Chapter 766: Selling like crazy!
Translator: Legge Editor: - -
There were traces of Zhang Ye all over Weibo!
He was everywhere!
He was like a shadow that followed you everywhere!
The only reason he could snatch the "sofa" on these celebrities' posts was naturally because he had a method to do so. First off, this fellow was a hacker, the most wanted hacker with the highest bounty in the world, so he definitely used some underhanded means to help himself snatch the sofa. Second, the key reason was because Zhang Ye's hand movement speed was now a far cry from the past. Ever since he had eaten that many Fruits of Agility, his reaction speed had greatly improved. It was the same reason behind his reciting speed; his hand movement speed had also reached a peak. Therefore, no common netizen was able to snatch the sofa from him!
Zhang Ye's promotions had performed beyond expectation, with countless netizens watching on in laughter. Regarding the launch of Plants vs. Zombies, more and more people knew about it by now!
"This joker!"
"Zhang Ye's messing around again, haha!"
"Even though he has been put into the freezer, Teacher Zhang is still so entertaining every day!"
"Is it really a fun game? I'll go and try out Plants vs. Zombies as well then!"
"Supporting Zhang Ye!"
"This promotional campaign is simply astonishing! I'm pretty sure there will be other celebrities doing the same in the future! It's low cost, has a low barrier to entry, and has good effects. This campaign of Zhang Ye's has really touched into a new field of advertising!"
"It's impossible. Who can imitate this style of promoting their products?"
Such promotional techniques might look very straightforward and simple, but in fact, in the entire entertainment industry, only Zhang Ye alone could carry it out. Even if other people followed his strategy down to the letter to do their promotions, they couldn't achieve much of an effect. The reason was simple. First, you needed to have the technique and speed to ensure that you could snatch the sofa successfully. If your comments were a few pages down, who would notice? Even if people noticed, the effect wouldn't be as great, so a majority of those who would want to use this method were already be eliminated. Second, you'd still need to be somewhat of a big shot to do this. A small-time celebrity couldn't carry out such a method of promoting their products. If you were a D- or an E-list rookie and quite unknown in the entertainment circle, would you try and snatch the sofa of those big shot celebrities' posts and use their platforms to promote your own works? This was obviously not going to earn you any fans. This way of doing things would only devalue the efforts; furthermore, it could possibly offend others. But if you were a big shot, then it probably wouldn't happen this way, since even if everyone did not know each other personally, they would still give a certain amount of face to each other. Even with good hand movement speed and celebrity status, there was still the final requirement to manage something like that. That is, you'd need to have thick skin, reaching to the point of shamelessness!
With a large enough celebrity status.
With a quick enough hand movement speed.
Add on shamelessness to that.
—None of those factors could be missing.
The only person with these three qualities right now in the entertainment circle was Zhang Ye!
That was why this promotional technique could only be managed by Zhang Ye and no one else!
...
Noon.
Zhang Ye's antics finally caught the attention of the official Weibo staff. They had probably noticed him early on, but chose to let it slide at the beginning, thinking that his promotions for the game would stop soon after it started. But as it turned out, Zhang Ye did not even have to thought of stopping. From the morning, he had been snatching the sofas of posts, all the way until noon. It was as though his account had turned into a sofa-snatching specialist account. The Weibo staff found it both funny and annoying. They asked for instructions from their department leader, then grit their teeth as they issued a soft ban on Zhang Ye's Weibo account, stopping him from posting any further!
The reason for the ban: Advertising spam!
When Zhang Ye, who was at home, saw that he could no longer post any comments, he silently cursed under his breath and decided to stop since he had been banned. He shook his tired wrists and then went to get a glass of water. He was actually getting tired already.
He had now done all he could!
The rest was up to Plants vs. Zombies itself now!
...
At Fat Sis' company, everyone was up to their ears with work!
"Has Dayu Video not submitted the animated promotional trailer yet?"
"Uh, they said that they'd get it done today, Fat Sis."
"Go and hurry them up. I've already paid yet they're not getting our jobs done? What the hell!"
"Yes!"
"Fat Sis, quickly have a look at Weibo. Teacher Zhang has been advertising everywhere on Weibo by stealing the sofa on those big shot celebrity posts for the past three hours. Hmm, he's even sacrificed his account and gotten a soft ban!"
"Look at Teacher Little Zhang! Dedicated! He's totally dedicated! Come on, everyone. We have to learn from Teacher Little Zhang and get things moving now! Today is the launch date of our new game, and an important day for the game. The results we'll see in the future will all depend on the effort we put in today! No one should screw up at this critical juncture!"
"Yes!"
"Rest assured, Fat Sis!"
Everyone replied in unison!
Fat Sis asked, "Have the download numbers been calculated yet?"
A person said, "Not yet, but Little Hu is already contacting those game download websites, since we don't have access to their data and can only get it from them one by one. In any case, even if we calculate the data, it's only the statistics for the past four hours."
Fat Sis said, "Four hours worth of data will provide enough of a clue on how we're doing. The players will only need to pay after the first three levels of the game. We're only four hours into the launch now and there are still many players who might have downloaded the game late and not passed the third level yet, so there's no point to look at the serial codes sold for now. It won't be an accurate reflection of the numbers, but the most important thing to know right now is still the number of downloads and popularity of the game. The number of people who download, the number of accounts created—those are the most direct and the most reliable numbers we can check, and those are what I want to know. I will only be able to stop worrying if it can exceed Fishing Master 2's number of downloads!"
"Alright, I will go and hurry Little Hu up!"
"Go on!"
Fishing Master 2 was this year's most popular puzzle game, and since their game was also in the same genre, they definitely had to use it for comparison. Fishing Master 2's launch day downloads numbered close to 100,000, which was the figure for the 24-hour window. So if their Plants vs. Zombies could manage around 20,000 downloads in a four-hour window, then they could say they had succeeded. If it outperformed and got close to 30,000 downloads during that time frame, then they could say for sure that their game had brought some vindication to domestically made games by outdoing Fishing Master 2's results!
But how did they do?
No one knew at this moment!
Everyone was desperately busy and feeling very nervous. Whether their company could be revived all depended on this day. The company had bet everything it had on this release!
Suddenly, a scream sounded from the office across theirs!
"Fat Sis! Fat Sis!" It was Little Hu from the Operations Department!
Everyone looked over at that instant!
Only to see the office door bursting open and Little Hu stumbling into the office. As she was running too quickly, she did not watch her step and even bumped into the door frame, making her clench her teeth in pain, but not enough to slow her pace, as she ran into the office. She held the data documents with excitement, looking overwhelmed!
Fat Sis quickly asked, "Is it out already?"
Little Hu said with a pant, "It's, it's out!"
Fat Sis immediately asked, "How many downloads? Speak, quick!"
A deputy CEO of the company also asked anxiously, "Spit it out, Little Hu. How many downloads are we up to at this moment?"
Everyone's eyes were fixed on her.
Little Hu's face was flushed, not from the running, but from her excitement as she waved the documents in her hands and said, "The number of downloads for the four hours after launch is…47,000!"
When everyone heard this, the large office suddenly burst out in jubilation!
"47,000?"
"Heavens!"
"Hahahaha!"
"It's a success! We did it! We really did it!"
"Why are my eyes turning red? I think I'm gonna cry!"
"We've returned back to business this time! It's a hit!"
"Teacher Zhang is way too amazing! I'd said that this game would be no problem! That it would definitely be popular!"
"In the future, let's see who still dares to look down on our domestically made video games!"
Everyone was yelling in surprise!
Someone even threw all the documents in their hands up into the air!
They were all too excited and no one could control their emotions!
Even the company CEO, Fat Sis, had tears in her eyes. She smacked her hand on the table and repeatedly shouted, "Good! Good! Good!"
The company's Deputy CEO nearly shed a tear as he said in a trembling voice, "47,000 downloads in four hours. Then wouldn't that mean we would definitely surpass Fishing Master 2's 100,000 downloads after 24 hours?"
However, just as they were all celebrating, Little Hu from Operations interjected, "No! No! Fat Sis, CEO Chen, it's not like that!"
Everyone froze.
The Deputy CEO said, "What do you mean by 'it's not like that'?"
Fat Sis was also scowling. "Did you report the wrong statistics to us?"
"Ah?" Everyone thought that this better not be it, otherwise they'd have been happy for nothing!
Little Hu hurriedly waved her hands and said anxiously, "No, I haven't reported it wrong! It's, it's just that you all understood it incorrectly!" She quickly handed over the documents to Fat Sis. "The 47,000 downloads in four hours are not our game's total downloads, b-but the figures from just one of the game download websites, called 77gaming dot net! I still have not managed to get ahold of the other websites for their number of downloads! They have not sent those over to us yet!"
When she said those words, the entire office fell silent!
Fat Sis was startled. "Say that again?"
Little Hu said, "This is just one of the websites' download statistics!"
The Deputy CEO looked shocked, "D-did you get it wrong?"
Little Hu wiped away her sweat. "I thought it was calculated incorrectly too, so I asked 77gaming dot net several times for it, but the numbers they sent to us were always the same!"
Silence!
It was silent again!
47,000 downloads was just one figure from the website of a company among several dozen other companies? No one could believe this! Because…because this was too frightening to be true! If it were real, then the figures were totally unimaginable!
Fat Sis gasped, "Let's go! Lead the way!"
Little Hu knew that they did not believe her, so she quickly led everyone over to the Operations office to "reconcile" the data.
The other employees could no longer be bothered with the work they had on hand. They marched over to the Operations office together and filled that office entirely, both on the inside and outside!
Fat Sis personally handled this matter, even calling 77gaming.net's manager to verify the situation. In the end, the statistics were verified to be true! There was nothing wrong with the numbers. On top of that, during the time she spoke with them, the internal calculation at 77gaming.net for Plants vs. Zombies' total downloads had already gone up to 50,000!
Fat Sis put down the phone dumbfounded.
All the company's employees were also dumbfounded, not saying anything for a long time!
Then, gradually, all the other partner websites began sending over their download statistics!
Fenghe.net: 30,000 downloads!
A certain download host: 70,000 downloads!
A certain software search engine: 26,000 downloads!
Etc, etc, etc!
These were all the statistics for the four-hour window since launch!
Just four hours worth of data!
It was selling like crazy!!
Plants vs. Zombies…was selling like crazy!!!