Few people realized how much capital Jiangnan Group invested in promoting the Water-Sky-Color blind box this time.
A total of 10 million boxes of the Water-Sky-Color blind box were released, and they all sold out, amounting to only 100 million yuan in sales.
However, Jiangnan Group claimed to have invested a full 100 million yuan in promotional funds for the Water-Sky-Color blind box.
Firstly, there was a comprehensive publicity offensive across the entire network. The most prominent was the customary advertising of oo. However, due to too many past complaints about the annoying system message advertisements, oo gradually stopped this form of advertising.
Instead, Jiangnan Group launched sticker advertisements.
That's right, stickers could also become advertisements.
As everyone knows, since oo launched stickers, they have quickly become a popular feature for online chat. Who would be considered outdated if they don't use a few quirky stickers when chatting?
However, up until now, oo had only provided around 40 fixed stickers, like the yellow Baozi stickers. While they were initially very attractive, over time, people inevitably felt tired and bored.
As a result, this time, to promote the Water-Sky-Color, oo actually released exclusive Water-Sky-Color stickers. There were a total of 12 stickers, each depicting a small character wearing Water-Sky-Color attire in various poses.
For example, one of the most famous ones was called "Scared." It featured a little girl in Water-Sky-Color clothing, leaning against a corner with a scared expression.
As soon as this sticker pack was released, it instantly became a nationwide sensation. Countless users didn't know how to type the word "scared" anymore; they just sent the "Scared" sticker.
In any case, these stickers were updated in real-time to the pre-stored files of each oo device. When needed, the pre-stored files could be directly accessed, resulting in minimal data consumption. They were as convenient to use as text messages, allowing for instant sending.
Stickers that were this convenient and adorably diverse were naturally unbeatable. At the same time, this little girl in Water-Sky-Color attire also indirectly promoted the Water-Sky-Color Hanfu set.
In addition, a more significant promotional platform was Facebook.
Almost every refresh could see people discussing the Water-Sky-Color Hanfu. Simultaneously, Facebook even created a dedicated circle for Water-Sky-Color, prominently displayed on the homepage. Upon clicking it, one could immediately see a large amount of content related to Water-Sky-Color.
That wasn't all. If you clicked on the Facebook search bar, you would find that below the usual input box for Chinese characters, a line of red, bold text suddenly appeared: Hot Search: Water-Sky-Color Hanfu!
Good heavens, they even had a trending search.
And the strongest blow came from Zhang Rong.
On April 1st, Zhang Rong uploaded a picture on Facebook, and it was a high-definition image that broke Facebook's image size limit.
In the picture, Zhang Rong was wearing the men's version of Water-Sky-Color, sitting on a stone pillar by the sea. The sea breeze vigorously blew up the trailing hem of Zhang Rong's outfit, and the entire scene was breathtakingly beautiful.
If this photo alone was enough to drive many of Zhang Rong's fans crazy, what was even more insane was that after uploading the photo of the men's Water-Sky-Color, he immediately uploaded a photo of the women's Water-Sky-Color. It was the same person, in the same seaside location, striking the same pose, yet exhibiting two entirely different styles.
Well, this matter quickly went viral again, and Facebook exploded once more.
In addition, there was corresponding promotion on various news media outlets, making it seem like the hype was worthy of the 100 million yuan promotional budget.
However, if anyone looked at Jiangnan Group's financial report, they would find that 80 million yuan of the 100 million yuan was paid as advertising fees to Facebook and oo.
Ahem, although they were their own industries, the accounts still had to be settled clearly!
In short, the promotional effort this time was immense and extremely effective. Even old-fashioned figures like Zhang Yibo and Wang Yizhou, under the immense promotional onslaught, began to try online shopping on their computers.
One could imagine how much pent-up purchasing desire had accumulated in the country.
On the evening of April 8, 2003, at 8 PM, after half a month of various advertising and marketing promotions, the first day of sales finally arrived.
At this moment, the most nervous people were not the users with their mice poised in front of their computers, but the staff of Jiangnan Group's northern and southern network centers. To cope with this sales launch, the leadership and they had held relevant meetings for half a month, discussing all possible issues and response plans.
The leaders directly told them that on the day of the sales launch, if they could achieve a seamless operation without any network crashes, all staff would be rewarded with a month's salary.
If the network crash time on that day was within one minute, there would be no reward.
If the network crash time exceeded one minute but was within 5 minutes, everyone would have to work overtime for a month without pay.
If the crash time exceeded 5 minutes, then no one would receive their year-end bonus.
Thus, under such intense pressure, all employees strove for perfection and prayed to all the gods and Buddhas for protection, hoping that the network would absolutely not crash this time.
Although heaven sometimes liked to play cruel jokes, in the face of a thoroughly prepared team, everything was ultimately managed smoothly.
After the sales began at 8 PM, although in the first ten seconds, a peak traffic of 200,000 users flooded in, this was only about one-fifth of the 1 million users in the extreme testing state. Therefore, the entire process went very smoothly, with only two or three seconds of network latency. The excited person in charge immediately announced a reward of one month's salary for everyone, leading to cheers on the scene.
However, the sales were limited to 1 million boxes on the first day, but 200,000 people attempted to purchase. Assuming each person wanted to buy 10 boxes, then half of the users who immediately clicked the purchase button at 8:00 AM were sadly greeted with a sold-out notification, making them furious.
It is also worth noting that these 200,000 people were those who rushed in within the mere 10 seconds from 8:00:00 PM to 8:00:10 PM.
In fact, a continuous stream of another 1 million people rushed in within the next 5 minutes, attempting to make a purchase.
As a result, these people saw the purchase button had turned gray as soon as they entered the page. The word "Purchase" also changed to a small notification: "We sincerely apologize, all items have been sold out. Please try again tomorrow."
This left all the customers who thought they could definitely buy within the first five minutes stunned.
Even 90% of the scalpers were stunned. They had never had online shopping experience and thought buying within the first five minutes would be enough. So, when some of them controlled multiple computers and attempted to purchase, they were utterly dumbfounded seeing the grayed-out shopping buttons.
At this point, these customers finally understood that online shopping couldn't be delayed; one had to click the purchase button at the very first second.
Well, it doesn't matter. They learned their lesson on the first day, and they wouldn't make the same mistake the next day.
While the operations department of Jiangnan Network was celebrating and distributing bonuses to employees, in warehouses in major cities across the country, the same kind of motivation was just beginning.
"Brothers, this is the first tough battle for Jiangnan Logistics since its establishment!" In the warehouses, city managers loudly addressed their couriers in uniform.
"Brothers, this is a crucial mission. From today onwards, within 24 hours, we need to deliver 1 million blind boxes to a total of 128,000 different households across the country. Do you have confidence?"
"..." The crowd below remained silent. Delivering such a massive quantity of express blind boxes to so many households within 24 hours was a first for the nation's pioneering commercial express delivery company.
Although Jiangnan Logistics had been operational for over three months, and all couriers had over three months of work experience and were familiar with their work methods, the workload for tomorrow alone was equivalent to ten times the previous workload. After all, the previous Jiangnan Mall was just a website similar to Xianyu for transactions among Jiangnan Blind Box members. A day with 10,000 packages was considered a large volume.
Now, they had to deliver 120,000 packages a day, which made everyone hesitant to make any guarantees.
"Ahem..." Seeing the condition of his subordinates, the local manager could only cough awkwardly.
At this time, someone delivered files to the express company managers in different cities.
These managers glanced at the data files in their hands, and their hands involuntarily trembled, then they said, "Everyone, the order data for our city is out. The head office has xxx orders!"
The manager reported a number that made all the couriers swallow hard.
Depending on the size and scale of the city, this number varied.
For example, in Shanghai, the number in the manager's hand was as high as 19,823, meaning they had to deliver to nearly 20,000 households in one day.
However, for cities like Jiujiang, the data was only three to four hundred.
But the number of couriers in different cities also varied. Shanghai's Jiangnan Express had 40 couriers, while Jiujiang only had two. However, even when these orders were allocated to each courier, it was still an extremely terrifying figure.
However, there was good news: most of the blind boxes were stored in Jiangnan Express's warehouses in various cities, saving them the trouble of long-distance shipping. They only needed to dispatch directly from each warehouse to the entire city.
At the same time, the main warehouses located in provincial capitals needed to supplement the blind boxes to cities that were clearly experiencing shortages based on their order volumes.
However, this minor convenience was nothing compared to what was undoubtedly a terrifying hard battle for the newly established Jiangnan Express.
Under the command of Jiangnan Express's high-level management, all employees worked through the night, labeling all express packages with addresses and information, as well as sorting them to determine the packages each courier was responsible for in their respective areas.
Fortunately, Jiangnan Group seemed to have anticipated this step and had equipped all express delivery points with automated packaging machines early on. However, these packaging machines generally still required skilled operation. Fully automated express sorting lines were currently extremely costly, and human labor was cheaper.
As a result, all staff at the express sorting stations worked overtime for a full 10 hours to complete the packaging and sorting of all blind boxes. With bloodshot eyes, they loaded the boxes onto the couriers' three-wheeled motorcycles.
This was another trump card of Jiangnan Express.