At the beginning of April, there was good news from the offline promotion of Plants vs Zombies Online.
Coca-Cola chose fifteen of the most popular game characters from Plants vs Zombies Online, and used them as brand new bottle decorations, which were then printed on the latest Coca-Cola.
Since Coca-Cola had factories all over the world, when they started promoting the special edition Plants vs Zombies product, it was a very strong start. After the head office confirmed the packaging and distributed the production information to all the bottling factories, all of the Coca-Cola production lines started producing the new packaging at the same time. As soon as the products came out of the production line, they were immediately shipped to all the markets covered. The offline distribution speed was extremely fast.
Whether it was Hua Xia, America, Europe, or even Africa, as long as there was a Coca-Cola production line, they were the first to release the new packaging.
The new packaging of Coca-Cola, from cans to bottled beverages of various sizes, all used their unique red color. On the 360-degree packaging, about 50% of the area was used to display the Coca-Cola logo, 20% was used to display the product's ingredients and nutritional information, and the remaining 30% was used to display the Plants vs Zombies cartoon material.
What's more, it was worth mentioning that the 30% of the bottle was used to display the cartoon characters. There were fifteen different cartoon characters. Below the Coca-Cola logo, which took up half of the bottle, were two of the most iconic characters from Plants vs Zombies Online. One was a peashooter, and the other was a normal zombie. These two characters were below the Coca-Cola logo. Therefore, no matter how the bottle was placed, the visual elements of Plants vs Zombies Online could still be seen.
As of now, almost everyone who came into contact with a computer would have played Plants vs Zombies Online, so they were very familiar with the various images in the game. However, they had only seen these 2D images on the internet before, but now, these images had suddenly appeared in their lives. Moreover, they were 3D products that could be touched, so it immediately stood out from the crowd of soft drinks offline.
The image of Plants vs Zombies Online and the collaboration with Coca-Cola had a very obvious effect on offline consumers. Coca-Cola consumers who didn't like the game or hadn't heard of it before wouldn't give up just because Coca-Cola had a new packaging. However, those who rarely drank Coca-Cola, or occasionally drank Coca-Cola, would be easily influenced by the familiar cartoon characters of Plants vs Zombies Online, and would be tempted to buy it.
There was a lot of data that proved this point.
Since Coca-Cola used fifteen different cartoon characters in its packaging, it became a collector's craze as soon as it hit the market!
Around the world, a large number of consumers began to collect Coca-Cola. Some people bought bottled drinks, then carefully removed the packaging of the bottled drinks, flattened it, and stored it away. Some people directly bought cans, not drinking them, and placed them in the window of their home, collecting one cartoon image after another.
The most interesting thing was that Makino Technology taught Coca-Cola a little trick. Although they decided to use fifteen cartoon characters, they couldn't use them equally. They couldn't produce one and a half billion bottles, but of one hundred million bottles of each cartoon character was too mediocre. Instead, they had to increase the appearance of some of the characters, and decrease of of of the others. of of of the fifteen characters.
In other words, they had to make sure that at least two of the fifteen characters were relatively rare. This was the only way to stimulate the consumers' desire to collect them.
This was the inspiration Li Mu got from a snack when he was young. The snack came with a random card of one of the 108 Water Margin characters. However, there were a few characters that were extremely rare. Chong Lin was the hardest to find in Li Mu's memory. If he found a Chong Lin that cost fifty cents a pack of snacks, the card alone could sell for at least fifty dollars, or even more. The reason for this was that many people had a subconscious OCD. Their OCD made them want to collect these series of products when they saw them. As long as they didn't collect all of them, the more they collected, the more obsessed they became. If they collected ten out of the 108 characters, they wouldn't care, but when they collected all 107, they would fall into a state of anxiety and anticipation.
Therefore, Coca-Cola purposely controlled the appearance of the two cartoon characters, greatly reducing their appearance rate.
Among them, the one with the least amount of appearances was the Nut Wall.
The honest and cute Nut Wall had always been one of the most popular characters in Plants vs Zombies, especially among females. Therefore, in order to collect a Coca-Cola packaged with a Nut Wall, many females would even spend a lot of money online to buy one.
When Plants vs Zombies Online's Coca-Cola series swept the world, a can of Coca-Cola packaged with a Nut Wall had already been sold for eighty dollars on Taobao.
The European and American markets were even scarier, especially the United States.
For some reason, the United States was probably the country with the most collectors in the world. Some people collected dozens of tons of rocks, some people collected thousands of beer bottles from all over the world, and some people collected the stickers on all kinds of glass bottles. There were people who would go all out to collect all these strange things, not to mention Coca-Cola, a popular beverage that almost every American loved to death.
Therefore, on eBay, a bottle of Coca-Cola with a Nut Wall could be sold for sixty dollars, which was almost five hundred dollars. Other countries' versions went from forty dollars to twenty dollars. Besides the American version, the most expensive was the Canadian version. Because they were all in English, there wasn't much difference in the packaging.
A few days after the Plants vs Zombies version of Coca-Cola was released, the global consumer statistics showed that Coca-Cola's sales had increased by twenty-three percent!
This was a statistic that made Coca-Cola ecstatic, and Pepsi bang their heads against the wall.
For a globally popular cartoon game to have such a strong life force in the physical realm, it really shocked everyone in the physical industry.
At the same time, McDonald's custom-made dolls were being shipped from Hua Xia's OEM. The exquisite Plants vs Zombies and McDonald's dolls used the same fifteen cartoon characters as Coca-Cola, and also used the same hunger marketing model.
After these custom-made dolls passed the factory inspection, they were directly sent to McDonald's branches around the world. Because all the dolls were custom-made from Hua Xia's manufacturer, McDonald's delivery speed was much slower than Coca-Cola.
However, according to the feedback McDonald's gave to Makino Technology, McDonald's branches in various countries had their own raw materials and material partners. From potatoes to ketchup, from chicken to hamburgers, they were all supplied locally. In addition, their display materials and packaging materials were also supplied locally. Therefore, although the dolls weren't available in all the stores, all the display materials were already in place.
McDonald's was a highly standardized company, so they had already realized the local supply of all their raw materials. Take the Hua Xia market as an example. There were many companies that supplied bread and cold ingredients to McDonald's stores all over the country. Although they were different companies, they all strictly followed the standard set by McDonald's, which was why they were able to ensure that the global quality control was basically the same.
Under these conditions, all of the display materials and packaging materials for McDonald's in the Hua Xia market were also provided by local companies. For example, the boxes and packaging for hamburgers, fries, chicken nuggets, etc., as well as the light box display, menu display, and other materials for the store display.
Based on the standardized supply chain of local materials, McDonald's stores around the world had already completed a brand new event display. The Plants vs Zombies series set, the posters for the dolls, and other promotional materials had already been released in all the major stores. The consumers had already received the news, and through the promotional materials, they were able to understand the visual effects of the products.
Currently, there were a lot of customers asking when the Plants vs Zombies theme set would be released every day. Many hardcore fans of McDonald's, or hardcore fans of Plants vs Zombies, were waiting to collect the Plants vs Zombies series from McDonald's.
The first offline expansion of Plants vs Zombies had achieved great results. It had also shown the influence of Hua Xia's cartoons to the rest of the world. Even the people in the Hua Xia animation industry were deeply encouraged by Plants vs Zombies Online, even though Plants vs Zombies Online was just a game, and didn't have a manga or animation.
However, because Plants vs Zombies Online had such a huge influence on the global scale, many companies in the animation industry began to communicate with Makino Technology. Almost every Hua Xia animation company hoped to buy the rights to Plants vs Zombies Online, and use it as a base to produce a manga or animation of the same name. Li Mu rejected all of them without exception.
The roots of Hua Xia's cartoons were rotten in Li Mu's eyes. At least it was still rotten in the current era. Many animation companies weren't putting in the effort to produce animations, but were trying to cheat the government of subsidies. Therefore, there was a lot of trash content in the domestic cartoon market. Not only was there no innovation, but it was also much weaker than cartoons from ten years ago.
After rejecting the domestic animation companies, Japanese and American animation companies also approached. They all hoped to get the rights to Plants vs Zombies Online, and use it as a base to create a brand new story.
This time, Li Mu didn't reject them.
Japanese and American animation represented the top of the industry. Therefore, Li Mu decided to use a competitive bidding method to fairly compete for the rights to the manga, anime, and animated movies of Plants vs Zombies Online.
The premise of the competitive bidding was that no matter who Makino Technology chose to work with, they wouldn't use the method of licensing the rights to the other party. Instead, they would bear all the development costs themselves, and give twenty percent of the profits to the other party.
The competitive method was to let them come up with a detailed proposal, and Makino Technology would choose the partner based on the quality of the proposal. At the same time, Makino Technology would sign a confidentiality agreement with them. Makino Technology wouldn't divulge any of the proposals, nor would they use them for their own purposes. This was to ensure the fairness of the competitive bidding.
For example, if Pixar won the contract for the rights to the cartoon movie for Plants vs Zombies Online, then both parties would agree on a production fee, say fifty million USD. This fifty million USD would all be borne by Makino Technology, and after the movie was completed, twenty percent of the profits would be given to Pixar. Most importantly, Pixar would only get twenty percent of the profits, but the copyright would have nothing to do with them. The copyright would always be in Li Mu's hands.
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