February 2nd, Saturday.
For Gao Ming of Zhujia Group, this was destined to be another 996 weekend.
“Sigh, being a Marketing Director is so frustrating!”
“These problems are completely beyond my ability to solve. Besides, using the Marketing Department as Public Relations and using Public Relations for damage control—who does business this way!”
In his office with no one around, Gao Ming couldn’t help but complain.
His work hadn’t been going well lately.
When he first became the Marketing Director of Zhujia Group, everything had been smooth sailing, and he’d been full of confidence.
Being a Marketing Director at a listed company—even in mega cities like Capital City or Magic City—would definitely count as making it, right?
Of course, he knew he was just a high-level wage earner, but how many people in this world weren’t wage earners?
Moreover, as a high-level wage earner with stocks and a high salary, he was living much more comfortably than many small company bosses.
But… when had things started to change?
Gao Ming thought back. If he were to trace it to the source, it seemed to be when Tenda established the Sloth Apartment brand.
At the beginning, Gao Ming and Zhujia Group’s executives hadn’t paid any attention to it because this business model clearly wouldn’t work.
But later, first there was the formaldehyde incident, then the “Real Estate Agent Simulator”—one public relations crisis after another caused Zhujia Group’s stock price to plummet. Online criticism was overwhelming, and all the executives were in a state of panic.
The Zhujia Group executives were genuinely puzzled.
Zhujia Group had developed step by step from a small company using these precise tactics.
Now that the company had grown stronger with a high market share and had gone public, the same tactics should have become even more effective. So why had they suddenly stopped working?
In late November, “Real Estate Agent Simulator” was released. Shortly after, Uncle Tian released a video, and Chi Xing Studio announced its partnership with Sloth Apartment and Shenhua Real Estate to establish a Real-world Service Department, using the game as a vehicle to build a new rental platform. Subsequently, Sloth Apartment also launched a rent-to-own model and began to enter a stage of rapid expansion…
As for Zhujia Group, it was like rain pouring through a leaking roof.
Not only did their stock price plummet, but more importantly, two of their heavyweight new business lines—”Peace of Mind Housing” and “Attentive Butler” services—were both hit hard. After investing so many resources, they ended up with nothing but negative effects!
For such major core businesses, it wasn’t simply a matter of marketing. To a certain extent, they affected numerous aspects of the entire company’s organizational structure, personnel training, business direction, and so on. Once a business failed, it could easily cause serious damage.
This was why Zhujia Group could withstand it; smaller companies would have collapsed long ago.
As Marketing Director, Gao Ming had attended countless meetings and worked plenty of overtime recently. But they watched helplessly as the popularity of “Real Estate Agent Simulator” continued to rise with more and more property listings, while Shenhua Real Estate and Sloth Apartment rapidly expanded their businesses into first-tier cities.
Had they tried to fight back? Of course they had.
For instance, they mobilized all their branch agents to compete with “Real Estate Agent Simulator” for property listings, registering accounts to harass real landlords on the platform, or disguising themselves as landlords to post fake listings to lure tenants.
The result was… all their accounts were banned.
Even worse, their Doubt VR headsets were banned too.
Clearly, Chi Xing Studio had anticipated this possibility and hired many people to establish the Real-world Service Department. One of their important tasks was to monitor the platform, immediately deleting false information upon discovery and issuing warnings.
Of course, verifying false information was both a technical and labor-intensive task. Apart from requiring uploaders to provide sufficiently rich and detailed information, users who reported fake listings could also receive good rewards, thus mobilizing everyone’s initiative.
Zhujia Group wasn’t the only one trying to sabotage “Real Estate Agent Simulator.” Other rental brands and even small agencies were even more active.
Because as the pressure cascaded down level by level, they were the ones who suffered the most!
After the integration of “Real Estate Agent Simulator,” Shenhua Real Estate, and Sloth Apartment, they would inevitably seize a large market share, primarily in the high-end market, targeting quality tenants with higher requirements for living conditions.
On the surface, this didn’t constitute direct competition for some small rental brands and local small agencies.
But the problem was, once Sloth Apartment took Zhujia Group’s market share and Zhujia Group’s profits and market share decreased, what would they do?
Unable to compete with Sloth Apartment, they would have to move downmarket and target those small agencies!
Zhujia Group was large and established. Even if their business was somewhat affected, they could still sustain themselves with their nationwide network of branches, numerous agents, and the property listings they controlled. But these small agencies might not survive. Once Zhujia Group decided to compete with them for business, they would starve!
So, countless people were trying every means to disrupt “Real Estate Agent Simulator.”
They all thought: if so many rental apps couldn’t solve the issue of genuine property listings, how could “Real Estate Agent Simulator” possibly manage it?
Although much of the fake information on these rental apps was deliberately tolerated by the platforms, the difficulty in monitoring was indeed significant.
This was because posting false information to phish was a low-cost, high-return activity, making it persistently difficult to eradicate.
But after they posted some false information on “Real Estate Agent Simulator,” they discovered it was completely different! This thing was fundamentally different from ordinary rental apps!
It was a VR game that people had to pay for!
Although “Real Estate Agent Simulator” had released a standalone game version that ran independently on VR headsets to accommodate players, with a reduced price, it still had a cost.
To post false information or harass landlords on the platform, one first had to register a game account, bind an ID card, and purchase “Real Estate Agent Simulator.” This whole process was quite troublesome. Once the account was banned, not only was the money wasted, but finding another ID card to register would be a lot of work.
Going to all this trouble just to post false information or harass a landlord? It was a huge loss!
Even more terrifying was that the Doubt VR headset also came from Chi Xing Studio. If they discovered that accounts on a certain headset were consistently posting false information or being frequently reported by quality players, it would trigger the ultimate sanction: a BAN on the machine!
This VR headset would have its network function for “Real Estate Agent Simulator” permanently disabled.
In this regard, Chi Xing Studio was relatively merciful and didn’t directly brick the Doubt VR headsets. But for agents looking to cause trouble, this was already an unbearable cost.
Once your headset was banned, you could either keep it for personal use or sell it online at a low price. Whether anyone would buy it was uncertain, but being cursed at was guaranteed.
With this combination of measures, neither agency companies nor individuals could withstand it.
The key was that the losses far outweighed the benefits. Were they trying to disrupt “Real Estate Agent Simulator” or secretly boosting the sales of Chi Xing Studio’s games and VR headsets?
And this method couldn’t be copied by other companies.
If they dared to charge for their rental apps, such as requiring a deposit of a few dozen yuan to use them, it would be suicidal.
Because even without its platform attributes, “Real Estate Agent Simulator” was still an excellent VR game with quality that justified its price. Moreover, with Tenda’s reputation as a guarantee and the fact that it truly provided a platform with accurate information, players, tenants, and landlords were all willing to buy in.
Other companies simply didn’t have these conditions.
So, after Zhujia Group and other agencies struggled for a long time, they ended up with nothing to show for it. Not only did they fail to significantly impact “Real Estate Agent Simulator,” but they also ended up stockpiling a bunch of banned Doubt VR headsets that they couldn’t dispose of. They could only force them onto their branch employees as “benefits.”
What was even more absurd was that some employees, after playing “Real Estate Agent Simulator” for work purposes and watching Uncle Tian’s videos, suddenly had an awakening. They recognized the exploitative nature of real estate agencies, and their long-suppressed dissatisfaction instantly erupted, leading them to resign!
Many branches experienced agents running away, instantly creating a sense of twilight decline.
It could be said that the collaboration between “Real Estate Agent Simulator,” Shenhua Real Estate, and Sloth Apartment achieved a dimensional reduction attack in various ways. Each move was both unpredictable and impossible for traditional agencies to counter!
Last month, the first batch of properties from the collaboration between Shenhua Real Estate, Sloth Apartment, and “Real Estate Agent Simulator” went live and were instantly snapped up.
Shenhua Real Estate didn’t care about the rental income; they were building brand effect, so their prices and quality were very competitive.
As for Sloth Apartment, what had previously limited their scale was always the supply of properties. Now that they were allowed to offer long-term rentals, their property supply increased. The previously accumulated reputation and tenant expectations were instantly converted into success, naturally making them extremely popular.
“Real Estate Agent Simulator” gave these two high-quality property sources special promotion, attracting more and more people to rent through this game.
In short, there was no way out.
After struggling for a long time, Zhujia Group finally chose to give up.
For Gao Ming, this was actually a good thing because he could finally escape the endless meetings and overtime.
As for what would happen to Zhujia Group in the future…
Who knows? I’m just a humble wage earner.