"Your father is the one who discovered Transformers!" Boss Jia's eyes lit up.
This was a story that was talked about enthusiastically in the history of Transformers. Although the first "Transformers" anime premiered in the United States, this industrial wonder was actually an imported product from Japan. It was also something that Fusang's Toyama Toys regretted for the rest of his life.
The Tokyo Toy Fair was one of the most famous toy fairs in the world.
At the 1983 Tokyo Toy Fair, when an agent of Hasbro was wandering around in boredom, he was suddenly attracted by two small toys. The Toyama Toys Company of Japan was exhibiting their company's newly developed Micro Star Mini Superman and Dai Yakun series toys.
The shrewd agent instantly found a business opportunity in these two fine horses, so he immediately called Hasbro's headquarters. After obtaining permission from the headquarters, he negotiated with Toyama Toys for half a year and finally bought all the copyrights and design patents of these two games for 500,000 US dollars.
Immediately afterward, Hasbro registered the toy trademark for the Transformers toy. Then, in conjunction with Marvel, they jointly launched a comic related to the transforming robot toy: Transformers. Later, they also specially produced three episodes of the Transformers cartoon series.
However, these three episodes of the animated series exploded in the United States market in an instant. Later, the three episodes became 30 episodes, then 60 episodes, then 95 episodes.
This animated series also became the most watched TV animation in the United States before the birth of the Simpsons. At its peak, it reached 28 million viewers.
In 1984, Transformers set a terrifying record of more than 100 million US dollars in orders in 15 days, breaking the toy sales record in the United States.
There was a very interesting story about Transformers and Hua Xia.
It was in 1988, when Hasbro established a Hua Xia branch. They believed that as a country with a population of one billion, Hua Xia must have a very wide toy market, so they sent sales representatives to try to open this market.
After careful analysis, they believed that Transformers was the most suitable stepping stone to open the market in Hua Xia, so they sent two marketing representatives to Hua Xia.
After analysis, these two marketing representatives believed that blindly promoting a product without any fame in Hua Xia would not be successful. The best way was to broadcast the Transformers cartoon first and let the cartoon bring great popularity. Then, it would be the best time to promote Transformers toys.
One had to admit that these two marketing representatives were very insightful, and their vision was almost the same as Boss Jia's. They had long understood that cartoons were the best tool to drive toy sales.
Like Boss Jia, they used cartoons as a stepping stone to open the market. If Boss Jia had not spent a lot of money to buy Dynasty and produced a series of TV cartoons, Daqian would probably still be a small toy company in Xijiang Province.
Like Boss Jia, these two marketing representatives directly set their sights on Hua Xia's largest and only television station that could cover the whole country, CCTV.
Three years ago, when Boss Jia went to CCTV for the first time, if it were not for Chen Liren leading the way and Director He, "Water Margin Heroes" would not have been able to get onto CCTV so smoothly.
Most importantly, it was Boss Jia who argued with the experts during the review. He refuted each and every one of them and put a big hat on their heads. It was likely that "Water Margin Heroes" would not have been able to be shown on CCTV.
It was already like this in the 90s, let alone in 1988, when two foreigners came to promote cartoons.
At that time, after CCTV's review department took a look at the Transformers cartoon, they said lightly, "This cartoon is too violent, and it's not conducive to establishing a correct screen culture." Therefore, they directly rejected the two foreigners.
However, the two foreigners were unwilling to give up, so they went to Shanghai TV Station, which was considered the most open in Hua Xia at that time.
When the leaders of Shanghai TV Station found out that they had been rejected by CCTV once, they were a little worried and were unwilling to take the risk to approve them.
The two foreigners were immediately anxious. They could not return without success. Therefore, without directly asking the head office, they directly said that they were willing to let Shanghai TV Station broadcast the cartoon for free without taking a single cent.
Only then did Shanghai TV Station agree to try to broadcast it. Then, in 1988, the Transformers cartoon successfully appeared on all of Hua Xia's television screens.
The plot that followed was just like in the 90s. In just a short month, the topic of discussion in the streets and alleys was almost all about the Transformers. They began to collect sets of pirated Transformers cards and bragged about whether "Optimus Prime" or "Megatron" was the strongest. In the toy section of the department store, there were always a few boys sitting around the Transformers section and refusing to leave. In the era where the basic monthly salary was only a few dozen yuan, to be able to own a set of Transformers was the dream of every boy.
[PS: Some of the above text is copied from Baidu Encyclopedia]
This was quite a classic animation marketing. If one thought about it carefully, they would realize that Boss Jia's road to success was almost copied from Hasbro's marketing method of Transformers.
Who would have thought that one of the two marketing specialists who did not leave their names in history was actually the father of this young man in front of them? To some extent, this father could be considered Boss Jia's teacher.
"Your father has made such a great contribution to Hasbro. Why is he still a marketing specialist in Hua Xia?" Boss Jia asked a little strangely. Not to mention other things, just the discovery of the Transformers toy set alone made Henry Orlens at least two billion dollars in profit for Hasbro. This was enough to be promoted to the top of the company in any company. Why was he still a marketing specialist in Hua Xia?
"Oh …" Jack Orlens smiled a little awkwardly. "My father had been promoted to the president of the Asia Pacific region, but because of the failure in Hua Xia, he was beaten back to the original position by the company."
"What does this mean? Wasn't the Transformers quite successful in Hua Xia? When I was in school, all my classmates were proud to be able to buy a Transformers toy! "Boss Jia asked puzzledly.
"Then your classmates definitely didn't buy the original Transformers!" Jack Orlens said with a wry smile, "My father said that his actions in Hua Xia were indeed very successful, but he didn't expect the strength of the copycat companies in Hua Xia to be so powerful."
"A set of our Hasbro's original Transformers toy was sold for more than 150 yuan in Hua Xia. This price was too expensive for Hua Xia. Only a few thousand sets were sold in a year."
"But in two months, various copycat versions of Transformers appeared in Hua Xia. The price was only about 10 yuan. Our original products couldn't compete with them at all. My father went to court to sue them, but in the end, the company's marketing expenses in Hua Xia were more than all the sales. My father was removed from his position and became a marketing specialist in the Asia Pacific region again! "
"Uh …" Boss Jia was a little embarrassed. At that time, the situation in Hua Xia was indeed like this. If it weren't for Boss Jia's Little Raccoon card being suitable for instant noodles sales, and later, he fought a lawsuit of the century with the pirated manufacturers, completely shocking all the companies that tried to pirate Little Raccoon. Only then could he barely maintain the sales of the original.
Later, the mini 4WD was directly used to reduce the dimensionality of the attack, and the price of the original was lower than the cost of the pirated version. Naturally, no pirated version could compete with Boss Jia.
Therefore, Henry Orlens still didn't understand Hua Xia, so he could only be defeated.
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
