Chapter 8: Mystery Marketing and Chuunibyou

"Please reduce your comments on social media, cooperate with the company's upcoming mystery marketing, and wait quietly for the record release."

Miss Luo Quan looked at the email Miki sent and fell into thought.

She was no stranger to the word "marketing." Many stars in China in her previous life became popular through marketing.

The main means of marketing for Chinese stars was viral marketing—simply put, constantly getting on trending lists, posting videos on video sites, posting on various forums, or binding and touching porcelain with a popular star.

The ultimate goal was to gain heat for oneself and establish a persona.

This kind of marketing method was common in the entertainment industry and had been applied since its birth. Although it was hated by countless netizens, it could not be denied that this marketing method was the fastest and most effective way—almost removing the "one of."

Japan was not as excellent as China in marketing, but because of their big brains, they often came up with some ideas to achieve unexpected marketing effects.

And mystery marketing was one of the more representative ones, but this marketing method was popular in the 1980s and 1990s.

The process of mystery marketing was actually to reduce the artist's exposure, reduce contact with fans, only gain attention through works, and appear at appropriate times, playing the effect of "half-hidden behind the pipa."

Once, this set was very popular among Japanese people and also created quite a few popular female stars. They were mysterious idols in the eyes of the public, dream goddesses who would not show up easily. So-called distance creates beauty—that was probably it.

Einstein once said: The most beautiful experience of mankind is mystery. Mystery is the true source of all true science and true art.

All fantasies come from mystery. Because of not understanding, the idol is perfect in the hearts of fans and can be pursued for a lifetime.

However, with the development of the times, the close contact between stars and fans had increasingly become a major demand of the idol market, and mystery marketing had completely become a thing of the past.

In the modern era where the internet is so developed, no star could create any mystery anymore. If fans really wanted to dig, they could even dig out what score their star got in their middle school final exam and which female classmate they sat with at the same table!

Moreover, there were so many fan meetings, endorsements, variety shows, and other activities to carry out, and it was impossible to keep a distance from fans.

Of course, there were stars in the entertainment industry who never hyped and never participated in variety shows, but such stars usually had very hard works themselves and didn't need any marketing strategies to maintain heat. Such stars couldn't even be found in one out of a hundred.

So for the past ten years, this method of mystery marketing hadn't worked once, and now Sony was using this method to market her record, which was something Miss Luo Quan didn't expect.

What surprised her even more was that around 8:00 PM, Sony Music released a marketing short video about Miss Luo Quan under their official account.

The name of the short video was: The Beautiful Girl Encountered Once in Five Thousand Years in China—The Perfect Combination of Looks and Talent!

Just this title made Miss Luo Quan stay stunned for a full two minutes.

She knew that Japanese people were all chuunibyou and liked to use exaggerated language to describe everything, but she didn't expect it to be this serious!

This wasn't helping her promote at all; this was wishing she would die. Self-praise wasn't done like this!

Clicking into the video, the content of the video was the videos Lin Zheyuan took for her this morning.

The video was obviously processed with slow motion. Every lift and fall of her feet in the water was very slow, and the splashing water and the snow-white calves exposed under the long dress fused into a picture full of temptation.

A series of elements such as wet body, leg control, and foot control instantly occupied the high ground, becoming the first impression of all viewers. In fact, these three elements were also one of the elements that could attract the most attention of a girl.

No one could understand what men liked better than men, and as a male photographer, Lin Zheyuan grasped the G-spot of video viewers while making the video fit the theme well.

What was even more rare was that this video didn't take selling meat as a selling point. It was thought-provoking but not cliché, truly interpreting a sentence: it's not just bikinis or swimsuits that are called sexy.

It was worth mentioning that Miss Luo Quan didn't show her face in the entire video. Only a section of snow-white neck could be seen, and anything above that was out of the phone screen range.

At the end of the short video was a striking preview: "July 19th, record release, please look forward to it!"

The whole video didn't say who the protagonist was, what the record was called, didn't give everyone a trial listening segment, and didn't even reveal the protagonist's appearance.

Such a promotional method was truly a bit mysterious. Paired with such an exaggerated title, if it were in China, the vast number of netizens would have sprayed it long ago.

However, the Japanese netizens who were all chuunibyou seemed to eat this set, and most of the comments below the video expressed anticipation, not dwelling too much on the Chinese identity of the girl in the video.

Of course, because the information revealed in the video was too little, no one linked the protagonist of the video to Miss Luo Quan.

And in order to cooperate with the company's wave of marketing, Miss Luo Quan deleted the three videos in her personal space on YouTube for the first time, even though their views were already close to one million!

The trending search related to Miss Luo Quan's songs on Twitter had gradually fallen, replaced by this mysterious short video released by Sony Music. Almost everyone was guessing the true identity of the girl.

First of all, the two premises of coming from China and having both looks and talent could exclude quite a lot of suspected candidates. However, because Japanese netizens were not particularly familiar with Chinese stars, they couldn't guess an answer that could convince everyone after guessing back and forth.

However, most people were still more inclined to a Chinese female star, that is, the newcomer who had been very popular in China recently—Wang Xuan.

Only her conditions could barely match the title of the short video.

But Wang Xuan was only the one with the greatest possibility, and the debate about the heroine of the video was still heating up.

Under the promotion of Sony and the fierce discussion of vast Japanese netizens, this topic rushed to the first place on Twitter's trending list in Japan the next day, and because it involved Wang Xuan, it also entered the vision of Chinese netizens.

Wang Xuan's PR team was likely the first group of Chinese people to discover this news. Such a windfall is not something one encounters every day. Regardless of whether it was their own doing, they decided to ride the wave of popularity first, and it was immediately arranged on the Weibo trending list.

"Wang Xuan suspected of cooperating with Sony Music, rushing to the top of the Japanese trending list!"

This title was much more reliable than Miss Luo Quan's. By rushing to the foreign trending list to stimulate the national pride of netizens, and then the whole text was also written in an ambiguous tone, so there was no need to take any responsibility after denying it three times.

Because Wang Xuan was already very popular recently, plus it involved Japan, this news soared to the first place on the Sina trending list in a very short time.

The search for the mysterious heroine of Sony's short video followed closely behind, reaching the second position.

The first trending search basically didn't have too many highlights. More were Wang Xuan's fans asking and celebrating. It was indeed something worth boasting about that their own fans could cooperate with Sony and trigger such a heated discussion at home and abroad.

And those who paid attention to the second trending search had to be more, because the quality of this short video was really a bit high.

Although it was only two minutes long, the space for imagination could be as long as two hours.

A large group of netizens also left messages in the comment section one after another:

"These legs! I'm healed~~"

"I have a friend who wants to know the name of the heroine."

"What do you mean upstairs? Don't you jerk off to nobodies?"

"It is said that the heroine is Wang Xuan."

"Fart! I've seen Wang Xuan's legs; they aren't this straight. And because Wang Xuan comes from a girl group and practices dancing often, her thigh and calf muscle groups are more developed than the average girl, while this girl's calves are more plump, and the muscle groups are not particularly obvious."

"Look, this is called professional. jpg"

"Don't you all think the title is too exaggerated? A beautiful girl once in five thousand years, how many years has Chinese history been in total?"

"Island people are old chuunibyou. In their place, a thousand years is the basic unit. Don't mention five thousand years; there are beautiful girls once in fifty thousand years."

"That makes sense. Fifty thousand years ago, weren't they all monkeys on the island? Compared to monkeys, modern people are celestial beings even if they are Feng Jie."

"To be fair, Feng Jie is really not as good as a monkey."

"Choose one of the two, which one do you want?"

"Only children make choices, and I, I want them all!"

"You are a wolf-destroyer, I am willing to call you the strongest."

Compared to the chuunibyou-degree-exploding Japanese netizens, the fun degree of Chinese sand-sculpture netizens was not inferior.

Just when the discussion about this video topped the trending lists in two countries, and most people locked the heroine of the video as Wang Xuan, the situation reversed. ===== CHAPTER 9 =====