Chapter 47: The Traffic Clout Battle

The whiteboard in the meeting room was filled with combat plans scribbled by Jiang Ye, the marker's ink almost soaking through to the reverse side.

Five newcomers huddled in a corner clutching their notebooks, while Bai Mengyan bustled back and forth with a coffee pot to refill cups. The air was thick with a mixture of instant coffee and tension.

Following closely at Jiang Ye's heels day in and day out, she carried out her duties as an assistant with effortless skill and immense joy, almost forgetting that she was merely here to dip her toes into the entertainment industry...

"You've all worked hard, staying up and working overtime this late!" Jiang Ye placed his tablet on the table. "Starting now, we must give it our all for the next week. The higher the show's view count, the higher your bonuses will be!"

After laying out his grand vision, he began assigning tasks.

"Xiaocao," he looked toward the bespectacled plump girl, "your twenty regional chat groups are too scattered. Merge them into three groups of two thousand members each tonight."

He tapped his fingertips on the desktop. "Stop browsing Baidu for group announcements. Just write: 'Welcome to come and hurl abuse at us. Those who roast well will win a pair of the Princess Consort's matching sandals.' Have Wang Meng crop out a picture of the shoes and post it."

?????

Li Xiaocao froze, but she bit the end of her pencil and nodded anyway, her pencil tip poking a hole right through her notebook.

Working at such a fledgling company—if she hadn't heard she'd get to see stars, she wouldn't have come at all!

Since she was just here to slack off anyway, she would do whatever the boss said...

Who knows when this place will go bankrupt anyway!

Jiang Ye had already turned to Zhang Meng, who was still clutching the list of internet celebrities with the revised prices.

"That typo in your post about the male-to-female transmigration actually works as a hook." Jiang Ye suddenly smiled. "For @DramaChasingGirlMeow's copy, start by writing about what the male protagonist actually transformed into, pushing the gender-bending gimmick into the absurd—for instance, what expression a straight man would make if he suddenly got his period."

He paused for a moment. "Add another line: 'The Princess Consort's hands were shaking even as she flirted with the palace maid.' Bundle '#ThePrincessConsortIsToxic#' and '#MengZiyiAlphaVibes#' together and post them."

Zhang Meng's pencil tip paused. "As for @FujoshiDaily, should we mention the dynamic between the Crown Prince and the Ninth Prince?"

"Mention it, why wouldn't we?" Jiang Ye grabbed the whiteboard marker and drew a line under the word "Yaoi". "Have them write about how the Crown Prince's Consort, caught between two handsome guys, is actually thinking about braised pork belly. For the accompanying picture, use that edited screenshot of the Crown Prince's Consort glaring at a pork knuckle. Even though her face looks like an inflatable doll, it has enough of a contrast to work."

Wang Meng let out an "ah", her face turning completely red instantly.

She had joined the company purely because she thought the boss was handsome...

Jiang Ye had already turned to her: "Don't hide your Photoshop skills. Crop out all those gauze dresses and curtain-turned costumes from the show, and make a compilation of 'Crown Prince's Consort's Wardrobe: Taobao Style'."

"Find a few proper costumes I borrowed from my school and make a comparison. Never mind if they are new or old, pick the ones with the best texture and crop out high-definition pictures. On one side, our gauze dresses made from curtain fabric, open-toe sandals paired with court robes; on the other side, proper python robes embroidered with gold threads. Put them side by side in a nine-grid format."

"Send it to @FilmAndTelevisionRoaster bright and early tomorrow morning, and tell them to roast it mercilessly without holding back a single bit."

Xiao Liu and Xiao Chen were still staring blankly at Excel, so Jiang Ye handed over a stack of printed bullet-screen screenshots.

He pointed to a complaint in the screenshots that read, "The hair is blown wildly all over the place by the leaf blower." "You two pick out every single bullet comment containing the word 'poor' and compile them into the Top 10 Most Destitute and Shabby Moments of the Crew."

He thought for a moment and added, "For example, the entire cast shares a single tube of lipstick, and the guards' armor is made of papier-mâché. Organize them and send them to Li Xiaocao, telling her to find a marketing account tomorrow to push the topic '#HowDestituteIsTheCrew#'."

"..."

The meeting lasted for over an hour. Finally, Jiang Ye tossed the marker back into the whiteboard tray, the barrel striking the metal with a crisp snap that made the newcomers in the corner shrink their necks.

He pressed both hands flat on the meeting table, his gaze sweeping over a row of faces filled with bewilderment, and suddenly let out a low chuckle.

"You must all be quite confused right now." He leaned down to pick up the tablet and tapped on the screenshot of the bullet comments full of complaints. "Take a close look: every single one of these comments cursing the show as 'mind-numbing' or 'shabby' has dozens of replies arguing underneath it."

"So from now on, there is only one thing you need to do: turn these curses into hooks."

Jiang Ye walked back to the whiteboard and drew a huge arrow at the very top, pointing from "Abuse" to "Trending Searches".

"Remember this," he turned around, a fierce glint flashing in his eyes. "What we want right now is not a good reputation; it's to make the entire Weibo platform argue about just how utterly absurd that trashy and poor 'Go Princess Go' really is."

"Bad publicity is publicity too. When everyone is cursing it, traffic and data will naturally follow."

"..."

At 3:00 AM, Jiang Ye sat alone in his office, the blue light of the computer screen reflecting on his exhausted yet excited face.

He opened QQ, found a contact nicknamed "Supreme Commander of the Water Army," and typed out a line:

"Initiate operations!"

A few seconds later, the other party replied:

"Understood. Target locked: 'Diors Man 3'."

...

The next day, Yanjing, Sohu Media Plaza.

Dapeng walked into the meeting room holding a cup of coffee. Projected on the wall were the data reports for the "Diors Man" series:

"Diors Man 3", exclusively launched on Sohu Video on March 26, 2014, surpassed 420 million views in 30 days, with a peak single-episode view count of 58 million.

The cumulative view count across all three seasons reached 1.43 billion, accounting for 18% of the platform's total web drama views that year.

Weibo topic popularity: The main topic `#DiorsMan#` garnered 1.57 billion reads and 8.26 million discussions.

"How are the discussions for Season 4's script coming along?" Dapeng flipped through the planning proposal and looked up.

Xiao Zhang, a writer from the scriptwriting team, pushed up his glasses. "It's still being optimized, but President Zhang's intention is..."

He paused. "We need to cut the budget by another 20% and ideally embed a few more commercials."

Dapeng didn't speak; he merely took a sip of coffee while sneering inwardly in his heart.

Cut the budget further? Did they really think the audience wouldn't notice shoddy production?

He was currently the Deputy General Manager of the Content Center at Sohu Video, while also serving as the director and lead actor of the "Diors Man" series.

He had just registered "Dapeng Studio" on the 4th of this month.

Lately, he had been feeling rather irritated!

Charles Zhang advocated for "traffic first" and demanded an increase in product placements.

Dapeng insisted on "content as king," believing that excessive commercialization compromised the user experience.

During a planning meeting a few days earlier, Dapeng had even questioned them to their faces: "Cut the budget again? Are you going to make the actors bring their own packed lunches to the shoot?"

However, he didn't have any thoughts of striking out on his own just yet at this point.

What truly triggered his urge to leave Sohu was the film "煎饼侠" (煎饼侠 - Jian Bing Man / Man of Tai Chi style translation: Pancake Man).

Released in July 2015, it pulled in 1.16 billion box office revenue on a budget of 50 million. As the director, he didn't receive a single penny of profit share, earning only a base salary of 10,000 yuan.

Yet even so, he wouldn't leave Sohu until 2018!

His assistant knocked on the door and entered, looking rather grim. "Brother Peng, the public opinion monitoring team just picked up some... rather unfriendly discussions."

He handed over the tablet, the screen brightly displaying the latest hot post on the "Diors Man" Baidu Tieba forum:

"‘Go Princess Go’ is far bolder than ‘Diors Man’!"

Original Poster: "Just finished watching ‘Go Princess Go’. The male-to-female transmigration setup is hilarious, a hundred times fresher than Dapeng's old gags!"

Top Comments:

"By the third season, ‘Diors Man’ had already run out of fresh ideas; it's just repetitive sketches."

"If Dapeng has the guts to do a male-to-female transmigration, I'll live-stream eating my keyboard!"

"The crew of ‘Go Princess Go’ is poor but full of creativity, whereas ‘Diors Man’ is now nothing left but commercials."

Dapeng stared at the screen and suddenly laughed. "Interesting."

He sat down in front of the computer and casually clicked on the first episode of "Go Princess Go".

Initially, he just wanted to see how much weight this "parasitic traffic-riding show" actually carried, but as a result...

"What the fuck?"

Ten minutes later, he couldn't help laughing out loud.

"Male-to-female transmigration? That setup is wild enough!"

Half an hour later, he slammed his hand on the desk. "This show is going to blow up!"

As a pioneer in the domestic web drama market, Dapeng knew all too well what kind of content could detonate traffic.

He himself produced low-budget web dramas!

Although "Go Princess Go" had cheap costumes, makeup, and props, its strengths lay in its wild imagination, fast pacing, and daring use of memes, completely hitting the sweet spot for young audiences.

Male-to-female transmigration, comedic gender contrast, modern thinking colliding with an ancient imperial court, ambiguous romantic subplots...

Take any single one of these elements, and it could be turned into a blockbuster topic.

Dapeng stroked his chin, his gaze gradually turning playful.

"Who is the director?"

"A student from the Beijing Film Academy named Jiang Ye!"

"A Beijing Film Academy student? This kid... isn't just riding on coattails; he genuinely understands web dramas!"

He turned to his assistant. "Go register a sock-puppet account and reply to the post:"

"‘Diors Man’ may be lousy, but at least it's original. Isn't ‘Crown Prince's Consort’ just a rip-off of ‘Transmigration Girl and Boy’?"

The assistant hesitated. "This... won't this start a fan war?"

Dapeng narrowed his eyes. "A fan war is precisely what I want."

He understood this playbook inside and out: controversy meant traffic, and traffic meant money.

He quite liked the other party's show, and since the opponent had delivered themselves to his doorstep, he didn't mind playing along...

Who was riding whose coattails remained to be seen!

He stood up, walked over to the window, and overlooked the scenery of Yanjing.

"‘Diors Man 4’ is about to start filming. What do we lack? Heat and buzz."

"Now, ‘Go Princess Go’ has willingly delivered itself to our doorstep, helping us hype up topics for free."

"Let them hurl abuse; the fiercer the better."

Dapeng turned around and gave instructions to his assistant:

"Have our publicity team enter the fray as well. Release press releases comparing ‘Go Princess Go’ and ‘Diors Man’, with the headline: ‘Web Drama Newcomer Challenges the Pioneer?’"

"Find a few joke-writers to fabricate fake gossip about Dapeng rewriting the script for ‘Diors Man 4’ overnight."

"Stir up the rhythm on Tieba and Weibo, and get netizens arguing over who truly is the king of low-budget web dramas."

...

That afternoon, Jiang Ye looked at the sudden influx of new topics on Weibo.

`#WebDramaNewcomerChallengesPioneer#`

`#DapengRewritesScriptOvernight#`

He narrowed his eyes and smiled.

Dapeng indeed had not disappointed him; he truly lived up to being an old hand in the industry!

He acted fast!

Since that was the case, this traffic war of mutual parasitism could officially commence...

(PS: Big brothers, please support the new book. Your chapter reads, recommendation tickets, and monthly tickets are truly vital for a new book!

If you like it, I'm begging for your support!

If the performance is good, I'll update 10,000 words a day for a month!)