View—this time, Meng Chang had spent a large sum on promotional expenses to place this documentary on advertising display screens in buses, subways, and other office buildings.

This was part of Meng Chang’s promotional strategy. After all, to earn high commissions, he had to spend money, and spending money definitely required technique.

Pei Qian was very satisfied with this, feeling increasingly that Meng Chang was on the right track.

This was practically a textbook example of “spending money with no effect”!

First, the display effect on these small screens was poor to begin with. Moreover, there might be no sound or unclear audio on buses and subways. That’s why most manufacturers opted for more brainwashing and monotonous advertising slogans to enhance the advertising effect in such complex environments.

But Suffering Travel’s promotional video was clearly different from these advertisements. You had to hear the sound and see the subtitles to understand what it was about, yet small screens often had low volume and subtitles that were difficult to read clearly.

Second, these advertising slots mainly targeted office workers, who tended to be quite practical.

Looking at other advertisement types—recruitment, second-hand cars, rentals, moving services, wedding photography—each one addressed fairly essential needs in life.

Even travel agency advertisements generally emphasized a petite bourgeoisie sentiment, suggesting: you work so hard, you should go traveling to see beautiful scenery and take a rest.

As a result, the Suffering Travel documentary directly made office workers feel that going to work seemed better!

In short, placing the Suffering Travel documentary as an advertisement on these small screens was absolutely brilliant!

The key was that this operation indeed cost quite a bit of money.

After all, these advertising spaces had to be competed for against recruitment, second-hand car, rental, and moving companies—which of these companies lacked money?

The advertisement had no cost-effectiveness, but after securing these spots, it purified the environment, sparing everyone from the torment of brainwashing advertisements—it could be said to be immeasurably meritorious.

More importantly, it not only deterred potential customers from the outside, but also had a “kill the chicken to scare the monkey” effect on Tenda Group’s internal employees!

Suffering Travel would be fully open to the public in the future—pay the registration fee and you could join.

The reason for this had been explained before: making Suffering Travel a commercial venture rather than simply an employee benefit would burn more money and lose more money.

Therefore, deterring potential customers in advance became crucial.

For Tenda employees, it was a different matter altogether. Outside people only needed to not pay and register, but Tenda employees couldn’t avoid participating even if they wanted to pay to get out of it.

Suffering Travel was a company benefit for them, and a “benefit” that couldn’t be refused.

When employees saw how much the managers suffered, and then realized that the benefits for regular employees weren’t much different from those of managers, why would they work hard and strive to become managers?

At that point, everyone would slack off together. Even the original managers would begin to hide their abilities—wouldn’t things improve then?

So, the more Pei Qian thought about it, the more appropriate it seemed, and he was quite satisfied with Meng Chang’s arrangements this time.

Back in his office, Pei Qian opened the documentary again, preparing to rewatch it.

Such a mood-lifting video deserved to have hundreds of seasons, with twenty or thirty episodes per season!

In fact, this documentary wasn’t very long, and the content of the challenges wasn’t that stimulating.

Rock climbing and wilderness survival were quite professional activities, and there were even many specialized TV programs on these subjects. Compared to those dedicated experts, the Suffering Travel group was obviously far behind, barely qualifying as beginners.

But it gave people a very down-to-earth feeling.

After all, those wilderness survival and rock climbing experts were obviously not ordinary people. When doing these high-difficulty, extremely challenging activities, they naturally created a sense of detachment.

For office workers who lacked exercise year-round, outdoor survival masters like Bear Grylls were practically a different species. Watching such TV programs was more about curiosity; they would never imagine themselves in those situations.

But Suffering Travel was different—these were ordinary people. Not to mention anything else, simply eating compressed biscuits and jerky was a severe challenge for some of them.

So it was especially relatable, and after relating to it, people felt they would never participate in such activities.

The challenges in the documentary were relatively simple, mainly including low-difficulty rock climbing, rappelling, swimming, setting up tents, making fires, cooking food, and so on.

The food consisted of farm-raised poultry bought from nearby farmers’ markets, placed in a specific area for these people to catch. They could use archery or set traps; if they couldn’t catch anything, they could only gnaw on compressed biscuits.

It sounded interesting, but the result was often that they ended up dirty and exhausted, yet empty-handed, only able to watch others eat roasted chicken while they themselves gnawed on compressed biscuits.

The physical damage wasn’t great, but the insult was extreme.

These things all seemed easy, but in reality, for ordinary people, merely setting up a tent and sleeping outdoors was already a form of suffering.

Pei Qian paid special attention to the performance of these managers.

Hu Xianbin performed relatively well, possibly because he was younger and had better physical fitness, adapting more quickly.

Although Huang Sibo’s physical fitness wasn’t great, he was generally in a state of resignation, without much complaint, seemingly knowing that saying anything was useless. He completely had an expression of “Brother Bao, use whatever tricks you have, I’m giving up.”

Xiao Peng was still trying to get close to Bao Xu, apparently hoping to use emotional tactics to break down Bao Xu’s psychological defenses, at least to make things easier for himself, since among these managers, he was relatively less hated by Bao Xu.

He Desheng talked the most, deliberately appearing miserable in front of the camera. During interviews, he kept saying how much he was suffering, seemingly trying to evoke sympathy and escape from this misery as soon as possible.

As for Guo Licheng, his physical fitness was the best, but obviously, the joy of wilderness survival was far less appealing to him than weightlifting. So he also just perfunctorily completed Bao Xu’s requirements, waiting lifelessly for this activity to end.

One documentary perfectly expressed the various states of life of these managers.

But overall, there was one tone and premise: except for Bao Xu, no one was enjoying it. Everyone was suffering and longing to terminate the activity immediately and return to Jingzhou.

The documentary didn’t mention these people’s names or identities, because who they were wasn’t important—the suffering they were enduring was what mattered.

As long as everyone saw that Suffering Travel truly lived up to its name, creating a natural deterrent effect, then the purpose of this documentary would be achieved.

So far, this documentary had gained decent popularity on the AiLiDao website, and comments were gradually increasing.

When the promotional video was first released, there were still some people expressing desire to participate, but now such comments were quite rare.

“When I first watched the promotional video, I wondered why it was called Suffering Travel. Now I understand—it’s truly suffering in name and reality!”

“The invited participants seem a bit unprofessional. Shouldn’t they try to appear as if they’re enjoying themselves? Why does everyone wear a bitter face?”

“Maybe this is Tenda’s consistent principle? To be sufficiently authentic?”

“What I mean is, shouldn’t the first batch of internal testers be people who are interested in wilderness survival? Why do these people seem like they’re being forced to participate at gunpoint?”

“In any case, one thing is clear: this Suffering Travel is genuinely about making people suffer; the promotional video was the deception!”

“Nice, hope they’ll produce more seasons in the future! Although I won’t go, watching others suffer is quite interesting!”

Many viewers were puzzled by the existence of this documentary.

According to common sense, since this documentary was also officially produced, shouldn’t it show a more positive side?

And this wouldn’t require deliberate filming. Since it was an internal test, wouldn’t they carefully select people with a strong interest in wilderness survival to participate?

Then the resulting documentary would naturally show an optimistic, enjoyable state.

But it was unclear where the officials found these people, each with a face longer than a bitter gourd, truly embodying the words “suffering” to the extreme.

The viewers didn’t mind, after all, watching others suffer was quite enjoyable.

The key question was: did they still expect to make money from this in the future? Hadn’t they deterred all the target customers?