Schulhoff listened to Gu Biao's question, and was originally going to explain it euphemistically.

However, Shi Yuzhu, who is in charge of the company's advertising and marketing promotion, interjected first:

"Boss, if you allow me to smash TV commercials through multiple channels, I promise to keep the machine out of stock until the Christmas season! A total of 2 million units sold is not a dream!

Moreover, I can guarantee that the input-output efficiency ratio of advertising costs is more than 3 times. That is, investing 1 yuan in advertising can bring more than 3 yuan in additional gross profit. ”

In the advertising industry, a business that invests in one piece to win more than 10 yuan in sales and more than two yuan in gross profit is considered to be worth investing. It's just that a lot of times you can't define how much of this growth is due to advertising.

And it is even more difficult to calculate a product that can be sold without worrying about it in the early stage and then relying on advertising to maintain sales.

"Shi! Your plan is not measurable at all. Shulhoff reminded not too harshly.

Schulhoff's emotional intelligence is still good, and when the boss is a Chinese, he is still relatively polite to the Chinese management who does have meritorious achievements under his subordinates.

He also knew that Shi Yuzhu had made a lot of contributions to the promotion of Tiankun's arcade business, especially in "using the new channel of TV shopping to recruit franchisees", and without his skill and willingness, Tiankun might not have been able to win so many arcade halls in the United States within a year.

But Shi Yuzhu refused to give up the opportunity to perform: "However, even if there is no 3 times the income, rapid expansion is also beneficial, and what is more important for us to quickly gain brand reputation coverage, as long as we have to make money, why not smash it?

If you don't spend this money, according to the data and deduction curve fed back by the current market research, I estimate that in the fourth quarter, the shipment sales volume will decline to 80%, or even 70% of the full capacity. ”

Gu Biao waved his hand to stop him from continuing, and asked Schulhoff instead: "If you are only allowed to spend no more than $1 million on advertising, how many sales can you ensure in the last four months of this year?"

Schulhoff: "It's about the same as expected, maybe only 900,000 units will be sold, or 1 million units – that is, 300,000 units less than the advertising model.

However, the reason why I oppose the heavy advertising model is because I recently heard that Atari paid $25 million for the game adaptation rights to Spielberg's new movie, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

In the past year, I have studied Atari's usual way of playing in the past few years, and the amount of money they are willing to spend on advertising and promotion is generally not less than 60% of the IP adaptation rights they buy, that is, the proportion of movies and most publicized in Hollywood.

So, I think Atari will definitely spend more than $15 million on advertising in the fourth quarter of this year to promote their new home console game. At that time, the game advertisements on TV will be oversaturated, and the audience and consumers may have a rebellious psychology of being over-marketed, and the communication efficiency of the unit advertising fee will inevitably decline.

In that case, we might as well give up advertising for PLAY-BOX on TV and focus on other channels, so we only need to spend 1 million to avoid the inefficient period of over-bombardment. ”

Gu Biao picked up the coffee cup and took a sip: "That's all for these reasons?"

Schulhoff was questioned, and then he added: "Also, I have always felt that what you said about 'the model of over-consumption of loyal customers like Atari will inevitably lead to self-destruction in the end', so we should avoid the time and media of their crazy propaganda, lest the American people think that our style of play is the same as theirs." ”

The last sentence directly moved Gu Ao.

Yes, I told Liu Bei Cao Cao: If the enemy shows people to be honest, then I should show people sincerity.

Gu Biao immediately made a decision: "I agree with Schulhoff's statement, the competition between the second in the industry and the first in the industry can never go on the front track, and we can't publicize the enemy, so we will benchmark the publicity, and there will never be a chance." If you change your style of play, you may not win, but at least you have a chance to change your opponent. ”

Shi Yuzhu was very unwilling: "In this way, Atari will snowball faster and faster! Our handheld machine is just taking the lead, even if Atari does not follow the trend for the sake of face for the time being, and waits a few months, sooner or later it will follow suit."

When the first window period is over, their channels and brand influence are still greater than ours, and if they continue to snowball, we will still lose. What an all-or-nothing opportunity now!"

Shi Yuzhu's reasoning is indeed interesting for any non-traverser.

To defeat the strong with the weak, we must seize the window period of independent operation and strive to catch up and surpass, regardless of whether this window period is won by patents or time differences.

Betting that "Atari will play with its own eggs" is indeed not a safe approach, and belongs to the history of blind faith.

Of course, Gu Biao was very calm, so he knew how to discard the flaws.

"You have a point," he said, "but Atari is not going to immediately follow the trend of handhelds, and the window of exclusivity for handhelds will be much longer than you think - because Atari has made it clear that they are doing 'non-portable electronic devices,' and they refuse to participate in the IEC Society's EMC Section or accept any industry standards discussed by the Institute on that ground."

In this way, if they dare to build handheld computers, we can mock and humiliate them in public opinion, and we can also use other US allies such as Motorola to squeeze them out, and ask the industry quality supervision association to block and suppress them on the grounds that their products do not meet industry standards, or at least delay them for a long time.

Originally, without this hand, Atari might have been able to get a handheld and put it in mass production in half a year, but now it seems that even if they change their minds, it will not be possible to launch it within 9 months - well, let's take the Christmas season as the boundary, if it comes to the Christmas season, Atari has substantial signs of being ready to follow suit.

So starting from the beginning of next year, we will continue to invest in advertising at any cost, and strive to occupy as much of the market as possible in the last window before the launch of the Atari handheld. But if Atari still hangs on his neck and all the efforts of mediation in the early stage have not been made, then we are not in a hurry. ”

This opinion is more judgmental and not a one-word opinion. It is equivalent to looking at the enemy's reaction, and then deciding which period of time to do according to Schulhoff's words, and which period of time to adjust according to Shi Yuzhu's style of play.

Although Shi Yuzhu still has some regrets, he is at least willing to do his best.

Gu Biao finally concluded: "So, it's decided, in the second half of this year, for the time being, according to Schulhoff's promotion plan, by the end of the year, your advertising budget is only 1 million US dollars, and CNN's free advertising is not counted." When the time comes, I'm going to see 1.7 million units in stock. ”

This is 300,000 units less than the full load of 2 million units.

That's actually quite a good result.

Atari began to sell Atari 2,600 home game consoles in 1977, and by the end of '81, it had sold only 11 million units in the United States, and with the expected sales for the whole year of '82, the cumulative number was 14 million units.

This does not mean that there are 14 million live powder machines in the U.S. market, because it cannot be ruled out that some machines are broken and repurchased, or some iron fans bought the old version in the early years, and then bought another after a fine-tuned and improved version.

In this era, there is no big data, and it is impossible to accurately count, but it is roughly estimated that by the end of this year, the number of Atari 2600 in the United States will be about 1200~13 million households.

Gu Biao sold 1.7 million in half a year, and he can already compete with the enemy.

……

After the meeting with Schulhoff and Shi Yuzhu, Gu Biao had a working meal with everyone and took a break at noon.

In the afternoon, Schulhoff could also participate in the new project progress meeting, but Gu Biao signaled that he could take a break and focus on the sales promotion of the handheld computer in the near future, so he gave him a vacation.

Schulhoff was very discerning, not to ask more, not to ask more.

After all, he is only the president of Tiankun (USA), not the president of the Chinese parent company.

Each of Gu's new products is developed in the name of a Chinese company, and finally put into production before being sold to an American company - in fact, Tiankun (USA) is the same as the Apple (Hujiang) opened in China in later generations, it has no core technology, and is a marketing and technical service/after-sales service company.

In contrast, Gu Biao would rather let Han Ting, who does not belong to Tiankun Entertainment, but is more closely related to the technical layout of his entire industrial chain, attend the meeting.

Plus the R&D team represented by Professor Erickson.

Han Ting and Gu Biao haven't seen each other for half a month. In the middle two weeks, she returned to China and personally grasped various trivial affairs after production, and fine-tuned the process according to the feedback from the production line, which was very busy.

A few days ago, she flew to Spain again to watch the Chinese team's 0-4 defeat to Argentina in the last game of the second stage of the group stage, and was given a hat trick by Maradona, who had just debuted. In addition, the previous 0-1 defeat to Poland was a small defeat, and in the end, it was a two-game defeat with 0 points and 0 goals.

After Han Ting watched the Chinese team return home in Madrid, she flew to San Francisco to continue to discuss the next stage of business with Gu Biao - if Gu Biao is ready to put into production of desktops in the future, he will also put forward new requirements for the production line and equipment of Hanle Electronics' foundry, such as the introduction of a state-of-the-art SMT chip production line according to the cutting-edge trends of the industry pointed out by Professor Erickson.

SMT technology is changing every year, and some hand soldering processes cannot be completely replaced, but if the development trend of SMT industry in 1983 is concerned, it is still possible to strive for fully automatic circuit board soldering operations.

It's nothing more than that the equipment that just came out is very expensive, and the entire production line is possible at the level of tens of millions of dollars, but as long as the quality of the motherboard of the product can be guaranteed, Han Ting can still afford to spend money.

How can a factory that is always full of orders not have the money to expand production and purchase the latest technology production lines?

Without further ado, after a short break at noon, Gu Biao personally presided over the verification meeting of the new project.