Overly Intense [Criminal Investigation] 53

Chapter 53: After Surviving a Great Disaster, Good Fortune Will Follow

Qin Luo had no time to worry about any cameras. It was another matter whether she could even sleep tonight.

Qin Luo looked down and focused her energy on her computer. “You should go to sleep. We’re going to the factory tomorrow morning.”

Zhan Luo checked left and right a couple more times. “Alright, then Sister Qin and Sister Wang, call me if you need anything. Remember to lock the door when you sleep.”

Before he left, he also reminded her, “Don’t forget to eat your noodles.”

Qin Luo was typing and replied, “I know.”

Hearing her reply, Zhan Luo left with peace of mind. But as soon as he had closed the door, Liu Jia’s call came in.

Liu Jia’s mood on the phone was still at a normal level, but the first thing she asked was not about work, but: “Why did you tell Shen Yiyi that we were together?”

The room was simple, and even a small volume couldn’t cover up Liu Jia’s loud voice. The legal team’s Sister Wang was sitting opposite Qin Luo.

Qin Luo stood up and walked out of the room with her phone. “I didn’t know what to say to her.”

An old friend knows the voice. With just a simple sentence from Qin Luo, Liu Jia could tell from the change in her voice that she had just had a breakdown. “Did you cry?”

Qin Luo couldn’t keep a straight face. “Yes.”

Liu Jia chuckled. “Is this little thing worth our Sister Qin’s tears? But it’s good to cry once in a while. Just think of it as a detox.”

“My internet connection is not good here today, and I haven’t seen the news online. How is the public relations situation now?”

“It’s good.” Liu Jia bit her coffee straw. “The public relations statement was released this morning.”

Qin Luo stood in the corridor, put her phone on speaker, and opened the social media platform.

“Why are the related topics on the trending list still negative?”

“There’s too much public opinion, and it’s too messy.” Liu Jia had finished her third cup of coffee of the day at ten in the evening. “Public relations now is all about strategic diversion, combined with the water army’s gossip tactics. You can always stir up the water.”

The lights outside the floor-to-ceiling window of Logos were bright, and the glass reflected the new media cattle and horses who were working overtime. Liu Jia leaned against the glass. “I spent a hundred thousand to buy some data. Do you know what Olivia’s public relations team analyzed?”

Liu Jia sneered. “Haha, it’s not the same group of old farts who framed the team of scholars before.”

“Not the rival?”

“It is the rival.” Liu Jia glanced around and continued in a low voice, “It’s from ‘Ranmei.'”

…

Qin Luo was silent.

“Those women just want to squeeze us out. They want to cause a storm before the Norshaw Media Day, so that the organizers will block us, and the biggest female media matrix this year will be theirs.”

Qin Luo, who was in a position of information lag, was dazed. “Wait, wait, wait a minute.”

Qin Luo leaned on the dirty windowsill and asked, word by word, “Which wave was caused by Ranmei? Was it the bloggers’ betrayal or the consumers’ report?”

“Both…” Liu Jia covered her mouth. “It was all Li Ran.”

“Damn it!!!” Qin Luo cursed. “Are you sure?”

“I spent a hundred thousand to buy it from a data crawler!” Liu Jia exclaimed that Qin Luo didn’t believe the reliability of her news. “I’ve already heard that Dadihua has signed with Ranmei. Hahahaha…”

After she finished speaking, Liu Jia laughed sarcastically. “I think I’m tolerant enough. She breached the contract first, and then she turned around and said that we wanted her to pay for it herself. And the termination procedures haven’t even been completed, and she’s already having dinner with Li Ran.”

Qin Luo was annoyed by what she heard and wanted to smoke, but she didn’t have any in her pocket, so she had to send a message to Zhan Luo, asking him to get her a pack of cigarettes.

On the other end of the line, Liu Jia was still cursing, “For someone like Li Ran, it’s not surprising that she would do something like this. What happened to that domestic underwear brand that she ruined before?”

“Ranmei” was also a media company in the female growth track.

But her company had few businesses, only two sources of income: personal IP and live stream sales.

Li Ran was a semi-traditional media person, originally a top translation writer at a famous publishing house.

Later, when she saw Qin Luo go into business and easily cross the class divide, she also quit her job and followed behind her, creating the personal IP of “Ranmei.”

Logos’s content was rational, healthy, logical, and of high quality, and had always been a leader in its track.

Ranmei focused on the grassroots audience. Most of its content was daily chicken soup, or at worst, the hot topics that the neighbors loved to talk about.

There was an index monitoring agency in the new media industry called Norshaw.

Norshaw was a data platform that served the new media industry, providing all new media content traffic monitoring, IP index evaluation, and the annual media matrix influence index.

It was the most authoritative consulting company in the market’s digital economy. A single data report could determine the life and death of a media company.

In Norshaw’s eyes, Ranmei was a low-end imitation of Logos.

In the past few years, Qin Luo and Li Ran would often meet at events. They had added each other on WeChat early on, but their social interaction was limited to handshakes and thank yous. They had never contacted each other after the events.

But in recent years, the businesses of the two companies had begun to expand, and their audience profiles had slowly begun to overlap. The market competition had gradually increased.

Especially this year, brand offline events would organize bloggers to stand on stage, and the bloggers would inevitably be pulled into a communication group by the organizers.

Bloggers are people.

Logos had no right to restrict the freedom of its employees.

So it was common for bloggers to privately discuss their respective company’s benefits.

But Logos’s management regulations for bloggers were considered relaxed in the industry.

The company had a dedicated new media department responsible for the bloggers’ copy review, creative conception, and video editing, as well as a business department to handle advertising.

Logos had no strict update or playback requirements for them. The bloggers who worked at Logos didn’t even have to clock in.

Of course, since they had become pawns in the matrix, they also had to pay a corresponding agency service fee.

Logos would take 50% of the advertising revenue of its bloggers.

“Dadihua” was a top creator at Logos, a thirty-year-old single woman with 20 million followers on the entire network.

When her traffic was good, she could even surpass second-tier celebrities. An advertisement of three hundred thousand was nothing to her, let alone being willing to split it fifty-fifty with Logos.

Therefore, in order to keep Dadihua, Liu Jia had signed a special contract with her, only charging her thirty percent of the agency fee and providing her with a professional team.

But despite this, Dadihua was still not satisfied with Logos.

“This circle is really small. I’ve been gathering information from all over the place, and I’ve only just pieced it all together today.”

Liu Jia said tirelessly, “That assistant director who was pursuing you sent me a message a few days ago, saying that she had taken on a job from BP and was in contact with a blogger from Li Ran’s company. But Li Ran had annoyed the brand’s PR, and the deal had fallen through. She asked me if I wanted to talk about taking it over.”

“At that time, I was still thinking that BP’s investment was a lot of money and a clean job. How could Li Ran be willing to give it up? So I just didn’t get involved.”

“But then!!!” Liu Jia snorted coldly. “I called the boss of Yiguan today, and they said that Li Ran wanted to use a big advertisement to invite Dadihua to sign with her, and she had deliberately broken off the deal with BP.”

At this, Liu Jia laughed out loud again. “I’m not going to let her get away with this. The legal department sent her a letter this afternoon. The lawsuit will have to be dragged out for at least half a year. How many half-years can an internet celebrity afford to waste?”

Zhan Luo ran out with a cigarette pack. Seeing that Qin Luo was on the phone, he stood beside her and took out a cigarette to hand to her.

“Then what does this have to do with the consumer report?” Qin Luo took the cigarette and smiled at Zhan Luo. “Thanks.”

Zhan Luo said in a low voice, “Fire.”

As he said this, he held a lighter in both hands.

Click—

The flame lit up.

Qin Luo leaned forward, took a drag, and lit the cigarette. “Was the water army on the night of the live stream bought by Li Ran?”

“Not really.” Liu Jia explained, “That wasn’t even a live stream accident. It was just a fight between black fans and fans. The wave in the early morning was Li Ran’s little trick.”

Hearing Qin Luo smoking, Liu Jia said grimly, “So I’m telling you not to blame yourself. Even without the live stream remarks, they would have made a move.”

The bitter nicotine spread in her mouth. In the dilapidated hotel corridor, Qin Luo thought of Shen Yiyi.

The business recruitment for the next season of their reading group had just ended, on the day she had reunited with Shen Yiyi.

It had only been a month, but this reading group had already become a burden to her.

“I’ve thought about what I told you a few days ago.”

Qin Luo extinguished the cigarette on the balcony, plugging the black hole in the wall. “After the live stream department moves out, we’ll stop all our agricultural aid public welfare projects, and the reading group will also be temporarily suspended. Let’s focus on filming this movie first, and we’ll talk about the rest later.”

Liu Jia was stunned and said weakly, “It’s not that bad…”

“It’s really a bit tiring.” After Qin Luo said this, she unexpectedly yawned. “There are too many risks. I feel like I can’t bear it.”

Besides that, there was also guilt, not only for Logos, but also for them who were re-employed.

Those housewives had once seen Logos as a hope, but now, it had become the root of their predicament, thrown into the center of public opinion.

Qin Luo felt that she had not only betrayed their trust, but had also caused a crisis of trust in society and the community.

Especially for the women who were marginalized by the city and their families in their re-employment.

They were facing lawsuits against their factories, their wages were in arrears, and even their career projects were being branded as shoddy products. They were forced to be tied to Qin Luo to bear the commercial risks that Logos was facing.

So what if the public relations were fast?

The public had already planted the seed of being deceived. The public welfare project had become a discredited project. In the future, all similar female re-employment projects would be treated as suspicious targets by the media and exiled by capital.

A royal flush that turned out to be a pair of threes was the last thing Qin Luo wanted to see.

She would rather withdraw from these projects and give the public welfare cause a piece of peace. That way, at least the public would not hate it and would still have trust in female public welfare.

“Besides, these projects don’t make money.” Qin Luo laughed at herself. “I’m a black-hearted capitalist. How can I care about so many people’s lives?”

“Look at you.” Liu Jia clicked her tongue. “Are you being sarcastic with me?”

Qin Luo smiled wryly and turned around. She glanced and saw that Zhan Luo was still standing not far away. She was puzzled, and then after a couple of seconds, she remembered that his cigarette pack was still in her hand.

She smiled and handed it back. Zhan Luo took it, said good night, and left.

On the other end of the line, Liu Jia said, “At eight tomorrow night, I’ll have all the artists under me issue a company statement. Don’t worry. I guarantee that after surviving this great disaster, Logos will have good fortune.”