The Chinese often say that things don't happen more than three times, and this saying holds true. After the frontline employees of East Amazon had resolved the third crisis, the person in charge could no longer orchestrate a fourth. This was because he had been transferred by Walmart to be in charge of a country overseas.
This appointment was non-negotiable, as it was a direct order from Chairman Rob Walton.
Moreover, it was actually a promotion, as he was elevated from being in charge of three states to being the head of a national market, a significant step up.
However, this particular country frequently experienced minor issues, with government forces and rebel groups constantly at war. The previous Walmart manager was kidnapped by rebels and subsequently killed.
Consequently, the current manager promptly resigned, forfeiting any severance pay, and left Walmart in disgrace.
Following this, at a high-level Walmart meeting, Rob Walton once again emphasized the strategic importance of Walmart's cooperation with East Amazon for the company's overall strategy. He even initiated a campaign encouraging the entire company to learn from East Amazon.
As a result, no one within Walmart would intentionally obstruct East Amazon, and by maintaining strong grassroots relationships through consistent engagement with Walmart employees, East Amazon effectively eliminated any potential for trouble from the Amazon side.
However, Goldman Sachs remained persistent, with Tucker and his associates still scheming for ways to find dirt on East Amazon, to the point of losing sleep over it. The next day, arriving at work with dark circles under his eyes, a subordinate excitedly rushed to report that a critical post about East Amazon had appeared online!
"What! Is this true?" Tucker immediately perked up and logged onto the internet to check the relevant posts. He discovered it was a complaint thread about delivery delays.
A netizen from Ohio stated that they had purchased $120 worth of goods from East Amazon at 10 AM, expecting delivery by 2 PM that afternoon.
However, the delivery was inexplicably delayed until 6 PM the following day, and only after numerous calls urging them on did the items finally arrive at their doorstep.
Not only was the delay over a full day, but the items inside the packaging were also severely deformed, with many boxes crushed beyond recognition, clearly having suffered rough handling during transit. The customer then called to request a return but was instead met with a torrent of insults, causing significant emotional distress.
"My goodness, something good like this has happened to me!" Seeing this post, Tucker was so moved he almost cried. He had previously spent so much effort, utilizing a pawn hidden deep within Walmart, yet had failed to uncover any scandalous material about East Amazon.
Who would have thought that after he stopped doing anything, the material would just fall from the sky? The feeling was utterly indescribable.
After his initial astonishment, Tucker immediately applied his professional acumen, dispatching his subordinates to contact the blogger who had posted the complaint. Initially, contact was made via private message online. When Tucker's subordinate identified themselves as a media reporter and requested a phone interview, they were immediately provided with the blogger's phone number. The blogger then proceeded to vent their frustrations for a full two hours over the phone.
"It's impossible for someone to be this angry without genuine feelings; this matter must be true!" Tucker exclaimed, slapping his thigh, and immediately arranged for his subordinates to follow up.
The news was formally distributed to all Goldman-affiliated media outlets, with instructions for immediate reporting. Simultaneously, they contacted several online smear campaign companies, instructing them to immediately generate corresponding buzz online.
Tucker even reached out to the marketing department of Weibo, specifically purchasing several trending topics for this incident. Yes, Weibo was already openly selling trending topics, though not publicly. It was sold discreetly, and only those in the marketing circle knew that trending topics could be directly purchased, as Weibo still had its reputation to consider!
Before they could even finish with that, another complaint post emerged, and the content of this one was even more explosive.
This post was from a blogger in Montana. Although their order was delivered on time, the cat food they purchased caused their cat to foam at the mouth and die in their yard the next morning after feeding it.
The blogger, both furious and heartbroken, stated that their cat had always eaten the same brand of cat food without any issues. It only died immediately after consuming the cat food purchased online. They insisted that this batch of cat food must have been poisoned and that they were preparing to protest with their dead cat.
This news was far more sensational than the previous delivery delay, as the latter merely involved a delay and did not cause significant damage.
However, this incident resulted in the death of a poor cat, which was undoubtedly major news. Moreover, it was a cat that died, not a person, and this was sure to strike a chord with animal protection organizations, causing them to immediately rally.
After all, the combativeness of these animal protection organizations was far greater than that of any other group... except perhaps for the grassroots level in China.
In short, upon receiving this brand-new piece of negative information, Tucker was overjoyed. He immediately followed the same approach, contacting the blogger and offering to sponsor her entirely to travel to East Amazon's headquarters to demand justice.
As a full sponsor, this naturally covered all expenses, including food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. However, these were minor expenses. Under Tucker's plan, he would also arrange for people to contact animal protection organizations across the United States to mobilize them for a demonstration in front of East Amazon's headquarters. This would then be followed by arranging for a large number of journalists and media outlets to conduct interviews, ultimately escalating the situation and making East Amazon the focal point of global public outcry.
For Tucker, these were all familiar tasks that had become second nature, so the next day, everything began to unfold exactly as he had planned.
First, someone accused East Amazon of a one-day delivery delay in the media, while their staff also verbally abused consumers over the phone, igniting the wrath of netizens.
Then, the very next day, it was announced that inferior cat food sold by East Amazon had caused a cat's death, and numerous animal protection organizations gathered at East Amazon's headquarters to protest.
From online to offline, from new media to old media, these two pieces of news swept through the country. Within a single day, they received coverage from over 80% of American media outlets, and the following day, the news spread overseas, with media worldwide reporting on the story.
Due to the highly successful opening marketing campaign of East Amazon, the platform's popularity had not waned.
Simultaneously, the stipulation that gold coins could be exchanged for US dollars, with only one exchange window, and that these dollars could only be used for postage, had also generated many detractors for East Amazon. The two sides, seizing the opportunity of this scandal breaking out, had truly fanned the flames, attracting the curiosity of many who had never even heard the name East Amazon before.
The immediate emergence of scandals surrounding East Amazon, with such a cascade of explosive news, turned global audiences into eager spectators.
Even China's own media outlets reported extensively on this news. Nearly 50% of Chinese people immediately received this "big melon" from the United States, and they took to the internet to condemn the shoddy American e-commerce enterprise.
Interestingly, while these spectators were condemning East Amazon, they were simultaneously praising their own Jiangnan Mall for its convenience and excellent service, calling it the world's strongest e-commerce platform.
This was, in fact, true. Under Boss Huang's meticulous management, Jiangnan Mall, aside from lacking a mobile app and related features, was virtually indistinguishable from mature Chinese e-commerce platforms of the future. Jiangnan Logistics had also established a formidable logistics network that reached every county in the country, making the shopping experience truly incomparable to the early-stage e-commerce platforms in the United States.
Of course, most of these people complaining about East Amazon online and praising Jiangnan Mall had no idea that East Amazon was actually a Chinese-owned enterprise.
It was similar to how many people were unaware that Riot Games, the company behind League of Legends, was wholly owned by Tencent, making it a Chinese enterprise.
Meanwhile, Tucker was naturally triumphant.
His repeated failures had led to significant questioning within the Goldman Sachs Group. Now, he had finally succeeded in making East Amazon the target of global public criticism.
Tucker was soon commended by his company. If this endeavor ultimately proved to be a complete success, Tucker even had the opportunity to become a partner in the Goldman Sachs Group, an unparalleled honor.
Of course, amidst all this positive news, there were also some seemingly unreliable reports.
For instance, a super spy from the Goldman Sachs Group sent a message to the group headquarters stating that following the exposure of the incident, East Amazon's sales data seemed to have increased rather than decreased.
Naturally, this was considered mere rumor. How could East Amazon's data grow when it was being pushed so hard?
However, the source provided a plausible explanation, stating that while many long-time customers had stopped shopping at East Amazon due to the news, resulting in a loss of over 30% of their existing user base, more new customers were beginning to use East Amazon as a result of this global exposure. After all, despite its extensive advertising, East Amazon's reach had been limited to the internet, affecting only about 20% of Americans, with many traditional television viewers unaware of East Amazon's existence.
Now, with detailed news reports, people were realizing that all it took was placing an order online, and a company would deliver Walmart products directly to their doorstep within four hours, saving them the trouble of going out to shop.
This was simply wonderful!
As for the scandals that had broken out, people were adults and understood how businesses operated. Nothing in this world was perfect. They would deal with it if it happened to them, but for now, they didn't want to go grocery shopping.