Chapter 1907: Traffic

Young people?

Upon hearing Ye Jing's words, Zhao Fusheng frowned.

Intuition told him that Ye Jing wouldn't make such a request without reason.

In other words, he must have thought it over for a long time before making this suggestion.

As the de facto head of Future Film and Television, Ye Jing was well aware of the impact a decision of his could have on the company and even the entire entertainment industry.

Yet he still said it.

So Zhao Fusheng had reason to believe that Ye Jing must have some ideas.

"Select some good-looking young actors with great image, find ways to boost their visibility. They don't necessarily need representative works, but they must be able to capture the public's attention."

Ye Jing looked at Zhao Fusheng and spoke slowly.

"..."

Zhao Fusheng was a bit stunned, sitting there without saying a word for a long time.

"What, is it too fanciful?"

Seeing Zhao Fusheng silent, Ye Jing thought his idea hadn't impressed him.

"No, it's not fanciful."

Zhao Fusheng shook his head and smiled instead: "Rather, your idea is too ahead of its time."

Huh?

Ye Jing looked at Zhao Fusheng in surprise, clearly not understanding what he meant.

Zhao Fusheng chuckled and said to him with a smile: "You mean to boost the traffic of those artists, right?"

Traffic was originally an attribute of an artist, not an identity.

Starting with Ke Zhendu, who set the original standard with national recognition and high topic heat, Li Yifeng enriched the definition of traffic with new media indexes.

To put it bluntly, traffic is topic degree. Every move these artists make attracts attention and brings heat.

Therefore, these people are also called traffic stars.

So the question is, what can these traffic idols, male and female, bring to investors?

This matter needs to be analyzed from many angles.

Take the film industry as an example. The dominance of traffic stars is a bit like the sky-high mooncakes of yesteryear.

Mooncake manufacturers and sellers didn't focus on the taste and quality of the mooncakes themselves but went all out on packaging, hyping up the so-called collectible value of the packaging. The most expensive mooncakes were even hyped to tens of thousands of yuan per box, yet their taste wasn't much different from those costing a few yuan.

This created a brief boom in the mooncake market, but people didn't need rosewood mooncake boxes for the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Market demand gradually weakened, and the government tightened regulations. Within about a year or two, sky-high mooncakes basically disappeared.

Perhaps a small portion remained, sold as crafts or luxury goods, but it was no longer possible to be as hot as before. In fact, the economic phenomenon created by traffic artists is similar to sky-high mooncakes.

An actor's looks and fame are just the outer packaging of a film or TV work. What audiences truly need are the profound意境 of art films and the exciting stories of commercial films, all of which require various departments, including actors, to deeply hone their skills.

Just like when people eat mooncakes, they might care about whether the packaging is exquisite, but they won't think the mooncake tastes better because of the exquisite packaging.

Film and TV works are, after all, commodities. Commodities naturally need packaging and promotion. But if the packaging costs more than the product itself, and the hype is exaggerated, it violates business ethics.

People don't need packaging more expensive than the product itself. Selling people things they don't need is actually a shortsighted behavior—cheating consumers' trust, making a quick buck, while ruining one's own reputation.

Zhao Fusheng had seen many examples of this kind of thing years later.

Especially those TV variety shows, they all followed this routine.

Even five years from now, no one would deny the influence of traffic stars. Relying on traffic stars could indeed yield returns beyond expectations, whether in market buzz or actual box office conversion.

Five years later, the film "So Young" grossed 700 million yuan, kicking off the trend of "big IP + traffic stars" in the Chinese film market, where fans' money seemed especially easy to earn.

In the same year, "Tiny Times," directed by Xiao Si and starring Da Mimi, leveraged a cost of 23 million yuan to generate nearly 500 million yuan in box office, with an investment return rate that was "a small investment brings great profits."

The market immediately fell into a frenzy.

Zhao Fusheng had thought about this issue before, but he hadn't expected that as early as 2008, Ye Jing was already contemplating launching traffic stars.

"Ahead of its time?"

Clearly, Zhao Fusheng's words surprised Ye Jing; he couldn't grasp Zhao Fusheng's meaning.

Zhao Fusheng chuckled and explained: "Do you think cultivating a star like that would benefit our film box office?"

"Of course it would."

Ye Jing said: "I've calculated it; it's very beneficial. We can get a huge return from it."

With that, he simply took out a stack of materials, clearly having done research before reaching his conclusion.

Zhao Fusheng looked at the materials but remained silent for a long time.

In fact, he knew very well that popular stars could boost pre-sales and, relying on core fans, achieve a box office of 100 million yuan. But to push the box office higher, it mainly depended on ordinary audiences.

In reality, if fans could contribute 100 million yuan in box office, that was already terrifying. But if a film starring a traffic star only grossed 100 million yuan, it would mostly fail to recoup its costs.

So the next question was: why did ordinary audiences later become "indifferent" to films starring traffic stars?

Why did films that piled up traffic stars still not achieve high box office?

Why didn't the sum of fan bases correlate with box office?

Could it be that even core fans weren't buying it?

Zhao Fusheng knew that Ye Jing couldn't answer this question now.

In fact, even Zhao Fusheng himself couldn't tell him about it.

He couldn't exactly tell Ye Jing that years later, although traffic could still make money for the company, it had actually become a derogatory term.

If an actor was labeled with the word "traffic," it meant that person had no real skills and was just living off their looks.

Any artist with a bit of ambition knew this wasn't a good thing.

So, generation after generation of traffic stars desperately tried to shake off this image.

Admittedly, many of them worked very hard, including Han Lu and Da Wan Kuan Mian among the four returnees, as well as early traffic stars like Tang Zhu and Li Yifeng, who all frantically took on roles that could change their image.

But among them, some succeeded and some failed.

One could only say, it's a matter of timing and fate. The profession of acting isn't something that just good looks can make successful.

"So, is it worth pursuing?"

Ye Jing looked at Zhao Fusheng expectantly, hoping the guy would give him a positive answer.

He was the type to wear his heart on his sleeve. Even at the company, he was mostly cheerful and rarely had conflicts with others.

But now, Ye Jing was really nervous.

Seeing his expression, Zhao Fusheng couldn't help but laugh.

"You, come on, it's not that serious, is it?" Zhao Fusheng asked Ye Jing.

"What do you know? I've been thinking about this for a long time."

Ye Jing pouted and said to Zhao Fusheng: "Just tell me if it's feasible or not."

Zhao Fusheng thought for a moment and finally nodded: "It's feasible, but let me say this first: during the process, try not to make it too ugly."

"What do you mean?"

Ye Jing asked, puzzled.

Zhao Fusheng smiled bitterly: "Do you think hyping up buzz can be done without using rumors and scandals?"

"Well..."

As expected, Ye Jing fell silent.

Both he and Zhao Fusheng knew that in the entertainment industry, hype essentially boiled down to scandals and smearing others.

And obviously, Ye Jing's plan included these tactics.

That was precisely why Zhao Fusheng specifically cautioned him.

He didn't want his artists to become the target of nationwide online hate.