George Barkley and Li Mu quickly reached a series of agreements.
First, Li Mu would purchase 150 million N95-grade protective masks from 3M, as well as a large number of professional protective equipment. 3M would supply the goods to Li Mu directly at the shipping price. However, even with such a low price, the total price of Li Mu's order still reached 1.5 billion yuan, which took up more than half of Li Mu's material reserve budget.
However, George Barkley and Li Mu reached a basic agreement. Li Mu could pay half of the 1.5 billion yuan first, and the rest would be repaid in two ways.
One was that if 3M and Li Mu finally reached a marketing agreement and set a price for each display, the rest of the payment would be offset by the display and promotion fees. As long as the cooperation was not terminated, the money could be offset through this cooperation until the debt was zero.
The other was that if the two parties did not reach a final agreement on the cooperation, Li Mu, as 3M's partner in the Internet field in Hua Xia, would give Li Mu a one-year payment period, as long as Li Mu paid the balance within the one-year period.
Both of these methods were very beneficial to Li Mu. They ensured that he could use a small amount of money to stock up twice the amount of materials in hand. In the future, if he could use resources to slowly offset the cost, it would be more suitable.
With the cooperation between 3M and Honeywell, Li Mu's demand for protective supplies had exceeded expectations. There were 200 million N95-grade protective masks alone, which was quite a large number.
Not only were there a large number of masks in this order, but other protective equipment was also available. Moreover, these two companies promised Li Mu that the goods in the order would be delivered to him by air starting next week.
Li Mu had also informed Lei Jianguo in advance and asked him to make arrangements for the distribution of this batch of goods in several logistics bases in China. This way, once the goods arrived, they could immediately be distributed to the warehouses of the various logistics bases and be ready at any time.
…
After settling these two matters, Li Mu's biggest goal in the United States this time had been achieved.
With so many goods in hand, once the epidemic broke out, Li Mu could not only ensure that the domestic people would be able to buy the goods, but also have the confidence to suppress the price of the same type of products, so that those enterprises and individuals who wanted to raise the price would be forced to submit to his pace.
After reaching an agreement with George Barkley, Li Mu immediately contacted his technical expert, Fang Xudong, and asked him to appoint someone to set up a project team with products, development, and testing. Together, they would be able to implement several types of product placement that he wanted. The most important ones were the YY show and the Weather Assistant.
After arranging these tasks, Li Mu was ready to take some time to fly to Massachusetts to see Su Yingxue and Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard.
Unexpectedly, just before he was ready to leave, Lin Ching-ah brought him a piece of good news. The Coca-Cola Company was very interested in Li Mu's cooperation plan. They had already sent a senior executive and board member to Silicon Valley to further discuss with Li Mu.
Thinking that this might be an advertising cooperation worth a hundred million US dollars, Li Mu decided to stay in Silicon Valley for a day or two to finalize the cooperation with Coca-Cola.
The reason why Li Mu was so confident in the cooperation with Coca-Cola came from his understanding of Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola's brand value was among the best in the world, and a considerable part of it was based on advertising and marketing.
Coca-Cola's core product was an extremely low-cost carbonated beverage. It had a high gross profit margin, and the product's consumption cycle was also very short. It was a standard fast-moving consumer product. For this fast-moving consumer product industry, if the company wanted to maintain its market share or make steady progress, it must ensure continuous advertising investment. Otherwise, if they stopped advertising, their sales might plummet by more than 50% within a year.
Whether it was Coca-Cola, Pepsi, or Hua Xia's Jianlibao, these fast-moving consumer product companies did not dare to slack off in their marketing. Even a company like Coca-Cola could not lower their investment. Otherwise, once the market share was taken by others, it would be much harder to snatch back the market share.
Because of this, Coca-Cola's annual global advertising accounted for 50% of the company's net profit, and they continued to invest. They even changed their investment to ensure their sales and brand influence.
Makino Technology was a marketing channel that Coca-Cola had been paying close attention to recently. Before Li Mu came to the US, Coca-Cola had hoped to buy a pop-up window recommendation on YY or an advertising spot on YY website. However, Lin Ching-ah did not agree. The higher-ups of Coca-Cola were afraid that one day, Makino Technology and Pepsi would cooperate. If that was the case, McDonald's would be at a disadvantage.
Fortunately, Makino Technology took the initiative to look for Coca-Cola this time and proposed a cooperation model that shocked and delighted the higher-ups of Coca-Cola. The higher-ups of Coca-Cola discussed this model for less than half an hour before they decided to participate deeply in Li Mu's plan.
In the eyes of the higher-ups of Coca-Cola, the first person to advertise on Makino Technology's YY website would be able to gain a lot of additional attention. Therefore, they had been thinking about YY marketing resources.
Moreover, Li Mu's cooperation plan this time was indeed very attractive. They printed a special exchange code on the bottle cap. As long as the user held the cap, they would be able to exchange it for a certain amount of YY coins. This was not only novel, but it could also ensure that the user would benefit from this activity.
More importantly, the Coca-Cola logo could be continuously displayed during the process of the exchange code. This not only helped to increase the company's reputation, but it could also give a strong psychological hint to the user. When they thought of beverages, they would think of Coca-Cola. When they opened the supermarket fridge, they would think of Coca-Cola. This was the true meaning of brand marketing.
This time, the higher-ups sent by Coca-Cola were called Bruce Andre. He was one of the top five people in the entire Coca-Cola empire. He was mainly responsible for marketing and promotion within Coca-Cola. He knew how to package the brand the best.
When the two met in Li Mu's conference room, Bruce introduced himself politely to Li Mu. After that, he went straight to the point and asked Li Mu, "Mr. Li, we have seen your proposal. To be honest, we are very interested in your creativity. However, we still have a small problem that we do not understand."
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