Chapter 744 The New Market (2)
In China, the cultural and entertainment industry, including related industries such as cultural and creative products, is currently only a relatively small sector.
Niche culture.
Similar to the "idol worship" industry chain, only a very small number of the audience can be converted into consumers.
However, in that era of unbridled growth, regardless of how the United States did it, China has also experienced similar periods—
It's just not the official version.
Back when "My Fair Princess" was a hit, you could see things printed with the faces of the main actors everywhere you went.
That was during that time, when the market economy was still in a relatively unregulated stage of development.
Nowadays, movie and TV drama merchandise is mostly just character portrait pendants or mass-produced props from the show. To put it simply, it's almost entirely defined as a "toy." It doesn't even have the practicality of a toy; its only value is as a collectible.
Aside from a very small number of true fans, who would be interested in something like yours?
On the contrary, the business collaborations between some popular TV dramas and IPs and some fast-moving consumer goods brands are quite successful.
Linghe is one of the best among them.
Basically, the TV dramas and films produced by Linghe have a very fixed authorized co-branding cooperation with the retail brand "Lansen" endorsed by Lu Yanhe. On the other hand, they are also like other brands, especially fast-moving consumer goods brands such as coffee and milk tea.
Many people assume that Linghe primarily focuses on film and television production, but in reality, Linghe started as a copyright management company.
The company's external business expansion is all based on copyright operation.
Lu Yanhe gave a few simple examples, such as the collaboration between "Rouge" and local events like the Ghost Festival and Qixi Festival, which is one type of development. Another example is the real-life park and offline situational drama of "My Own Swordsman" in Jiangzhi, which is another type of development.
As for the development that Li Luzhi and his team wanted to do, which would be combined with the real economy, such as stationery products, Lu Yanhe mentioned "Love Letter".
"The TV series 'Love Letter' has already collaborated with 'Baixing,' a stationery brand I endorse, twice on licensing agreements. Both collaborations produced a set of stationery products based on 'Love Letter,' including basic items like paper, pens, notebooks, and rulers. Each set has sold over ten million units," said Lu Yanhe. "Besides the complete sets, we also sell them individually, but this depends heavily on the nature of the TV series IP itself. For example, in addition to 'Love Letter,' we also did similar development for 'My Own Swordsman,' but the market sales weren't very good."
Li Luzhi nodded.
“The market is not perfect right now. Many things are very risky because there is no fixed and stable industrial chain for production,” Lu Yanhe said. “Linghe itself does not actually enter the manufacturing end. We only provide co-branding authorization and cooperate with promotion. Moreover, the partners we choose must be top domestic brands with very high requirements for quality control, because once quality control is problematic, the already unstable market will become even worse.”
Li Luzhi astutely grasped the key words.
"So, in fact, none of the developments related to Linghe are original developments we do ourselves. We go out and see if there are any existing collaborations with other brands?" he asked. "It's rare to do original product designs based on movie elements or characters?"
“Yes, very few.” Lu Yanhe nodded. “The development of such original products inherently requires very high standards for the film and television IP. It needs to be well-known and popular, and it also needs a streamlined and mechanized production chain. Otherwise, the cost will be high and the market will be small. In recent years, there have been two promising projects in China that have been developed in this way: one is ‘My Own Swordsman’ and the other is ‘Burning Fire’ which is currently being filmed in Longyan. However, the former, like the stationery collaboration I just mentioned, doesn’t necessarily mean that the product will be a bestseller just because the IP is very influential. If you can’t find the real market appeal of the IP, it will just be a waste of money.”
Li Luzhi nodded, seemingly lost in thought.
Lu Yanhe asked, "Uncle, are you interested in getting into this business?"
"We wanted to start with this business area to see if we could enrich our company's product line. As you know, my company started in light industry, and later transformed, seizing the opportunity of the rapid development of computers and the internet to become an internet company. Since then, we have basically focused on these two major areas to develop some businesses," said Li Luzhi.
Lu Yanhe nodded.
While Li Luzhi's family is indeed large and powerful, it is still considerably weaker compared to a large conglomerate like Shijin. They started with manufacturing, accumulating their initial capital, then rode the wave of the internet boom, rapidly expanding and gaining a foothold in the investment world. However, to become a giant like Shijin, one must either catch the next wave of opportunity and seize it, or rely solely on time and experience.
To Lu Yanhe's surprise, in this modern economic society where capital games and financial leverage are commonplace, Li Luzhi still set his sights on manufacturing, remaining grounded in the real economy and using the essence of the tertiary sector to optimize and upgrade the secondary sector—based on their large secondary sector foundation.
Lu Yanhe thought about it and realized that it was indeed true. If he wanted to develop creative IP derivatives, having a partner that could directly connect with first-line factories would help him avoid some concerns and pitfalls and make some collaborative attempts.
Lu Yanhe said, "Uncle, if you are interested in doing this, we at Linghe have always wanted to do it too. However, due to the scarcity of suitable and trustworthy partners, coupled with various other factors, we have only been doing small-scale and unsystematic development. We can see if there are any areas for cooperation."
Li Luzhi nodded: "Of course."
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Why is it so difficult for Linghe to make this?
To put it bluntly, the reason why these factories don't have what Linghe wants to do is because they also lack the technology to develop a completely new product that can't reach the required scale.
Starting a separate product line without readily available components, including distribution channels, requires building everything from scratch, leading to excessively high costs and difficulty in generating profits.
However, now that Li Luzhi's company is willing to do this, perhaps it can transform from a purely transactional relationship into a win-win cooperative one, and make many attempts.
-
When Li Pengfei woke up, Li Luzhi had already gone to work.
Lu Yanhe sat on the sofa, reading a book.
Li Pengfei let out a long yawn, tears welling up in his eyes.
"You're still half asleep, you woke up pretty early."
"I slept a lot yesterday." Lu Yanhe put down his book and asked, "Do you have any plans for today?"
Li Pengfei asked, "What arrangements? I don't have any arrangements."
Lu Yanhe said, "Shall we go to Lingyang District together? To the 'Jump Up' area?"
Li Pengfei nodded: "Okay."
Lu Yanhe said, "Then I'll ask them first if they're free to have lunch together."
In response, Chen Siqi replied that she and Xu Zijun had a working lunch appointment with advertisers at noon and were not available to accompany them until the evening.
When Lu Yanhe told Li Pengfei about the situation, Li Pengfei said, "Let's eat here for lunch first. Let me order some takeout to calm down. I feel like I'm really getting old. If I stay up all night, I can't wake up refreshed right away."
"Go ahead and say that to your father."
“He’s much healthier than me,” Li Pengfei said, pursing his lips. “He’s full of energy every day.”
"Your dad exercises in the morning, just like Yan Liang."
“Of course.” Li Pengfei nodded. “I’ve just been out there doing things for the past two years. Otherwise, I would definitely be more fragile than him.”
-
This afternoon, Chen Siqi and Xu Zijun met with representatives of an advertising company that wanted to place an advertisement in "Jump Up" magazine.
Since its publication, "Jump Up" has not broken the tradition of not including advertising pages inside the magazine, insisting on only including single advertising pages, which are laminated together with the magazine.
In fact, the advertising price for "Jump Up" is not low now.
However, because the magazine has stable sales, a large readership, and a significant influence, brands are still eager to advertise with it.
Chen Siqi strictly controls the number of advertisements in each issue, while also constantly seeking ways to make the advertisements more creative and in line with the style of "Jump Up" magazine. Simply put, she "customizes advertisements" for each brand.
However, initially, many brand owners and brand PR managers viewed this as a thankless task.
Because of "customized advertising," there will be an additional expense for "customization."
Brands not only have to spend money on advertising, but also on design fees.
However, after several episodes of "customized ads" trended on social media for their creativity, no one bothered to comment on this anymore.
Yes, it trended on social media because of the ad itself—not because it was bought, but because it was an organic trending topic.
The ad content itself is so good that it naturally trends on social media. This is not just a simple boost to brand awareness, but also an enhancement of the brand image.
Especially when these brands combine some of the characteristics of "Jump Up" with specially customized advertisements, readers of "Jump Up" are more likely to accept them. This sense of care also makes readers of "Jump Up" feel more valued—in short, it's VIP service.
This is also a new idea Chen Siqi has for the magazine "Jump Up" - the brand "Jump Up" has been building a reputation and circle of "artistic peaks", and has even helped many artists hold solo exhibitions offline. Although it does not make much profit, it has a role similar to an artist MCN.
For each brand looking to advertise, the "Jump Up" team recommends artists based on the brand's image, the nature of the advertising, and other factors to explore the possibility of high-end advertising collaborations. Sometimes, what starts as a simple advertising campaign with "Jump Up" can escalate into a partnership after a good conversation and a quick agreement, eventually extending to the creative and design of the brand's entire advertising campaign.
At this point, "Jump Up" became an advertising company.
The reason why Chen Siqi started to try in this direction is that she has more and more resources at her disposal, making her suitable for doing this kind of thing.
By integrating resources, we can create a plan that others cannot or would require a great deal of difficulty to create.
For example, a brand that operates escape rooms nationwide used "Jump Up" to create a very successful advertising campaign—
Five of China's most popular mystery and suspense novelists, represented by Liu Jiazhen, visited different themed escape rooms as experience officers.
These five readers happen to have a high degree of overlap with the audience of escape room games.
Within three months of this initiative, the escape room brand saw its orders triple.
This is because "Jump Up" happens to have such writers, and because "Jump Up" acted as a middleman, leveraging its role as an MCN company, it encouraged writers to take on such projects. These writers, especially those who have already made a name for themselves and earned a fortune in royalties and copyright fees, are extremely protective of their reputation and are very cautious about this type of collaboration.
If someone else were to do this kind of planning, just talking to these writers, from getting in touch with them to persuading them to do it, would take who knows how long.
Chen Siqi and Xu Zijun chatted with the brand representative for two hours. After reaching a consensus, they happily saw the representative off.
This is an advertising order worth 8 million yuan, excluding the cost of "special customization". It is pure advertising, including 18 magazines a year plus two advertising campaigns on the official WeChat account.
This is one of the biggest deals in the history of Jump Magazine.
Once the collaboration begins, Jumpy currently has a huge media matrix targeting different audiences that is eagerly awaiting development.
Chen Siqi said to Xu Zijun, "It's rare to come across an order like this."
Xu Zijun laughed: "Because it's a new brand, we need to build up market awareness."
Brand advertising, which aims to build market awareness, is often the type of advertising that spends the most money.
"Actually, it's not a new brand, it's just that it has never entered the Chinese market before," Chen Siqi said. "I don't know who they will choose as their spokesperson. I'll share this information with Sister Ziyan, although she has probably already received the news."
Xu Zijun said, "Actually, I was just thinking that this brand that makes outdoor sports equipment is surprisingly a good fit for the documentary that Li Pengfei is going to shoot later. But never mind, there are no celebrities in the documentary that Li Pengfei is going to shoot."
Chen Siqi said, "You reminded me, this brand—"
Her eyes flashed.
“Actually, the market is huge. There is a large middle class in China now, and more and more people like outdoor and wilderness sports.” Chen Siqi asked, “Do you think it is possible for us to plan a variety show for this brand, a show that can highlight the brand’s value?”
Xu Zijun was somewhat puzzled.
"Are you planning to enter the variety show industry?"
“No, we don’t make things, we only come up with ideas. That’s the motto of our Jump Up team,” Chen Siqi said. “We don’t have the ability or manpower to do it, but we do have the ability to set up a plate.”
Xu Zijun nodded, feeling that Chen Siqi's idea was perfectly reasonable.
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That evening, Lu Yanhe and Li Pengfei arrived in Lingyang District and had dinner with their girlfriends, where the topic came up again.
Chen Siqi already has more specific ideas.
"Make a show, find some celebrities, and go on a trip together."
After listening, Lu Yanhe looked surprised and asked, "Divas Hit the Road?"
Chen Siqi and the others were taken aback. "What the heck?"
In that instant, Lu Yanhe felt... the gears of fate were turning relentlessly.
Lu Yanhe briefly explained the setup of the show "Divas Hit the Road".
The more Chen Siqi listened, the brighter her eyes became.
-
This chapter is still one where I'm slowly getting into the flow. It's alright; although short, I've written some parts that I'm satisfied with.
I recommend my completed entertainment-themed novel, "I Became the Scandalous Female Lead Overnight".
(End of this chapter)
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