In mid-March, everything is coming back to life, and the warmer land of Florida is seeing a sharp decline in the number of visitors to the North.

In downtown Orlando, at the door of one of the largest arcade halls, Mr. Schlapner, with a key chain in his hand and a pipe in his mouth, kicked open the door with his foot and walked slowly to the counter.

Then he used the key in hand to unscrew a lock on the side of the counter and checked the 1897 shotgun inside—the arcade was a type of entertainment venue that was about as frequent as a bar, and the owner couldn't do without a reflex gun.

"Old man, you're off work. Schlapner mouthed at Hank Nunu at the counter.

The latter, who was watching TV, immediately smiled and briefly checked the accounts with him, and then prepared to flash people.

Schlapner is the owner of the arcade, and Hank is his "network manager", and the only thing the two have in common is that they both belong to the "redneck" southerners.

"That's it today? It's really hard to do business when these Yankee guys leave. But Miami should be more depressed. Schlapner looked at the morning and noon revenues, and sighed loudly, not avoiding people at all.

The city of Orlando, and neighboring Miami, is a typical city with a booming winter tourism scene. Because the winters in the Northeast New England region are too cold, the rich like to spend the winter in Florida, the "Sunshine State".

It's just like the people of Northeast China like to go to Sanya for the winter.

After hearing this, Hank said a few more words before leaving: "Boss, I watched several Yankee interviews on TV, and their business is not bad this winter." ”

"Really? Hasn't television always looked down on video games, and even shows interviews about arcade halls? Is it a documentary? I'd like to see which Hollywood guy has a conscience to find out. Schlapner couldn't help but mumble a few words, and then looked at the TV.

Americans in 1981 have been playing arcades and home game consoles for three or four years, but this does not mean that game consoles are fully accepted by mainstream culture -

Chinese people can roughly analogize it, and the domestic home game consoles in later generations began to be shipped in large quantities in about 92, while arcade machines were about 90 years. At that time, even "Xiaobawang" did not exist, and in the first two years, Wanwan's copycat machine brand "Shengtian" and other factories were selling. And even if the game console has appeared for four or five years, by 95 years, it is still regarded as a flood beast by many parents.

In 1981, the attitude of mainstream American culture towards game consoles was roughly equivalent to China's acceptance in 95 years.

Previously, the game consoles on TV reported that there were only 30-second short and concise advertisements of the Atari family, with a clear purpose, that is, to sell cassettes without a "plot".

Therefore, Mr. Schlapner saw that there were positive "reports" about arcades in the television media instead of simple "advertisements", and a sense of closeness arose.

It also represents the perception of hundreds of other American arcade operators – if they could see this "TV shopping".

"It turned out to be a TV shopping, similar to the new show on the Miami Entertainment Channel at the beginning of the year, HSN. Schlapner looked at it for a moment and immediately reacted.

Thanks to the fact that he is a native of Florida, he was the first to see TV shopping, so there is no need for literacy.

The plot in the TV shopping quickly attracted him.

"Can you actually redeem 25 cents from two bank branches on 19th Avenue in Manhattan?

He was suspecting that the footage had cut to the next shot. A staff member at an arcade unscrews the coin box with a key in front of the camera, and then pours out a small half-barrel of 25 cents.

The old Z80 CPU machines on the market today generally only dare to charge two 10-cent coins once, so the 25-cent one must be a new game console after the price increase, which is very recognizable - this price is equivalent to a pay phone call on the street, so Americans can still afford it, and they will do it with a little itchy hands, without having to struggle with their brains.

During the shooting, there were also date watermarks, and everything seemed very realistic, showing that it was an ordinary day in the winter in New York, and that most of the rich people should have gone to the South for their vacations.

This section of posing in New York lasted only 2 minutes, and then it cut to the street shooting point of other cities, and in the middle of each segment, there will be an impassioned voice repeatedly emphasized:

"What are you waiting for, hurry up and become a TenCoin Entertainment franchisee! Please call XXXX mail order, only need to pay 10% deposit, and the rest will be paid on delivery. It also provides equipment financial leasing services, no money, no money, only pay the balance after returning to the capital, and inquire for details......"

Looking at his depressed arcade, Mr. Schlapner couldn't help but pick up the telephone.

A sweet female voice immediately came from the opposite side, and it seemed that the operator was of good quality: "Hello, this is the TenCoin Entertainment franchisee switchboard. Do you want to join the business? Please leave your name, city and calling number. ”

It was the first time Schlapner had made such a call, and he was a little nervous: "I'm just asking casually, I haven't decided to buy it yet!"

"But you're supposed to be a game hall operator, right?"

"That's right. ”

"That's right, please leave the necessary information as soon as possible, and I will immediately transfer you to the No. 217 business customer service, so as not to take up too much time on the switchboard. ”

"Do you have a lot of people on this hotline?" Schlapner was in awe.

The other party was neither humble nor arrogant to ask for his basic information, and it only took 15 seconds of shorthand before and after, and then he was turned away.

"It seems that this company is doing very well, and there are so many people calling. Schlapner secretly made up in his heart, and the unhappiness of being forcibly transferred to the extension immediately dissipated.

That's the biggest difference between carrier customers and consumer customers.

When consumers call the hotline, if the supplier dares to push back and forth, it will definitely be extremely unhappy. This is also an important reason for the poor TV shopping experience in the early 1980s - even in the United States, the technology of fully automatic program-controlled switches has not yet been popularized, the cost is very high, and the commercialization process is slow.

Therefore, after dialing the hotline number, it must be a manual station, and consumers will be impatient all of a sudden.

Although today's TV shopping pioneer and Miami's HSN has begun to try, it has not survived to the next generation after all, because many nodes of experience fluency have not been opened, and finally died tragically. If the media cost of TV shopping is so large, but it can only receive a few customers at the same time, if the customer unit price is not enough ultra-high net worth, it will not be able to bridge the publicity cost.

However, in the TV shopping program, the voice-over voice cannot have too many hotline phone numbers, at most two or three, so transfer is an unavoidable problem.

The giants in the United States that really made TV shopping bigger and stronger, and survived to the end, such as QVC, only began to rise in 1986, because automatic switches and extension forwarding had matured (about 84 or 85 began to be popularized).

It will take 88 years for the Chinese to really introduce automatic program-controlled exchange, relying on the localization achieved by Huawei.

However, the customers that Gu Biao has to deal with are completely different from HSN.

Potential consumers are impatient, but potential franchisees are patient.

Because the former costs money, and the latter makes money. When spending money, the experience must be smooth, and if you are unhappy, you won't spend it. When making money, as long as he sees hope, he is willing to endure no matter how hard it is.

Moreover, the franchise customers that Gu Biao wants to attract are considered "ultra-high-net-worth customers" in the field of "TV shopping" - a single phone call comes in, as long as the operator flickers around, finalizes the intention, and purchases more than ten or twenty units (five games, new and old versions are packaged and sold), and it is a sales volume of one or two hundred thousand US dollars.

It's not an order of magnitude different from HSN's customers who make a phone call and buy a few hundred dollars at most.

As long as there are dozens of operators, it is enough to support the entire American market.

Of course, Gu Biao did not bother with the marketing settings in these details.

It was up to Shi Yuzhu to come up with it himself, Gu Biao just took a final look at it, and then gave instructions that it was feasible.

Oh, and there is another detail - in fact, Shi Yuzhu deliberately deceived people, starting from the 201st customer service, the purpose is to show that Tiankun Entertainment's machines are very popular, and there are too many people who consult, so there are not enough operators, so that the owners of American arcade halls have the illusion that they are fast and slow.

In fact, the customer service number 001 to 199 does not exist at all.

……

Florida, Fall. Texas, Fall, Louisiana, Fall......

The markets that are conservative, deep southern, and less than the same pot as the popular elements in the north have gradually been opened up by Tiankun Entertainment and achieved a breakthrough of zero. The order cycle is once again in the back row, and it has entered the stage of short supply.

The latest order even promised delivery by the end of May — and by then, even Atari knockoffs were already on the market.

But the other party gave a few points of deposit, and said that the cooperation model of financial leasing was good, and first got a few experience machines equivalent to a deposit, but also calmed down, willing to wait.

The follow-up market was occupied by Tiankun Entertainment in advance.

In the end, even Little Rock, Arkansas, was conquered, and Little Rock's largest arcade operator was about to eliminate a batch of Atari three-year-old machines and then introduce new products from Tiankun Entertainment.

This is a conservative state that needed the 101st Airborne Division to send blacks to school, and it was only because of Governor Clinton's enlightened integration that it was a little bit of a twilight the year before last. Even such a place has been taken down, and it is obvious that the machine of Tiankun Entertainment has broken through the dimensional wall of cultural differences.

Of course, in the entire publicity campaign, Tiankun Entertainment did not expose even a little sign of "this is a foreign company", and did everything possible to package itself as a local American brand.

In the promotional video, the company is subtly named "The company has a team of entrepreneurs from Georgetown University" as an element to highlight the company's technical content.

This is not difficult to do, because the pronunciation of Tencoin is quite in line with the spelling rules of the English language itself. Just like a few years before Sony's SONY entered the United States, ordinary consumers did not realize that SONY was actually a product, so Sony's international success in history far exceeded that of other SONY peers.

It wasn't until 88 that Sony acquired Columbia Pictures, one of the eight major distributors in Hollywood at the time, which provoked a comprehensive nationalist crusade in the American media, which led to Sony's Japanese background being completely exposed in front of the American people at the bottom.

And only Nintendo's apparently awkward syllables can provoke a sense of national cultural resistance among Americans. So an English name that doesn't sound like East Asia is really important for brand internationalization.

Later, when OPPO and VIVO mobile phones slaughtered all over the Southeast Asian market, an important success factor was that OPPO/VIVO read far more like European and American brands than HUAEI. As a result, the ordinary melon-eating masses in Philippines, India, Thailand and Vietnam all bought the OV brothers as a European fashion brand.