novellhall Chapter 55: The New Waves Push the Old Waves Forward
Chapter 55: The New Waves Push the Old Waves Forward
Liu Yang, an editor at Sina Entertainment, noticed something was wrong in the morning.
After reviewing the feedback from this group of enthusiastic readers on the forum, he also looked back at the exclusive report he had personally posted two weeks ago, titled "The Situation Is Not Optimistic," which was still on the channel's trending list with over 800,000 views.
Thousands of comments, all criticizing the movie as terrible.
The problem is that those netizens who are criticizing bad movies are now asking the same question to those who got early screenings: How can I watch it in advance?
More than half of the comments on the thousand-page post were asking about this.
No one is discussing whether this movie is bad or not anymore.
People have already started discussing where to go to see this terrible movie.
Liu Yang had worked as an entertainment editor for ten years, from print media to portal websites, and had never encountered anything like this before.
Earlier, he wrote a full-page report accusing a movie of being the most disappointing bad movie of the year.
As the criticism intensified, the hype turned this "bad movie" into one of the most anticipated films of the year.
He opened the data panel in his editing backend and found that four of the top ten most clicked articles had Wei Yi's name on them.
Two of them were written by himself.
One was an exclusive report warning of a bad movie, and the other was a follow-up report four days later where the author had to change his tune and follow up on the popularity of celebrity blogs.
After thinking it over, Liu Yang hardened his heart.
He went straight to the editor-in-chief's office and knocked on the door.
After half an hour.
Wei Yi's phone rang; it was Han Sanping calling again.
"Sina is going to create a special page for you."
Old Han's tone carried a sense of resignation, as if to say, "I won't ask anymore, you figure it out yourself." After a pause, he added, "The person in charge is called Liu Yang. Don't underestimate him; his father works in the publicity department. Although he's not a high-ranking official, he has some connections. You'll have to cooperate. China Film's publicity team will follow up and oversee the content."
Wei Yi agreed and had Li Hua call Sina back.
The framework for the special page was quickly completed.
Sina acted swiftly, launching it on the same day.
The title displayed on the homepage recommendation page is "A Complete Analysis of the First Film by a Top-Scoring College Entrance Examination Student: 'One Shot'".
Four sections.
The first section is "Face to Face with Directors".
Sina sent a female reporter to the Beijing Film Academy for an interview. After asking a few standard opening questions, the reporter got to the point: Why did the only person in the country to get a perfect score on the college entrance exam choose to make a movie?
Wei Yi looked at her recording pen and said, "A perfect score only proves that I can solve problems, not that I can do scientific research. I know I don't have that kind of talent. I want to try something else."
This is the truth, and it's the truth he carefully considered that's most suitable for this kind of topic.
It's less effort than telling lies, and more memorable than being polite.
There was no explanation or counterattack; he simply accepted the question and offered his own version of the answer.
The second section is "Celebrity Lineup Revealed".
I won't write a plot, I won't write characters, I'll only write about one thing:
This film marks Chow Yun-fat's first time working as a lighting technician, Gong Li's first time working as a makeup artist, and Huang Xiaoming's role as a character whose very existence he himself was unsure of.
The content from the previous four blog posts has been officially incorporated into Sina's official framework, which means that all netizens who come to catch up later have a complete entry point.
The third section is a behind-the-scenes photo section.
Wei Yi selected fifty photos from the set photos he had taken.
Each one is blessed with the "Mirror Flower Karma Dharma".
Chow Yun-fat stands sideways under the light, holding a reflector; Gong Li is seriously gesturing at Fan Binbin's face with a makeup brush; Fan Binbin is squatting on the ground eating a boxed lunch with half a piece of pickled vegetables still on the lid; Bao Qiang's face is a mess of white flour and laugh lines, like a Peking Opera clown who forgot to remove his makeup; Tian Erzhuang sits in front of the monitor smoking with a serious expression as if he is filming some epic movie; Mu Tingting is wearing a female ghost costume and squatting in the corner, being comforted by seven or eight people in a circle.
Everything is high-quality, and everything has an electronic opium-like visual allure.
The fourth section is the comments section, which directly connects to the most popular posts on Tianya.
They simply copied and pasted the previous verbal battles and online attacks verbatim.
The IP addresses and post timestamps of those individuals were preserved, allowing viewers to see and judge for themselves.
1 month 19 number.
There are less than 30 hours until the release of "One Shot".
Han Sanping's assistant jogged over and placed a sheet of printed data on his desk. The paper was still warm, having just been torn from the printer.
The assistant's surname is Zhou. He has been working for Han Sanping for almost five years. He is from Sichuan Province and is usually a calm and collected person.
He stood in front of his desk, his lips twitching several times, unable to suppress it.
Han Sanping put on his reading glasses and glanced up.
He specifically asked the publicity department to obtain the data from Sina Blog's backend.
The number of views, comments, and shares for the "One Shot" feature and the four blog posts are all listed in one table.
"This is the one by Chow Yun-fat."
Xiao Zhou pointed to the first line, "It's been nine days since it was published, and it's ranked number one in terms of readership. But Fan Binbin's post has almost half as many comments as Chow Yun-fat's, and he has a team stirring things up in the comments, so its interaction rate is the highest among all celebrity blogs."
Where is Huang Xiaoming?
"His post got the most shares," Xiao Zhou said. "The title was riddle-like, and everyone was guessing what role he played. There were more shares than comments."
Han Sanping pushed his reading glasses down and stared at the string of numbers for a long time.
"What level is this data at?"
"Chairman Han," Xiao Zhou swallowed, "the most popular blogger on Sina Blog right now is Xu Jinglei, whose total monthly traffic is probably in the tens of millions. But that's one post a day, while she updates her blog daily."
"Director Wei's campaign only had four articles, and the themed section was only set up yesterday. In just nine days, it climbed to the top of the monthly charts. The number of views per article has already exceeded Xu Jinglei's average."
Han Sanping didn't speak. He lowered his head and looked at the table again.
A movie-themed section that Sina (a Chinese online platform) requested to create.
I only made a few phone calls, and the cost was just the phone bill for those calls.
It's worth at most one yuan.
Four blog posts, each a few hundred words long, with a few photos, cost a total of zero yuan.
The most expensive part of this promotional campaign was the advance screening for the thousand people.
However, since it's using China Film Group's own venue, the total cost won't exceed 20,000 yuan.
Even according to the report provided to Wei Yi by China Film Group, the cost was only a little over 80,000.
To date, China Film Group's total marketing investment in this film has not even reached 90,000 yuan...
Han Sanping recalled how, in the past, in order to promote a movie, he would buy a full-page advertisement in the newspaper and prime time on TV, spending millions of dollars, but the splash he made was not even half as big as these four blog posts.
Eight figures, he silently calculated in his mind.
To achieve this level of exposure, you need to generate at least this much traffic.
Moreover, this is just a blog post; it doesn't even include the tens of thousands of comments on Tianya, the exclusive report on Sina that garnered 800,000 views, or the 300 unsolicited film reviews from viewers in ten cities that were simultaneously screened.
Seeing that he had been silent for too long, Xiao Zhou tentatively spoke up, "Chairman Han, the distribution department is asking about additional budget."
"Add more?" Old Han took off his reading glasses and placed them on the table. He leaned back in his chair and stared at his assistant for two seconds. "It's going to be released tomorrow! Where are we going to chase it? I'd like to see if this kid, after all this time, can actually keep the box office going."
"If he can really boost the box office, that would be amazing. Then this kid is a true marketing genius; he's created a new marketing strategy."
He laughed as soon as he finished speaking.
That smile was complex; Xiao Zhou had rarely seen him smile like that in all the years he'd followed him.
There was a mix of excitement like finding a treasure and a subtle discomfort of being lectured on how to do things by an eighteen-year-old.
"What about the theaters...?"
"Keep the screening window open for now."
Han Sanping's smile faded as he folded the data and put it in the drawer. "Don't lock it in too tightly. The screening schedules for 'King Kong' and 'Fearless' are too rigid. We'll adjust them based on the pre-sales when his movie comes out. His film might need a more flexible screening schedule."