Chapter 32: Pulling One Hair and Moving the Whole Body

Gu Cheng’s verbal onslaught that night left countless peers dumbfounded.

After calming down and pondering Gu Cheng’s actions, everyone boiled their conclusions down to two points:

Gu Cheng was exceptionally skilled at managing his artists and helping them find their footing. However, when it came to managing his own public image and commercial value, he appeared utterly idiotic.

Or to put it another way: Gu Cheng simply wasn't short of money and cared nothing about his own commercial value when appearing as an artist. Consequently, he was reckless to the point of speaking only harsh truths—a state of extreme authenticity where he said whatever came to his mind.

After all, Chen Tianqiao from another timeline had likewise been cursed at mercilessly by people, yet millions of players still bought Legend game prepaid cards while cursing him. Gu Cheng’s current role destined him to be casual and arbitrary in his personal performing career, as long as his reputation remained better than those of guys like Chen Tianqiao and Ma Teng, whom netizens cursed like dogs.

Moreover, doing this was not entirely without benefits.

At the very least, his authentic persona went viral the next day. People across the country learned that Gu Cheng might be unorthodox, but he disdained lying.

The various "rumors" smeared against Gu Cheng by Zhou Hongyi, in collaboration with employees who had been fired from Legend Entertainment, Dangdang, and Qidian, were also rationally clarified.

Along the way, the academic community sparked a wave of discussions regarding "what caused the internet winter and how to emerge from it in the future." While there were certainly many who criticized Gu Cheng for talking nonsense and holding him responsible for the winter, the increase in the number of people discussing the issue rationally was even more pronounced.

Such a social discussion fever would have been impossible to generate relying solely on dry, boring press conferences.

Because traditional scholars only hid in ivory towers and did not know how to utilize the power of netizens and social public opinion.

Just like among those heavily criticized by the likes of Fang Zhouzi, while there were indeed some scumbags guilty of academic fraud, there were also genuine scholars like Xiao Chuanguo who were ultimately proven innocent, only to be hounded miserably after provoking a mad dog.

Gu Cheng was merely a high school student who hadn't even attended college. Under normal circumstances, even if he possessed deep economic forecasts and foresight in his belly, he lacked the qualifications to speak out. Therefore, he had no choice but to temporarily borrow the mad-dog tactics of the Fang Zhouzi type in times of urgency to attract some attention.

Those who achieve great things do not sweat minor details.

...

Because the first concert was an extremely successful venture, Gao Dasong, who was in charge of the overall organization, and Lee Soo-man, who provided the technical support, both urged him to hold more shows to consolidate the popularity of the artists under his wing.

After all, Jolin Tsai had only joined last year and become popular just this year, while BoA was breaking into the Chinese market for the very first time. Aside from Jay Chou, whose divine status in the domestic market was already secured, the rest of Gu Cheng’s artists still needed an extra push.

Gu Cheng accepted this suggestion, agreeing to spend three or four months on a tour with a frequency of no more than one concert every half month. He also innovatively proposed the ticketing model of "Alipay online crowdfunding presale" to ensure that the ticket sales would not incur losses.

However, it was impossible for Gu Cheng himself to have that much time to attend every single show, so he only promised to make guest appearances for a few numbers at the two shows in his hometown of Qiantang and in Beijing. He also guaranteed that he would strictly sing and absolutely refrain from giving any more long-winded, preachy speeches. The reason Beijing was added was entirely because he might need to make several trips there in June to continue discussing subsequent deployment issues regarding the AdSense deep integration with Boss Li, so he was stopping by on the way.

When Gao Dasong, who was organizing the concerts, first heard the term "crowdfunding presale," he was extremely curious and completely unable to understand it. After Gu Cheng explained it to him, his subordinates were thoroughly convinced, utterly shocked by this wildly imaginative creative concept.

"The so-called Alipay crowdfunding presale allows music fans with Alipay accounts to prepay for tickets online. Based on the presale results at the end, we then decide how large a venue to rent and whether to hold a concert in that city at all.

For example, in Beijing, if only 50,000 tickets are sold, we find the largest indoor arena; if 80,000 tickets are sold, we go to the Workers' Stadium.

Take Nanjing for another example: if only 20,000 tickets are sold, the concert is cancelled, and the presale ticket money on Alipay is fully refunded to the fans, along with some complimentary electronic small gifts, such as premium lossless music packages, as compensation for the handling fees. If there are 30,000 people, we reduce the number and scale of attending singers and refund a portion of the ticket discount.

When buying tickets, fans can also check 'must-see singers.' In that case, if Chengdu ultimately only sells 30,000 tickets, causing Jay Chou not to appear, then fans who checked the 'must see Jay Chou' option can receive a full refund and return their tickets."

After Gu Cheng finished laying out this proposal, the first person to react was his number one "manager," Lin Chiling: "According to Ah Cheng's proposed approach, we can almost guarantee that there won't be any problem of unsold tickets leading to losses."

Gao Dasong, being a bit more seasoned and prudent, thought of a problem: "But what should we do if the audience feels cheated? Letting fans who expect a concert in their city find out in the end that the show has been canceled—that psychological gap definitely won't look as sincere as peers who insist on holding the show regardless of profit or loss from the start. Competing talent agencies will definitely seize the opportunity to attack us."

Gu Cheng hadn't thought of this problem at all, primarily because people in future generations took "crowdfunding" as a matter of course; if a crowdfunding target is not met, naturally everyone gets their refunds and disperses.

Only after Gao Dasong brought it up did he have to ponder it.

Fortunately, it was Lin Chiling who helped him out of the dilemma: "I think the key to this problem is public opinion guidance. By paying attention to public relations, we won't be on the defensive. First of all, the advantage of crowdfunding is that it allows fans in second-tier cities with poorer economies, or even third-tier cities, to see a concert—before crowdfunding presales, out of risk considerations, almost no talent agencies would go to those cities to hold concerts. Our crowdfunding at least gives them a chance.

A glass is half full. Some people see it as half full, some see it as half empty. Doesn't business opportunity lie precisely in the fact that the same objective fact yields different forward-looking predictions in the eyes of different subjective observers?"

Gu Cheng suddenly felt that Lin Chiling really hadn't wasted her time studying in the Department of Economics at the University of Toronto.

Treating Sister Chiling merely as a pretty vase was a severe waste of talent.

Once this issue was resolved, everyone had no further doubts and efficiently put Gu Cheng's arrangements into execution.

As for Gu Cheng himself, he pulled most of his energy back into cooperating with Boss Li and lobbying Cardinal Qi and the senior executives of China Unicom.

...

A month passed in the blink of an eye, and the summer vacation had already arrived.

The establishment of the AdSense company had also been a month old. Several elite programmers under Gu Cheng's command had been transferred to work at AdSense, gradually grinding and meshing together smoothly. However, the core R&D progress of AdSense obviously relied more heavily on Boss Li's people to complete.

On this day, a preliminary topological structure ready for presentation was finally produced. Boss Li, true to his word, accompanied Gu Cheng along with the project's technical director to report to Cardinal Qi's people.

The reporting was not done in Qiantang, but resolved right there in Beijing. Since Cardinal Qi had no jurisdiction over China Unicom, he had already introduced his connections in Beijing to Gu Cheng, leaving him to go and persuade them on his own.

The government side naturally also mobilized some experts to evaluate the technical achievements and market outlook reports from Gu Cheng and Baidu.

Following three days of grueling negotiations, backed strongly by Canship Holdings and Baidu, the lobbied party finally agreed with their statements and submitted mediation to China Unicom.

"The new platform jointly developed by Baidu is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of this year, and the internet winter is expected to end in the first half of next year. Introducing the fully functional 153KB/S CDMA data service now is a responsible action toward the market, and one that is likely to shorten the gap between our country's network infrastructure construction level and that of developed countries. Unicom should take this as an opportunity to seize the pulse of the era of generational upgrading."

The think-tank report quickly took effect and was transmitted to the negotiation leads of China Unicom and SK Telecom. Unicom ultimately managed to catch up before the actual deployment of CDMA base stations by adding a small portion of its budget, changing the plan to introduce the full version of the base stations, and ensuring the official operation of the 153KB/S mobile/data card wireless internet service by January 2003.

Having worked hard for several months, Gu Cheng finally did something for the country. He kindly extended an olive branch, signing a strategic cooperation framework agreement with China Unicom, stipulating that in January next year, they would provide data package subsidies on time for 1 million mobile phones pre-installed with the "YY Mobile Version."

As long as Unicom could sell these 1 million contract phones pre-installed with mobile YY, the YY company (newly established at the time, with YY not yet fully developed) would provide a data plan fee subsidy of 10 RMB per month per device.

In reality, Gu Cheng did not intend to pay all of this money out of his own pocket; through Kwon Soon-yu, he had already found a partner to share the burden—the phones were sold by Samsung, and Samsung of course should "shell out half upon meeting."

Considering the role Gu Cheng played in this win-win mediation, Samsung was very cooperative, and Lee Jae-yong obediently acknowledged the bill.

Upon receiving news of Unicom's actions, China Mobile was indeed somewhat unsettled, though it did not make any substantive follow-up moves.

However, rumors often caused confusion more easily than reality. China Telecom and China Netcom seemed to smell new signals and policy directions regarding mobile communications companies crossing boundaries to operate internet services, and grew worried about future "imagined" competition.

Right at the end of July 2002, China Telecom took the lead in reacting, decisively accelerating the comprehensive coverage progress of ADSL broadband networks, issuing red-head documents to various provincial branch companies, and planning to use ADSL coverage as the primary performance indicator starting in 2003.

China Netcom reacted slightly slower, yet was also forced to follow suit. They announced plans to launch a 2M bandwidth family package in the 2003 New Year while simultaneously starting to plan a long-term "cable television digitalization" initiative.

Across the vast land of China, an upgrading war among state-owned internet infrastructure giants was pried open by Gu Cheng, a seemingly negligible little chess piece.