“We were able to spend a lot of money on promotion in Europe and America before, and I believe we can do it this time too.” Mr. Ma once again focused his attention on the $1 billion investment.
Zhong Xinxin began to say with some difficulty, "In the first phase of our promotion in Europe and America, we contacted hundreds of advertisers, and all of them were expedited and encrypted. We already spent tens of millions in the first phase of the promotion."
"The second phase of the promotion has already begun. Many advertisers have not yet settled their final payments. Moreover, the scope of the second phase of the promotion is larger and the promotion platform is more high-end. Therefore, we expect to settle at least 30 million yuan with advertisers this time, including deposits and final payments."
"Previously, the project team found a top-tier celebrity from Europe and America to endorse our product. The advertisement is currently being filmed, and the advertising fee for this top-tier celebrity is 10 million."
Zhong Xinxin shifted her gaze from the computer's billing interface back to the present. "If you calculate it this way, the $1 billion will actually disappear as you spend it."
Although Zhong Xinxin wasn't in charge of the money at Tencent, she was the one who handled this $1 billion investment, so she was most aware of the income and expenditure of the money.
“Without packaging and with inadequate data, we’ll still be killed by ICQ.” Boss Ma looked at Zhong Xinxin and continued, “Didn’t you say before that we have no choice but to go down this path now?”
Zhong Xinxin sighed, "I will continue to look for advertisers and have them promote our products in our way."
The so-called "penguin method" is simply a method of throwing money at the problem.
They are now going against the current; if they don't move forward, they will fall behind. In the European and American markets, their products have already achieved a user base that is on par with Longteng through advertising.
A few days later, the penguin received orders from its superiors to begin searching for suitable advertisers around the world.
ICQ, on the other hand, hardly put any effort into advertising.
Even though Longteng had a good relationship with North American media companies, they did not contact any advertising or promotion channels.
Two days later, the engineering department announced that Happy Farm was officially launched simultaneously in Europe, America, and China.
Chen Dong, representing Longteng, left a message on ICQ's international forum:
"Dear users, after several months of hard work, the Longteng Engineering Department has finally innovated and developed a new virtual game. This game will adopt new gameplay, new rules, and new media to bring you a newer casual social experience. Please stay tuned."
Soon after, ICQ's Happy Farm was officially launched, and ICQ users instantly took over the farm.
According to Chen Dong's design, Happy Farm simultaneously caters to the different styles and preferences of several regional markets through its battle mode and leisure mode.
Happy Farm was downloaded 100,000 times in just one day after its launch.
Happy Farm is highly interactive, with innovative gameplay and a simple yet sophisticated interface. It allows you to make friends and communicate with them while having fun.
The emergence of this game greatly stimulated young netizens, who downloaded ICQ, explored the online farm, constantly discovered new ways to play the farm, and many even posted tutorial posts on the forum.
When the news reached Tencent, Zhao Nanzhou, the chief engineer of QQ, was very dismissive, saying, "When QQ was launched in China, didn't we also create the miracle of 500,000 downloads within a month?"
"Longteng must have spent a lot of money on promotion and pre-launch hype, which is why the market reacted so quickly this time."
No sooner had he finished speaking than Liang Huihong immediately retorted, "This time, when QQ launched the Happy Farm game, they didn't do any promotion or publicity. They just released a message on their official website."
"QQ has millions of regular users, and after ICQ Show paved the way, QQ's regular users have reached 1.3 million."
Liang Huihong glanced sideways at the chief engineer of Tencent and said in a very unfriendly tone, "Although the total number of QQ users in several regions is over a million, most of them are temporary users. Many people download QQ and then delete it."
“When we frequently visited Europe and America, the strategies we adopted were indeed too aggressive,” Luo Qun couldn’t help but interject.
He works in product development, and he knows best what kind of emotional experience users want to have on QQ.
The fatal flaw was that their initial promotional strategy was too aggressive, resulting in a continuous increase in the number of users, but very poor user stickiness.
"Although QQ achieved the number one download ranking through advertising, our users do not use QQ for long and their online time is even shorter. There is still no cohesion between users and between users and the platform."
Luo Qun added, "Our competitor ICQ has been investing in the field of communication network software for more than half a year. They have very high user stickiness, and ICQ has also cultivated their users' usage habits through certain media channels."
"And these are all things that QQ lacks."
After listening, Mr. Ma frowned and looked at Luo Qun, saying, "What QQ lacks is not user stickiness, user cohesion, or usage habits. Ultimately, what we lack is time."
Looking around at the attendees, it's clear that Tencent's current senior management is primarily composed of people with technical backgrounds. This leads to the conclusion that Tencent has invested considerable effort and money in the technical aspects of perfecting this product.
However, they overlooked one point: even if a product is developed and users are attracted, users still need to be maintained. Without a professional department responsible for user retention, their product's user stickiness will be very weak.
My dear reader, there's more to this chapter! Please click the next page to continue reading—even more exciting content awaits!
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