Chapter 743: New Market (2)

Entertainment merchandise, cultural creativity, and related industries in China currently belong only to a relatively small circle.

Niche culture.

Similar to the "star-chasing" industry chain, only a tiny fraction of the audience can be converted into consumers.

However, during those years of wild growth, not to mention how the United States did it, China has also had such an era—

It just wasn't official merchandise.

During the era when "My Fair Princess" was broadcasting wildly, items printed with the headshots of several main actors could be seen everywhere on streets and in alleys.

It was precisely at that time that the market economy was still in a relatively wild stage of growth.

Current film and television merchandise is either character headshot keychains or industrially manufactured props from the drama; how to put it, the definition almost lies in the nature of "toys." They do not even possess the utility of "toys," having only collectible value.

So apart from a very small number of true fans, who would be interested in such things of yours?

On the contrary, some current popular film and television dramas and IPs conducting business co-branding collaborations with fast-moving consumer brands are doing quite thrivingly.

Linghe is one of the outstanding examples among them.

Basically, for film and television dramas launched by Linghe, on one hand, they have very fixed authorized co-branding collaborations with "Lansen," a retail brand store endorsed by Lu Yan He; on the other hand, they are the same with other brands, especially focusing on fast-moving consumer brands like coffee and milk tea.

Many people assume Linghe focuses primarily on film and television production business, but in reality, since its inception, this company has been engaged in copyright operation.

The company's external expansion businesses are all based on copyright operation.

Lu Yan He gave a few simple examples, such as the collaboration between "Rouge Button" and some local activities for the Ghost Festival and Qixi Festival, which is one type of development; another example is the real-scenery park and offline situational drama of "Wu Lin Wai Zhuan" in Jiangzhi, which is another type of development.

As for the development that Li Luzhi and others wanted to pursue, combining with the physical industry, such as stationery products, Lu Yan He mentioned "Love Letter."

"'Love Letter' has already conducted two authorized collaborations with a stationery brand I endorse called 'Baixing,' both themed around 'Love Letter' to produce a set of stationery products; basic paper, pens, notebooks, rulers, etc., with sales for each set breaking ten million," Lu Yan He said. "Besides selling complete sets, items are also sold individually, but this depends heavily on the nature of the film and television IP itself. Like us, besides 'Love Letter,' we also developed in this direction with 'Wu Lin Wai Zhuan,' but the market sales performance was not very good."

Li Luzhi nodded.

"The current market is not perfect; many things carry huge risks because there is no fixed, stable production chain," Lu Yan He said. "We at Linghe actually have not entered the manufacturing end; we only provide co-branding authorization and coordinate promotion. Moreover, the partners we choose must all be top-tier domestic brands with very high requirements for quality control, because once quality control issues arise, the already unstable market will become even worse."

Li Luzhi keenly grasped the keywords within.

"So, actually, these developments related to Linghe are not original developments done by yourselves, but rather looking at other brands to see if there is any ready-made foundation for direct collaboration?" he asked. "Original product design based on movie elements or images is rare?"

"Yes, very rare." Lu Yan He nodded. "Such original product development itself places extremely high demands on the film and television IP; it must have great popularity and high fanbase. Furthermore, there must be a streamlined, mechanized production chain; otherwise, costs will be high and the market small. In our country over these years, those with hope for such development are 'Wu Lin Wai Zhuan' and 'Fen Huo,' which Long Yan is currently filming. But as for the former, just as I told you earlier regarding the stationery co-branding, it is not that if an IP is influential, the things made from it will necessarily sell well. If one cannot find the point where this IP truly has market appeal, it will still end up unsold in hand."

Li Luzhi nodded, lost in thought.

Lu Yan He asked, "Uncle, do you want to engage in this line of business?"

"I want to start from this line of business to see if we can enrich our company's product line. As you know, my company started in light industry, later transformed, and happened to catch the era of rapid computer and internet development, becoming an internet enterprise. Afterwards, we basically established ourselves in these two major areas to expand some businesses," Li Luzhi said.

Lu Yan He nodded.

Although Li Luzhi indeed has a large family and vast enterprise, compared to a large group like Shijin, he is still much weaker. They started with physical industry, accumulated their first pot of capital, then caught the internet trend, expanded rapidly, and gained a foothold in the capital circle. However, to become a giant like Shijin, one must either catch up head-on at the next trend and seize the opportunity, or rely on accumulation over time.

What surprised Lu Yan He greatly was that in this modern economic society where everyone plays capital games and financial leverage, Li Luzhi actually still set his sights on the manufacturing industry, remaining grounded in the physical sector, using the connotation of the tertiary industry to optimize and upgrade the secondary industry—based on their massive foundation in the secondary industry.

Lu Yan He thought about it; indeed, if one wants to do creative IP derivative development, having an enterprise that can directly interface with first-line factories as a partner can avoid many concerns and pitfalls in many aspects, allowing for some collaborative attempts.

Lu Yan He said, "Uncle, if you intend to do this, we at Linghe have actually always wanted to do it too. It's just that suitable, trustworthy partners are few, plus various other factors, so we have always only been doing small-scale, non-systematic developments. We can see if there are areas for collaboration?"

Li Luzhi nodded: "Of course."

Why is it so difficult for Linghe to want to do this thing?

To put it plainly, because current factories do not have the things Linghe wants to make, and it is also very difficult for them to have the technology to carry out entirely new development for a product that cannot reach a certain scale.

Opening a product line separately means nothing is directly usable from start to finish, including channels; everything needs to start from scratch, resulting in excessively high costs and difficulty in making a profit.

But now, since Li Luzhi's company is willing to do this, perhaps we can change from a pure buyer-seller relationship into a cooperative win-win relationship to make many attempts.

By the time Li Pengfei woke up, Li Luzhi had already gone to work.

Lu Yan He sat on the sofa, reading a book.

Li Pengfei let out a long yawn, tears welling in the corners of his eyes.

"Woke up dazed; you woke up early enough."

"You slept a lot yesterday." Lu Yan He put down his book and asked, "Do you have any plans for today?"

Li Pengfei asked, "What plans? I don't have any plans."

Lu Yan He said, "Then shall we go together to Lingyang District? To the 'Jump Up' side?"

Li Pengfei nodded: "Sure."

Lu Yan He said, "Then I'll ask them first if they are free to have lunch together at noon."

As a result, Chen Siqi replied that she and Xu Zijun had scheduled a working meal with an advertiser at noon and had no time to accompany them; only in the evening would be possible.

After Lu Yan He told Li Pengfei about this situation, Li Pengfei said, "Then let's eat here first at noon; order some takeout and let me recover a bit. I really feel my age catching up; after pulling an all-nighter, I can't just wake up from a sleep and regain my spirit."

"Go say that to your father's face."

"His health is much better than mine." Li Pengfei pursed his lips and said, "Full of energy every day."

"Your father exercised this morning too, just like Yan Liang."

"That's for sure." Li Pengfei nodded. "It's just that I've been tossing and turning outside these past two years; otherwise, I would definitely be more fragile than him."

At noon today, the advertiser Chen Siqi and Xu Zijun met was a brand representative hoping to place advertisements in "Jump Up" magazine. Since its publication, "Jump Up" has not yet broken the tradition of not placing advertisement pages inside the magazine, insisting only on single advertisement pages sealed together with the magazine in plastic wrap.

In fact, the advertising prices for "Jump Up" are not low currently.

However, because the magazine's sales are stable, its reader base is huge, and its influence is significant, brands willing to place ads continue to arrive in an endless stream.

Chen Siqi strictly controls the number of advertisements in each issue while simultaneously thinking of ways to make the presentation of advertisements more creative and better aligned with the temperament of "Jump Up" magazine. Simply put, it is about "customizing advertisements" for every brand.

However, initially, this point was seen by many brand sides and brand public relations managers as effort with no reward.

Because "customized advertisements" require adding another sum of money for "customization."

The brand side not only has to spend on advertising fees but also has to spend another sum on design fees.

However, after a few issues of "customized advertisements" made it onto trending searches due to their creativity, no one complained anymore.

Hmm, making it onto trending searches because of the advertisement itself—and not bought, but organic trending searches.

The advertisement content itself being good enough to trend organically is no longer simply an improvement in brand awareness, but furthermore an elevation of the brand image.

Especially when these brands combine certain characteristics of "Jump Up" to create customized advertisements, not only will the readers of "Jump Up" be more accepting, but this sense of dedication will also make the readers of "Jump Up" feel more valued—to put it plainly, it is VIP service.

This is also a new idea Chen Siqi has for "Jump Up" magazine—the "Jump Up" brand has always been building a reputation and circle as a "peak of arts and literature"; offline, it has even helped many artists hold solo exhibitions, and although profits are not high, it has acquired a function similar to an artist MCN.

For every brand wanting to place advertisements, the "Jump Up" team will recommend certain artists based on the brand's image, the nature of the advertisement, and so on, to explore the possibility of high-end advertising cooperation; sometimes, what begins merely as placing ads in "Jump Up" evolves, because the conversations click and minds meet, into involvement in the creative design for the brand's entire series of advertisements—

At this point, "Jump Up" has become an advertising company.

The reason Chen Siqi began experimenting in this direction is that "Jump Up" now holds increasingly abundant resources, making it suitable for such endeavors.

By integrating these resources together, one can create a plan that others cannot produce, or that would be extremely difficult for others to execute.

For instance, for a brand operating escape rooms nationwide, "Jump Up" facilitated an incredibly impressive advertising campaign—

Represented by Liu Jiazhen, China's five most popular suspense and mystery novelists served as experience officers, visiting and checking in at different themed escape rooms.

The readership of these five authors happens to overlap significantly with the audience for escape rooms.

Within three months following this campaign, the order volume for this escape room brand tripled.

This is because "Jump Up" happens to possess such writer resources, and furthermore, because "Jump Up" acted as the intermediary, fulfilling the role of an MCN company, the writers felt confident accepting such work—these people, especially those who have already achieved fame and earned fortunes from manuscript fees and copyright royalties, are extremely protective of their reputations and approach such collaborations with utmost caution.

If anyone else were to execute such a plan, merely negotiating with these writers, from making initial contact to persuading them to participate, would involve an unpredictable amount of time.

Chen Siqi and Xu Zijun spoke with the brand representatives for two hours; having largely settled matters and reached a cooperation intent, they warmly saw the guests off.

This was an advertising order worth 8 million, excluding fees for "special customization," purely for advertisement placement, covering eighteen magazine issues over a year plus two advertising campaigns on the official WeChat account.

For "Jump Up" magazine, this counts as one of the largest orders in its history.

And once cooperation begins, "Jump Up" currently still has a massive media matrix targeting different audiences eagerly awaiting content.

Chen Siqi said to Xu Zijun, "It is rare to encounter an order like this."

Xu Zijun smiled, "Because it is a new brand needing to establish market awareness."

Brand advertising is often the type aimed at building market awareness, and such clients are always the most willing to spend money.

"Actually, it is not a new brand; it just has never entered the China market before," Chen Siqi said. "I do not know who they will choose as their spokesperson; I will sync this information with Sister Ziyan, although she has most likely already received the news."

Xu Zijun said, "Actually, I was just about to mention that this outdoor sports equipment brand surprisingly fits very well with the documentary Li Pengfei plans to film next, but never mind; the documentary Li Pengfei intends to film does not feature any celebrity artists."

Chen Siqi said, "You have reminded me; this brand—"

Her eyes flashed with light.

"Actually, the market is huge; currently, the domestic middle class is massive, and more and more people enjoy outdoor and wilderness sports," Chen Siqi asked. "Do you think it is possible for us to plan a variety show for this brand, a program that can highlight the brand's value?"

Xu Zijun looked somewhat puzzled.

"Are you preparing to venture into the world of variety shows?"

"No, we will not produce it; we will only provide the idea; this is the tenet of our 'Jump Up' team," Chen Siqi said. "We do not have the capability or manpower to produce it, but we do have the ability to assemble the framework."

Xu Zijun nodded; she felt Chen Siqi's idea was completely sound.

That evening, when Lu Yan He and Li Pengfei rushed to Lingyang District to sit down for dinner with their girlfriends, this matter was brought up again.

Chen Siqi already had a more concrete idea.

"Produce a show, gather some celebrities, and travel together."

After hearing this, Lu Yan He showed a surprised expression and asked, "'Divas Hit the Road'?"

Chen Siqi and the others were momentarily stunned. "What is that?"

In that instant, Lu Yan He felt... the gears of fate turning relentlessly.

Lu Yan He briefly explained the format of the program "Divas Hit the Road."

The more Chen Siqi listened, the brighter her eyes became.

This is still a chapter slowly finding its rhythm; it is acceptable; although short, it contains some content I am satisfied with.

Recommend my completed entertainment-themed novel, "I Became the Scandalous Female Lead Overnight." (End of Chapter)