Chapter 111: A Special Video Script
Chapter 111: A Special Video Script
The next day.
Pei Qian sent a document to Lu Mingliang.
"Follow this plan."
Pei Qian had full confidence in Lu Mingliang’s obedience.
Since the development of Game Producer, Lu Mingliang had always faithfully executed Pei Qian’s instructions—even going as far as doing voice acting when Pei Qian asked him to.
Pei Qian was very pleased with this particular trait of Lu Mingliang.
Employees who don’t mess around are good employees!
Lu Mingliang opened the document Pei Qian had sent. It mainly contained three parts:
Which video creators to work with for promotion, the script for the promotion, and the promotional budget.
It was very detailed.
Lu Mingliang read through it from start to finish.
‘We're doomed. I have absolutely no idea what President Pei’s intention is!’
Lu Mingliang was a little panicked. Before, he could at least make a guess or two at President Pei’s intentions, but now? He didn’t understand at all!
Every sentence in the script was very clear on its own, but when put together, it became completely incomprehensible!
First of all: which video creators were selected for the promotion?
Lu Mingliang took a look. These creators were all over the place, covering all sorts of fields—he even saw beauty vloggers included!
But strangely, none of them were big names. Not a single one!
Among them, the most well-known creator remotely related to gaming was “Teacher Qiao” (Qiao Liang), the one who had previously roasted Lonely Desert Road.
However, President Pei specifically noted that this video couldn't be posted in Qiao Liang's Trash Game Roast channel. It had to go in This Month’s Recommended Games.
On the surface, this seemed reasonable.
Because Trash Game Roast was all about mocking bad games—using that channel to advertise would probably have the opposite effect.
That’s why Qiao Liang had created a new channel called This Month’s Recommended Games specifically for sponsored content.
But if you actually looked at the stats for the two channels, a problem became apparent.
This Month’s Recommended Games, the channel for sponsored content, had view counts less than one-tenth of Trash Game Roast!
With such a big difference in popularity, what effect could an ad even have?
The other video creators were even more baffling—lifestyle channels, beauty vloggers, tech reviewers— these completely unrelated creators might promote the game with all their effort, but how many real players would Game Producer actually gain from that?
Advertising is all about conversion rates.
Viewers of gaming videos are mostly gamers. If they see a good game being introduced, they might look it up and try it. Even if just one out of every hundred views converts into a download, that’s pretty good.
But in other content categories, like beauty, the audience is probably mostly makeup-loving women. Even if they think the game looks good, they’re very unlikely to search it up. Even with a million views—if only one out of ten thousand actually tries the game, that’s going to be a tough sell.
So, staring at this list of random video creators, Lu Mingliang felt mentally exhausted.
But the real headache came next.
The second issue: how to promote.
Generally speaking, each of these video creators has a very distinct personal style when making content.
Some like to roast things, others love to insert memes, some are skilled in storytelling or adding special effects, and so on.
So, when doing a sponsored video, the norm is to fully respect the creator’s style—just provide the necessary materials, and let them create the content however they want.
Of course, as the party who’s being paid, the creators still have to rack their brains to meet all of the client's requirements.
But at the very least, their creative freedom is respected. It’s supposed to be a win-win.
The document Pei Qian sent over, however, included a universal video narration script.
No matter the category—gaming, beauty, tech, gadgets… every creator had to use the same script to make their video!
Even that might have been tolerable…
But the key problem was: the script gave Lu Mingliang a headache just reading it. He had never seen a script like this before—one mixing Chinese and English, complete with demands for tone of voice and even sound effects.
For example:
“Waaaooo, this is my exclusive moment, right?”
“This is so freaking cool!”
“Sluuurp sluurp sluurp...” (sound of tongue flicking and swallowing)
“Awesome!”
“Such a beautiful start screen! Just the title screen alone is probably worth... three thousand bucks, right?”
“OK, let’s try to treat this like a normal running animation, don’t over-glorify... don’t put it on a pedestal.”
“Waaaooo ×14” (said continuously)
Stuff like that.
After reading the script, Lu Mingliang fell into deep self-doubt.
‘Has my IQ really dropped this much...?’
This video script… no matter how you looked at it, it felt like the ultimate insult to the creators!
The mixed Chinese-English dialogue was already borderline punch-worthy, but even worse—there were demands for sound effects, and even insisted that “waaooo” had to be repeated exactly 14 times—not one less?!
Is the goal here to make the creators lose subscribers as fast as possible?
Finally, the pricing.
Depending on the creator's subscriber count, the rates varied—but overall, the prices were very, very generous!
In fact, Pei Qian had even set aside an extra amount of money, specifically to increase the offer if needed!
Clearly, Pei Qian had already predicted that some video creators would refuse such a bizarrely high-paying offer—probably out of (mainly) pride or for the sake of their public image.
Even if they refuse—no problem! We’ll just offer more money!
Of course, the increase wasn’t unlimited—the maximum was double the original offer.
At those prices, it would be hard for any of the selected video creators to turn it down. After all, Pei Qian had specifically chosen creators who weren’t very popular to begin with—people who were barely scraping by. They didn’t have the luxury of worrying too much about their image.
But for Tengda, wasn’t this basically a lose-lose situation?
The creators would inevitably get flamed by their own fans, lose subscribers, and damage their reputations; meanwhile, Tengda would spend a fortune and still fail to get meaningful promotional results—just burning money for nothing...
Just thinking about it was despair-inducing.
‘Stay calm.’
‘President Pei must have a deeper reason for doing this.’
‘Even if I don’t understand, I shouldn’t act on my own. Just follow orders honestly.’
With that in mind, Lu Mingliang went to all the major video platforms and began reaching out to every creator on Pei Qian’s list.
…
…
In a rented apartment in the capital.
Qiao Liang looked worn out as he sat hunched over a bowl of instant noodles.
Yes, a bowl—not even the convenient cup kind.
He couldn’t afford cup noodles anymore—he had to settle for the cheaper packet version.
Business hasn't been great lately.
Not for lack of effort, mind you. It was just that there hadn’t been any good material. No great games to cover, no hilariously bad games either!
In short, he couldn’t ride any trends, nor could he create any hype himself.
And to make things worse, no one was even offering him sponsored deals recently. Qiao Liang’s financial situation was becoming dire.
He was even thinking about changing careers.
Just look at President Pei’s Daily Life—it has gone completely viral!
Qiao Liang was burning with envy. With that many views, the guy must be raking in sponsorship deals left and right!
As he slurped his instant noodles, Qiao Liang mindlessly browsed the internet.
Suddenly, he noticed a new message in the backend of Fanshu.net.
“Hello Mr. Qiao, I’m Lu Mingliang, Lead Executive Designer at Tengda Network Technology Co., Ltd. I’d like to discuss a potential business collaboration with you—would you be available?”
Qiao Liang didn’t even read the message carefully. His eyes locked directly onto four magical words: business collaboration.
Available?
Of course I’m available—desperately available!
I’m practically starving over here—I’ve been waiting for this opportunity!
Qiao Liang was in full “beggars can’t be choosers” mode. The mere mention of a sponsorship deal immediately jolted him awake.
They exchanged contact info and became friends in record time.
“I wonder how much they’ll offer.”
“What should I ask for? 1.500 yuan? Would that be too high...?”
Qiao Liang hesitated, trying to act reserved.
But before he could say anything, this Lu Mingliang guy beat him to it.
“Mr. Qiao, how about 3.000 yuan for one video—would that be alright?”
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