Ford quickly gave Li Mu a definite reply through Davidson. In the reply, Ford made it clear that Jaguar, Land Rover, and Volvo could all be considered for sale.
As for the more specific issues, Ford hoped to have a face-to-face meeting with Li Mu, or both parties could send representatives to have a simple discussion.
Li Mu immediately thought of sending Elon Musk to take the lead. Elon Musk was one of the top dupes in Silicon Valley. It would be no problem for him to handle this matter, and it might even be more effective than Li Mu himself.
It just so happened that Elon Musk was in the United States. He could take the time to fly to Ford's headquarters to have the first round of discussion with them.
Therefore, Li Mu called Elon Musk and asked him to go to the city where Ford's headquarters was located on the weekend and meet with the people from Ford the next Monday morning.
On the phone, Li Mu made a few requests to Elon Musk:
First, Ford must transfer all assets under the three brands, including patent technology and other hidden assets;
Second, Ford must guarantee that after the acquisition by Makino Technology, 80% of the core team of the three brands would not leave for the next three years. Similarly, Makino Technology must guarantee that the employees under the three brands would not be lower than the same industry standard;
Third, payments must be made in installments. No matter how much the acquisition price was in the end, Makino Technology must pay in five years. 35% in the first year, 25% in the second year, 20% in the third year, and 10% in the remaining four or five years. In other words, from 2004 until the opening of the Yan Beijing Olympics.
If Ford could agree to these three requests, then they would continue the discussion. If not, then there was no need to continue the discussion.
If it really did not work out, then they could talk to Daimler about acquiring a few of Chrysler's brands.
Daimler and Chrysler were unlucky after the merger. Chrysler didn't have the ability to make money, but it was very good at incurring losses. It was said that Daimler Chrysler's current market value was lower than Daimler's before the merger.
Daimler definitely wouldn't sell Mercedes Benz to him, but Chrysler, Jeep, and Dodge shouldn't be a problem.
As for the acquisition price, Li Mu naturally wouldn't let Elon Musk make the decision, and he couldn't make the decision immediately. The team that he had asked Elon Musk to form was prepared for this. Such a large-scale acquisition would take at least a year. After the intention was reached, he could slowly find out their bottom line and combine it with their offer to formulate a pricing strategy for the acquisition.
Elon Musk naturally obeyed. After receiving Li Mu's call, he immediately started preparing for the trip.
After leaving the negotiation with Ford to Elon Musk, Li Mu continued to focus on the panda bear.
With the panda bear's popularity, Sichuan became the biggest beneficiary. The number of tourists soared, tourism income skyrocketed, and even the local housing prices skyrocketed overnight.
In the past, Zhao Lei sang the song "Sichuan" on "I Am a Singer" on "Sichuan", which caused the housing prices of Sichuan to soar, not to mention the global brainwashing publicity of the panda bear.
The panda bear made the city famous all over the world overnight, and it became the city that tourists wanted to visit most in 2004.
Many hotel groups also focused their attention on Sichuan. For a time, there were more than ten hotel groups preparing to open branches or expand their operations in Sichuan. Other levels of tourism capital also poured into Sichuan.
Even Sichuan Airlines was actively applying for loans and government subsidies, hoping to expand the size of its fleet as soon as possible, making full use of Sichuan as its headquarters, and eating well during this wave of dividends.
At present, the marketing team of Makino Technology had also reached a consensus with the Sichuan government to make the panda bear the most important visual element of Sichuan in the future.
In other words, the image of the panda bear would be everywhere in the future. When tourists came to Sichuan, they would be guaranteed to see the panda bear as soon as they opened their eyes.
This was also a copy of the operating method used in Kumamoto Prefecture. In Kumamoto, Kumamoto Prefecture was also everywhere. Traveling to Kumamoto Prefecture was equivalent to being in a sea of Kumamoto Bears.
At the same time, Makino Technology did not stop cracking down on piracy and infringement. At present, the national market supervision departments were focusing on pirated panda bear products, so much so that it was basically impossible to buy pirated panda bear products.
The entire Yiwu small commodity market seemed to be under a spell. Originally, it was full of Kumamoto Bear products, but now there was no trace of them.
From production to wholesale to retail, every step was monitored by the market supervision department, which led to the chain of pirated products being broken.
For example, some small workshops wanted to take the risk and continue to produce some pirated panda bear products to seek illegal profits. However, it was difficult to find wholesalers who dared to continue to distribute pirated panda bear products, let alone find retailers scattered all over the country.
If some middling wholesalers wanted to take the risk, they would go to their upstream factories. The upstream factories might not dare to start production, and the downstream retailers might not dare to buy it.
If it was a bottom-level retailer who wanted to take the risk, it would be even more troublesome. They wanted to sell but could not get the goods at all.
Therefore, once the chain of production, wholesale, and retail was broken, pirated products would lose the soil to exist.
After solving the negative impact of piracy, Li Mu decided to continue to cultivate the influence of the panda bear.
For him, the panda bear was a super IP. However, at present, it was popular enough, but the content was still very lacking.
At present, this guy only had a few sets of cartoon images and two sets of real life dynamic expressions.
If he wanted to continue the popularity of the panda bear, he not only had to continue to promote the cooperation between the panda bear and top brands, but he also had to continue to introduce new cartoon images, new dynamic expressions, and even launch more offline publicity and promotion activities.
Li Mu was very clear that a good IP would suffer a big loss if the content was very short and few.
On the contrary, looking at the operating model of popular IP in the West and Japan, as long as the ratings of a TV series were good enough, it could be filmed season after season. A comic could also be made to produce hundreds of episodes. This was the key to strengthening the IP.
Li Mu felt that the image of the panda bear was somewhat weak because it only had image and actions, but no story behind it.
Since there was no story, he would create some for it!
The first thing that Li Mu thought of was to invest in a panda bear series of cartoons.
Just like Happy Boy and Boonie Bears, he would make up a world view, a character, a background for the panda bear, and then use a main line and countless short stories to string them together.
If it was made into an animated film, it was not suitable to be set in modern times. Because once it was integrated into the modern background, it was necessary to deal with humans because humans were the creators of modern society.
Li Mu did not want a cartoon animal to interact with modern humans, so he might as well give it a world view with no humans and only animals.
Thinking of this, Li Mu immediately thought of Zootopia and Kung Fu Panda.
Zootopia was a very new movie. The world view of the animals in it was very large. Almost all the animals that could be thought of were in it. The main character was a rabbit who dreamed of becoming a police officer.
Li Mu could not remember which year Kung Fu Panda was released, but the plot of Kung Fu Panda was still deeply engraved in Li Mu's memory.
Not only was there a panda named Ah Bao, but there was also Ah Bao's adoptive father, a duck, as well as turtles, tigers, cranes, mantises, snakes, golden monkeys, rhinoceroses, red pandas, and other animals with distinct personalities. The structure of the animal world was not as complicated as Zootopia, but because it was integrated with Hua Xia's unique martial arts style, it was especially rich.
Comparing the two, the theme of Kung Fu Panda was more suitable for the panda bear.
Moreover, Kung Fu Panda itself was based on the ancient Hua Xia, and with the martial arts style, the elements of Hua Xia were stronger.
In Li Mu's mind, there was already a rough outline.
This outline was divided into two steps. The first step was to borrow the setting of Kung Fu Panda. The background was a small town in the mountains of Hua Xia. There were all kinds of animals living in the town, including a panda named Ah Bao.
Ah Bao was the only panda in the town. His father was a duck who owned a noodle shop. At this time, Ah Bao had just become an adult and had the dream of becoming a Kung Fu Master.
The subsequent plot direction was also completely based on the plot of Kung Fu Panda.
However, this was only the first step.
The second step was to push the timeline of the story forward.
Ah Bao in Kung Fu Panda started from when he had just become an adult. He talked about how he became a Kung Fu Master, and then talked about the special background of him and his people.
The second step was to specifically describe the time when Ah Bao was still a young panda and the story of what happened in the town. This could be set to a young age like Happy Goat and attract the audience through a unit story.
In this way, Kung Fu Panda would occupy the big screen and the market for children, teenagers, and adults.
And Young Ah Bao would occupy the small screen at home and the market for children and teenagers.
Thinking of this, Li Mu suddenly remembered that Kung Fu Panda seemed to be made by DreamWorks.
DreamWorks was Spielberg's!
So, Li Mu immediately called Spielberg.
They were all old acquaintances. Wouldn't it be great to let his DreamWorks make an animated movie for his panda bear?
When the phone was connected, Spielberg was a little excited to receive a call from Li Mu.
After exchanging pleasantries with him for a while, Li Mu went straight to the point and said, "Steven, I'm calling because I need your help with something."
Spielberg hurriedly said, "Mr. Lee, you don't need to be so polite with me. Just tell me what you need."
Li Mu said, "I recently made a cartoon character called Panda Bear. You should have heard of it, right?"
Spielberg laughed and said, "Of course, not only have I heard of it, but I am personally a fan of Panda Bear."
"That's great." Li Mu said, "Here's the thing. I want to customize a series of big movies for Panda Bear, an animated movie. Your DreamWorks is a master of animated movies. Are you interested in making a big movie about Panda Bear?"
"Panda Bear?" Spielberg said subconsciously, "We just started a new project at the end of last year. It's a panda theme. The art department has already started working on the visual design."
Li Mu hurriedly asked, "What project? Is it convenient to tell you the name? "
Spielberg said, "The tentative name is Kung Fu Panda."
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