Billy Howard, gratified, collected $2 million in funds from Motorola's finance department and began planning how to launder Motorola's reputation.
Since he had taken the money, he had to complete the task. Otherwise, if Motorola's anger erupted, he and his company would be finished. Therefore, Billy Howard dared not delay for a moment. He immediately summoned the elites of his company to start planning, and soon a complete public relations plan was devised.
The first step, naturally, was to find a new news hot spot that could reverse the situation.
Humans, besides being forgetful, are also easily distracted by other things. Edward Zamp's intention was precisely this; he had a brilliant plan.
That was to first find some negative news, then cleverly link this negative news with Tianxing 5, and finally reveal that Motorola was framed and that Tianxing 5 was deliberately framing Motorola.
This way, a perfect closed loop would be formed. The audience would be whipped into a frenzy as news after news was released, and ultimately, Motorola's reputation would be perfectly whitewashed, Tianxing 5 would become infamous, and he, Billy Howard, would successfully earn a huge profit of over $1 million. It couldn't be any better.
In addition to finding this news hot spot, they also needed to communicate with various online troll companies they were connected with and bribe their trolls to cooperate.
This kind of thing would have been very difficult a year ago because Weibo had just been established, and its scale was not as large as it is now, so the market was insufficient. Therefore, there were no professional troll companies, only some individual studios at most.
However, the situation had changed drastically. With a year of development, Weibo, having no competitors and possessing the development experience of Facebook, had become the largest social media platform in the United States.
Furthermore, Weibo had absorbed some of the characteristic functions of later Twitter, becoming a perfect amalgamation. It had completely dominated the entire social network media. Many of the fantastical stories and tactics common in later times began to emerge on Weibo. Simultaneously, many sensitive individuals gradually discovered avenues for profit on Weibo, the simplest of which was being an online troll.
Although it was far from the frenzy of later times, where new narratives and the need for trolls to whitewash things appeared almost daily on Weibo, there were generally two or three lively narratives each month, so the demand for trolls was quite significant. For example, many trolls had already set their sights on the current big narrative surrounding Motorola. Billy Howard was very confident that as soon as he gave the signal, a large number of trolls would come to his command.
Finally, and most importantly, just having the support of trolls was not enough; they also needed to be able to delete opposing comments.
Of course, simply having the support of trolls was not enough. Just as an excellent army needs outstanding generals, an excellent force of trolls also needs its leaders, which are the big Vs on Weibo.
Only when these big Vs speak first, followed by the trolls, can the narrative be successfully driven and the victory firmly established. Therefore, Billy Howard would have to contact several more big Vs to rally support for him.
Alas, at this point, one had to admit that the current development of the internet was far inferior to later times. In later times, internet big Vs were mass-produced and packaged, even forming a middleman platform.
Public relations companies only needed to place orders directly on the middleman platform, and the platform would automatically contact the big Vs under its umbrella. Then, for a post costing hundreds or thousands of dollars, hundreds or thousands of big Vs with millions of followers would support it in a short period, which was very convenient, fast, and efficient.
But now, it was not possible. Billy Howard could only rely on his personal connections and start contacting some big Vs, asking them to speak up and help out when the time came.
Soon, all these tasks were assigned. The next crucial task was to find something, a black spot on Tianxing 5, to ignite the entire network and rebrand Motorola.
This black spot was very important. First, it must be true, or at least half true and half false, otherwise, it would easily be exposed by the opponent.
Second, this black spot could not be too serious or too trivial. For example, causing deaths abroad was irrelevant to the American people. Matters of foreigners were none of the business of the American people.
It had to touch upon the pain points and satisfaction points of the American people, in simple terms, it had to be down-to-earth.
Finally, and most crucially, this black spot had to be related to Motorola, otherwise, the final reversal to rebrand Motorola could not be completed.
This made finding such a black spot quite difficult. Billy Howard personally began to investigate various materials related to Tianxing 5, hoping to find something to criticize.
However, it was rather difficult to satisfy all three conditions simultaneously. Billy Howard searched for a long time but found no satisfactory results. He couldn't even find anything about Tianxing 5 that could be considered a black spot, which made him feel very frustrated. Could it be that Tianxing 5 was really as clean as an angel?
No, how could Billy Howard be defeated by such a small setback? So he began to broaden his thinking. Since no black spot could be found for Tianxing 5, he would look for it in the Tianxing series of mobile phones.
If no black spot could be found for the Tianxing series of mobile phones, he would then look into the entire BLM company behind it, or even the Jiangnan Group.
To his surprise, with the help of this open thinking, Billy Howard actually found what he was looking for, a piece of news from two years ago.
This news was found on Weibo by a netizen named Professor Chen. In a Weibo post he made yesterday, he discovered the following entry: "It's been 600 days since I escaped that despicable and shameless Jiangnan Company, and today I saw such news again. This company is truly relentless; their ugly mark can be seen everywhere!"
"Years ago, I returned with great enthusiasm and technology, only to have everything stolen by them, leaving me with a lifetime of infamy and pushing my friends working at Motorola into dire straits. Today, I have returned to this free and democratic land, and I will one day prove that all of this is the most hypocritical scam in the world!"
Billy Howard was originally uninterested in such a tweet, as the article was vague and incoherent, filled only with resentment and lacking any basic facts. Normally, Billy Howard would never pay attention to such things.
However, when the names Jiangnan and Motorola both appeared in the article, Billy Howard had to take it seriously.
So, he began to read the author's Weibo posts extensively, sorting through all of his articles to get a general understanding of the story.
His first post was published exactly 601 days ago, stating, "Finally returned to this free land. I took a deep breath. Ah, even the air here smells sweet."
From this, it could be seen that this person had returned to the United States 601 days ago. The subsequent posts were few, mostly complaints about his life.
Such as the terrible living conditions, old friends unwilling to help him, inability to find work, and even former students insulting him. In short, his life was miserable.
Of course, scattered among them were some stories. After piecing them together, the general story was that this individual named Chen should be a Chinese person, and also a professor. It seemed he held a certain status in China years ago.
Then, years ago, he took the most advanced chip technology from the United States back to repay his nation and country. However, he was framed by the Jiangnan Group, falsely accused of theft, and then cleverly escaped back to this free land.
The most crucial point was that he was framed by the Jiangnan Group, and the technology he was accused of stealing was Motorola's technology.
Upon seeing this, Billy Howard felt very excited. He wanted to uncover more truth, so he began to contact this Professor Chen, posing as a reporter who was very interested in his story and willing to help him seek justice, asking if he would be willing to be interviewed.
---
Chen looked at Billy Howard with some trepidation. He was indeed Professor Chen Jin. After discovering that something was amiss back then, he dared not stay in China for a moment. He did everything he could to get an overseas ticket and came to the United States, narrowly escaping disaster.
However, he found his life in the United States to be very unsatisfactory. Americans ignored him, and Chinese people looked down on him. Now, he was living by washing dishes for others, and his wife was doing manicures for others.
So, Chen naturally vented his dissatisfaction online. Of course, he would never admit his mistakes, so he fabricated many scenarios. Unexpectedly, this attracted the attention of a reporter.
Thus, he brazenly fabricated a story, saying that he led a team to develop world-class chip technology, and after the technology was noticed by the Jiangnan Group, the Jiangnan Group framed him for stealing Motorola's technology and used all sorts of power to try to seize all the technology he held.
Then, he fled to the United States.
However, after he finished telling his story, Professor Chen noticed that Billy Howard's expression did not seem satisfied. Was his story too poorly written?
Alas, there was nothing he could do about it. He was a science major, not a liberal arts major. He just didn't know if he could get paid for the interview.
As Chen hesitated and pondered, Billy Howard spoke, "Chen, I was very moved by your story. I hate this Jiangnan Group as much as you do. However, can your story be changed a bit?"
"How so?" Chen asked with some surprise. He didn't have any objection to modifying his story, as it was fabricated anyway. He just didn't know how the other party wanted to change it.
"It's simple," Billy Howard asked. "Instead of being framed for stealing chip technology from Motorola, what if you actually stole chip technology from Motorola?"
Professor Chen: "..."