Chapter 8. Commercial Promotion

     Lin Qitong was awakened by the ringing of her cell phone.

     She was half asleep, and her mind was still in a mess when she answered the phone. She didn’t know what she said when she heard the familiar voice. She hung up the phone after a few words and went back to sleep.

     After more than ten minutes, she reached out from the quilt, fumbled around and found the remote control of the air conditioner at the head of the bed. After turning off the air conditioner, she slowly opened her eyes and sat up from the bed.

     She half-closed her eyes and looked at her phone sleepily, and found that it was already afternoon.

     She didn’t know when it started, but her biological clock gradually reversed day and night. When she was in school, the dormitory management office forced her to turn off the lights and disconnect the Internet at 11 o’clock. After she was out of the control of the dormitory management office, she stayed up later and later at night, and got up later and later.

     She did a live broadcast last night until 4 o’clock this morning, and then she checked her phone for a while and went to bed at almost 6 o’clock. She slept for more than eight hours, but she was still exhausted after waking up.

     She is not a live streamer, but she runs a self-media account. She usually takes on some commercial promotions, shoots some short videos of visiting stores, and occasionally broadcasts live.

     When short videos became popular, she actually started to get involved in this industry, but she could never get to the threshold. It was not until her sophomore year that she learned enough shooting skills and video editing knowledge from the club and started shooting short videos. Over the years, she has gradually accumulated 250,000 fans.

     During this period, she also signed some guilds and shot a lot of slightly popular food videos. In the end, she terminated the contract with the guild for various reasons.

     After the second half of her senior year, she has been making some promotional videos of visiting stores by herself.

     When Li Yaolin found her, she was a little surprised. Although her work had nothing to do with her major, so she didn’t communicate with her classmates about her work situation, she often paid attention to the news in the class group and knew that the company where Li Yaolin interned seemed to have gone bankrupt and was owed wages.

     Li Yaolin hadn’t spoken in the class group for nearly two months. No one knew her current situation. Why did she suddenly find herself?

     When she opened the private chat, she found that Li Yaolin asked a strange question.

     Li Yaolin: “Qitong, do you accept commercial promotion?”

     The time of sending was thirty minutes ago.

     Lin Qitong replied: “What commercial promotion?”

     After thinking for a while, she added, “What’s the situation at your previous internship company now?”

     Li Yaolin was probably busy and didn’t reply for a while. She ordered a takeaway and put down her phone to wash up.

     Ten minutes later, she came back with a mask on, and Li Yaolin had already replied to her: “Well, the unscrupulous boss has gone abroad, and the salary can’t be recovered, so let’s not talk about it. I remember you seemed to be shooting promotions for tourist attractions? I have a tourist attraction here that I want to find promotions for. I want to know if you are interested.”

     Lin Qitong was naturally interested. After she terminated her contract with the guild, her traffic was not as large as before, and she could only occasionally receive some commercial promotions. Now there are commercial promotions that actively come to her, and they are tourist attractions. She can make money and go to have fun, so she naturally has to seize the opportunity. 

     Li Yaolin sent some photos, short videos and location to Lin Qitong, saying: “I want you to help promote this place. Of course, you need to come here in person, and the ticket can be reimbursed.”

     “Why did you go to Youshi?” Lin Qitong was a little surprised. Youshi is more than 400 kilometers away from Yangshi, and even farther away from Li Yaolin’s hometown. She even suspected that Li Yaolin was abducted to Youshi.

     “I work here.” Li Yaolin was vague.

     Lin Qitong saw that she didn’t say much, so she stopped asking and talked to her about the promotion fee in a businesslike manner.

     Her account now has 250,000 fans and tens of thousands of active fans. It costs more than 4,500 to take an advertisement. As for the advertising effect? The number of views of her videos generally ranges from 200,000 to 500,000, so whether she can meet Li Yaolin’s expectations is up to her.

     Lin Qitong’s commercial promotion is generally in Yang City, and her fan base is naturally mostly in Yang City. Now Xingzhou Island has not developed any interesting projects, and it is difficult to attract tourists from Yang City.

     But Li Yaolin can take advantage of the popularity of Yuhai Park!

     During the May Day holiday, Yuhai Park received 363,800 tourists, an average of 73,000 per day.

     At that time, she asked Lin Qitong to locate in Youshi and do a local promotion in the city to let everyone know that in addition to Yuhai Park, Youshi also has Xingzhou Island.

     “The company has two plans, one is a promotion fee of 4,000 yuan, including round-trip tickets, boat tickets, and accommodation; the other is only 5,000 yuan promotion fee, and transportation, accommodation and boarding are self-paid.”

     Lin Qitong of course preferred plan 2, but the difference between the two plans was 1,000 yuan. Are the tickets and accommodation there so expensive?

     However, when she replied to Li Yaolin, she chose plan 1.

     She believed that her old classmate would not cheat her.

     Li Yaolin sent her an OK emoji and made an appointment with her.

     While there was still time, Li Yaolin took a taxi to Yuhai Park to learn from other.

     Yuhai Park was privately contracted many years ago. It had no infrastructure and no entertainment projects, but it charged 20 yuan for admission, so there were few tourists. Later, the government announced a document called “Marine Economic Development Plan”, which officially kicked off the development of marine tourism economy.

     The government vigorously supported and developed Yuhai Park, gradually improved its infrastructure, and attracted many businesses operating entertainment projects to settle in, and opened it for free, making it more and more lively every day.

     Local citizens like to drive here in the evening when the weather is not so hot, or bring their families to play with sand on the beach, or couples meet on the path under the coconut trees and walk hand in hand.

     It was high tide, and the salty sea breeze came from the sea with the posture of overturning everything, rolling up the surging waves and blowing Li Yaolin’s long hair into a mess.

     Li Yaolin had to smooth out her hair and tie it up into a bun because her hair was tied in several knots.

     Li Yaolin took off her shoes and ran to the beach barefoot to play for a while. Suddenly, she found that the water in Yuhai Park was quite turbid. After the waves came up, a layer of foam would float on the water surface. Even after the seawater seeped into the beach, this layer of foam still existed and would not dissipate on its own for a long time.

     In fact, it was not only Yuhai Park, but also the seawater seen at Baoren Fishing Port Pier was also very turbid. Even if the weather was good, the ocean in the distance was not blue, and the sand in the shallows was darker, which was obviously different from the water quality of another undeveloped beach in Yuhai Park.

     Compared with these two places, Li Yaolin was very confident that her Level 1 white beach was more beautiful and cleaner.

     Unfortunately, the transportation of Xingzhou Island was a flaw.

     In the evening, Li Yaolin opened the APP again to count the latest data on the island.

     【Sea Fishing Ground (Level 1)】

   Popularity: 42/100

   Pollution Index: 40 (Level 4 Pollution)

   Operation Cost: 1,000 yuan/day

     【White Beach (Level 1)】

   Popularity: 37/100

   Pollution Index: 40 (Level 4 Pollution)

   Operation Cost: 2,000 yuan/day

     【Task: Within one month, the number of tourists reaches 300 (55/300)

   Complete the task to get 3 million yuan in cash and random rewards. 】

     There were only 55 tourists in the past two days, but the total popularity of the two attractions has reached 79. Li Yaolin believes that there must be some tourists who are cross-over. In other words, tourists who go to sea fishing also go to the white beach, but the popularity is calculated separately.

     But tourists who go to sea fishing will inevitably pass by the white beach, but the popularity of the white beach is lower than that of the sea fishing ground, so Li Yaolin guessed that the calculation of the popularity is related to the length of time tourists stay at the attraction.

     She suddenly thought, assuming that a tourist stayed at the sea fishing ground for a long enough time, then went to the white beach for a long enough time, and then returned to the sea fishing ground, would this be counted as two points of popularity or three points?

     Assume again that the accumulation of popularity seems to overlap, for example, there is a fisherman who comes every day, and the popularity will increase a little each time, then what about the number of tourists? Taking a boat back and forth once in the morning, once at noon, and once in the evening, is it considered 3 times? After all, the little mermaid said that she went to the island through legal means, and bought a boat ticket for the three visits to the island, so it is legal, right?

     Li Yaolin believes that these rules actually have loopholes, but she does not intend to exploit loopholes. What if the system already knows that there are such loopholes and has made restrictions, but just did not remind her?

     The next few days were cloudy and rainy, and the number of people visiting the island dropped sharply. Only the fishermen from the sea fishing club would charter the ferry to the island.

     The growth rate of the number of tourists slowed down suddenly, and Li Yaolin was still very Buddhist, doing what she had to do every day.

     It happened that the crew member Lao Du called her and said that he had found two people for her and asked her when it would be convenient for her to interview.

     Originally, she was going to interview five people, but two of them stood her up because they were too far away and the weather was bad, and one of them did not meet the requirements. In the end, Li Yaolin only hired the person introduced by Lao Du.

     One of them was called Gao Zhenhai, 29 years old, who was a lifeguard at Yuhai Park. He resigned half a year ago and has not found a job. He and Lao Du are half relatives. He heard Lao Du say that Xingzhou Island was recruiting people and the salary conditions were 1,000 yuan higher than Yuhai Park, so he came.

     Another one was called Lin Qiang, 26 years old, a friend of Gao Zhenhai. He retired from the army two years ago, passed the safety officer qualification certificate, worked as a safety officer at the Romantic Sea House Resort for half a year, and was brought here by Gao Zhenhai.

     With a filter for veterans, Li Yaolin decided to hire him.

     After signing the labor contract, Li Yaolin took out a confidentiality agreement for them, requiring them not to disclose information on the island to the outside world.

     Both of them were a little surprised. Why do safety officers and lifeguards have to keep secrets? Is there any unknown activity going on on Xingzhou Island?

     Lin Qiang asked to go to his workplace to take a look before making a decision.

     Li Yaolin had no objection. The next day, she took them to the island for a tour and explained to them: “I am not doing any illegal activities. I just want to cover Xingzhou Island with a veil of mystery. The more mysterious it is, the more curious it is, right? When the mysterious veil is lifted, the response will definitely be very good.”

     The process of developing the island will inevitably involve a lot of commercial secrets. It seems reasonable for her to ask the two to keep it confidential.

     Lin Qiang said: “As long as it does not involve illegal activities, I am willing to keep it confidential.”

     Gao Zhenhai had no objection, and the two signed the agreement.

     I don’t know if it was their illusion, but after signing the agreement, they felt a little more belonging to the island.