2003: Starting with Foreign Trade

Chapter 452 The Effect of Livestream Shopping
FlashCheer has always been known for its catchy marketing slogans and its ability to create trending internet terms. Many popular terms on the internet originated from them and then became widely used.

After the segment aired on Qixi Festival and subsequently went viral on multiple CCTV channels and online platforms, netizens seemed to understand where these trending internet terms came from.

Boss Tan is a veritable buzzword generator; in just 45 minutes, the length of a class, he spouts nothing short of brilliant quotes.

What? I'm not short of money, I don't have much of a pursuit for material things, FlashCheer wants to be a national enterprise.

He rattled off a whole string of pretentious phrases like "young people should buy a house and get married early," and aside from a few incomprehensible terms about company planning and economic trends, Boss Tan's other remarks were surprisingly down-to-earth.

What resonated most with young people was that at the end of the interview, the host asked Mr. Tan to give some life advice to young people, in an era where celebrities like to give speeches everywhere and popularize their values.

Our boss, Tan, responded to these people with a sharp retort of "I can't give you a single thing," which was both unconventional and satisfying.

Right, you're only in your early twenties. If you were to act like those older entrepreneurs and offer some life advice, that would seem rather strange. Does having money mean you can just give advice to anyone?

Having money can certainly do a lot of things, and it can certainly give ordinary people some advice, but we young people don't like to listen to it!

"Get this book on the shelves quickly, put out a lot of copies, make a cover with Boss Tan's name, and add that line from the show. Make the poster bigger."

After the live broadcast, Dangdang.com's operations department urgently produced a batch of unsold university gift sets. Normally, nobody buys these things.

As for infringement, let's not worry about that. Let's see if we can sell it. As long as we can sell it, that's fine. These entrepreneurs' images are everywhere, and many shops use them, but I haven't seen any entrepreneurs actually sue them.

Surely Mr. Tan wouldn't sue us?
Let him sue if he wants. We'll let the boss handle it. We're just trying to get rid of these leftovers. School's starting soon anyway, so a promotional event would be perfect.

Compared to interviews with Ningbo TV, face-to-face coverage is much faster. Since the beginning of this year, places including Ningbo and Anhui Province have intentionally or unintentionally increased their publicity efforts for Tan Jincheng.

These are positive young people, clean and honest, and they work in labor-intensive industries, which greatly helps solve the employment problem and also earns Guo Jia a lot of foreign exchange resources.

This face-to-face interview is actually more of a summary of the subtle publicity that has been going on for the past six months.

This can be seen as similar to the promotion of internet celebrities in later generations, which promotes a positive image of a person who fits the current era's development background. Tan Jincheng is one of the lucky ones who was chosen.

This is much more impressive than Flash's own advertising, and it's done subtly and effectively. Flash's own advertising tends to be somewhat deliberate, and they've been using online trolls for over a year; other internet companies have already learned these tricks.

I don't know how strong other capabilities internet companies have, but when it comes to learning, imitation, or even plagiarism, it's not just Pony Ma's company; other companies are just as good at it.

The host mentioned in the program that "those who cut ice do not keep cattle and sheep" is from the Great Learning. These books are not usually bought by many people, but after Tan Jincheng's interview was broadcast, it had a great impact.

At the same time, this phrase officially spread. Dangdang.com's operations team wanted to seize this wave of traffic and clear their inventory, so they started making marketing plans and posters overnight, using the image of Tan Jincheng from the TV show "Face to Face".

The operators weren't unaware that this was an infringement, but they wanted to take a gamble, hoping that Tan Jincheng wouldn't hold it against them. After all, they were just using his photos to make a little money and clear out their inventory; they weren't using Boss Tan's image to do anything bad.

It only involves some economic interests. Even if they are sued, the boss can find some connections to mediate, and it shouldn't be a big problem.

The gamble was on Tan Jincheng's desire to save face. And you know what? Dangdang's tactic worked quite well. After the phrase became popular online, combined with traffic generation, the sales of the "University Rites" section on this largest online bookstore, which sells books, really increased significantly.

Before Flash could react, they did. As expected of a veteran e-commerce website, they should have done a pretty good job if they hadn't seized the company seal.

Flash's marketing and public relations departments quickly noticed this phenomenon. The public relations department did a good job cooperating with the nationwide inspection this time, and their monitoring of public opinion was more professional than before.

Mr. Tan's image represents the company's image. Now other e-commerce companies are using the boss's image for marketing and sales. This is unacceptable.
The matter was quickly relayed to Tan Jincheng.

Tan Jincheng also laughed. This reminded him of many "XXX-style" products in later generations, many of which were dubious and just marketing ploys to gain attention. He never expected that this would happen to him.

Looking at the promotional slogan "Recommended reading by President Tan," I'd like to scoff at the idea of ​​recommending something like that. It's hilarious.

"Let's have the legal department send a letter explaining this, telling them to be careful with their advertising wording and not mislead consumers." If we really care about this, we could sue them; it's blatant infringement. But these kinds of things happen a lot these days. If we sue them, Tan Jincheng himself will actually suffer. Dangdang.com is a large company, and many of the people who buy books there have a bit of a literary or artistic flair.

I can't say there aren't any, but a large portion of them definitely consider themselves cultured. If you actually sue them, not only will you bring them traffic, but you'll also damage your own reputation.

Can something done by cultured people be called stealing? Right?

So this matter can only be left unresolved; it's not worth it. Moreover, there will definitely be many similar situations in the future. You can't possibly sue everyone. You can't just write a whole cartload of tens of thousands of words of complaints to sue ordinary merchants like some other companies.

In fact, quite a few small offline stores occasionally misuse the images of Shanchi and Tan Jincheng. Unless it's particularly outrageous, Tan Jincheng usually doesn't care.

He used to sell fast food. Even when business was good, it was actually quite difficult and hard to run a small store.

He resorted to some underhanded methods to improve his business; he used them quite a bit when he was selling fast food.

If someone has status and position and still cares about such trivial matters, then they are becoming a bit too arrogant. However, Tan Jincheng will absolutely not tolerate anything that damages the company's image.

Making money by riding the wave of a trend is fine, but not this.

"Okay, I'll arrange it right away." After more than a month of getting to know each other, the head of the public relations department had a general understanding of the new boss's personality.

They are ruthless in business competition and cunning in dealing with investors, but for some reason, they seem to be very kind to grassroots employees and even ordinary people who are unrelated to them.

Is this what they said in the interview? Do they really hold themselves to this standard?

Tan Jincheng has already returned to Ningbo. It's already the end of August, and Gu Qingqing needs to prepare for the start of the new school year.

For Ningbo University, having a CEO of an internet company with a net worth of over 100 million yuan and huge influence while still a student is a living advertisement for recruitment. Gu Qingqing is the one standing in the center of the admission notice.

The same is true for the School of Foreign Languages. With such a figure already predominantly female, the School of Foreign Languages ​​has become an even more desirable place for many freshmen, especially female students. Who knows, maybe you can meet the next CEO Tan here, right?
Meanwhile, Gu Qingqing also had to give a speech at the freshman orientation ceremony. In any case, Yongcheng University used everything it could think of. In addition to the news interviews of Gu Qingqing being played on a loop in the cafeteria, there were also many posters of her hanging on campus.

She was everywhere. Gu Qingqing, who returned to Ningbo before Tan Jincheng, spent the last few days of August busy with this work.

After leaving Tianjin, Tan Jincheng went to the south again, met with several bigwigs from Yicheng in Shenzhen, and also contacted BYD to visit BYD's Shenzhen factory.

When it comes to manual manufacturing, BYD is truly impressive. Their massive workforce, despite limited technical capabilities, has created numerous miracles in the battery and automotive industries, something that the new era of navigation technology should definitely learn from.

The trip to Shenzhen came after the broadcast of the face-to-face interview program. In the program, Tan Jincheng neither admitted nor denied that he would manufacture cars. The trip to Shenzhen further confirmed Flash's layout in the automotive industry.

Not admitting that Flash Motors can manufacture cars might fool ordinary people, but it won't fool those who know Tan Jincheng, especially his electric vehicle peers who have been dealt a heavy blow by him.

"It's a good thing that this kid is going to build cars. His energy is limited, and we can have a lot more peace of mind for the next few years," Zhang Congxun sighed as he lay in his office.

If we're talking about the most frustrated electric vehicle competitor, it's not Ni Jie, but him. Xinri has been developing very well in the past two years. They have the highest market share in the high-end market, and they are also doing well in the mid-to-low-end market.

The original plan was to hire the eldest brother as a spokesperson, leverage his influence to secure the qualification of Olympic sponsorship, and then have electric vehicles sell like hotcakes, thus firmly establishing the company as the industry leader.

Who would have thought that everything would change completely after being ambushed by Flash Speed? They might not even be able to get the top spot this year. This is a real loss of the leading position, which is much bigger than the blow to regional companies like Luyuan.

Well, it's about the same level of blow as when AC Milan celebrated with champagne at halftime, only to have Liverpool win the championship in the end.

Damn it, go back to being a national enterprise, go back to making cars, stop messing around in this small electric vehicle business. The CEO of BYD is really bold. This guy is the kind of person who takes a few sheets of toilet paper with him when he goes to take a dump, and you actually let him visit?

I burned my hand while making coffee, so typing this out is incredibly embarrassing.

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(End of this chapter)