Chapter 244: New Battle for Local Life
The setting sun disappeared into the horizon with its heat, and a business car slowly stopped downstairs of the office building.

From a distance, a young woman with a slightly delicate face was surrounded by assistants as she got out of the car. She had the same airs as a famous female star, but her actual status was a building higher.

The man stamped out his cigarette with emotion and turned back to the conference room to report the news. After some buzzing conversation, many men and women sat up straight.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting."

Song Anli walked into the conference room and shook hands with Zhong Lifang. Then she nodded and looked around, then sat down at the main seat naturally. "Let's not waste your time, let's get started."

"Today we are finalizing the promotion and marketing plan for the movie "Lost in Thailand", increasing the proportion of new media marketing budget, and screening the film on a large scale to spread word of mouth, in order to cooperate with the online pre-sale of movie tickets during the Golden Week on October 1st."

The largest investor in the movie "Lost in Thailand" is Xie Jingxing/Gongzi Wang, followed by Ning Hao and the production team. Many film and television companies such as Xiaoma Pentium are also involved.

However, a painful plot occurred. Ning Hao himself had connections with Maoyan, an online ticket booking website owned by Meituan. The two parties agreed to conduct large-scale pre-sales of movie tickets at a time when the pre-sale model of movie tickets is still in an experimental state.

Correspondingly, Zhong Lifang, a gold medal producer with trendy skills, strongly supported it, intending to increase the new media marketing budget by tens of millions to cooperate with the pre-sale distribution method.

Xiao Wang, who is in charge of distribution on the other side, also agrees with this. His Wanda Cinema Line also has a good cooperative relationship with online ticketing channels.

"Is Dianping not okay?" Song Anli asked lightly after listening for a while.

"We have communicated with Dianping.com. Their cinema coverage is lower than Maoyan. Their subsidy conditions are also worse."

Ning Hao quickly jumped out to explain on behalf of the distributor: "Of course, the best situation is not to choose between the two. So we finalized the publicity and promotion plan today, and tomorrow we will take the publicity and promotion plan to Maoyan for another round of negotiations with the distributor. If our new media marketing plan is good and can drive their pre-sales growth, there is hope that a three-party cooperation can be negotiated."

"Mr. Wang will come tomorrow, right?" Song Anli didn't comment and was too lazy to intervene.

Xinda'e has abundant financial resources, and it is no wonder that it is spending money in the group buying field with Meituan. Users can buy a movie ticket for only three yuan instead of ten yuan, making a huge contribution to the domestic film industry.

However, Xinda'e has not yet completed internal integration, and the online ticket booking business department is inevitably chaotic in management when it comes to individual projects. It would be more efficient for Maoyan Box Office to operate independently as a subsidiary.

In comparison, the details are a little lacking, which is also a reflection of the overall macro situation.

Currently, the local life + group buying market has entered a new stage. First of all, the players in the online travel market are burning money and are almost becoming mummy. Ctrip and eLong, which have been competing and negotiating mergers since ten years ago, are once again rumored to be acquiring each other.

At the same time, Qunar, Tongcheng and Tuniu also got involved. Today you want to marry me, and tomorrow I will marry you.

Anyone with a discerning eye could see that everyone really didn't have any money left to burn, and the problem now was - Xie Jingxing was a bastard!
Well, it has something to do with Mr. Xie. He led two mergers and acquisitions, Didi-Kuaidi and Dianping-Ele.me, in a row within half a year, which greatly stimulated the sensitivity of the public, experts and even officials to "commercial monopoly".

Although domestic commercial laws are not perfect, they do exist.

No matter which peer Ctrip wants to acquire, it is best to bring in a few allies to avoid a single-handed full-equity acquisition, thereby reasonably avoiding the risk of commercial monopoly.

All three BTA companies are interested in participating, among which Baidu is the most active and shows its generous nature. If it can acquire a stake in Ctrip, it can achieve strategic complementarity with Nuomi.com.

At the same time, Ganji.com and 58.com can no longer compete with each other. Information publishing platforms such as Zhaopin.com, Renrenche.com and Lianjia.com are experiencing rapid growth in their niche products, and the two companies are increasingly feeling a sense of crisis and are considering a merger.

As a result, the entire local life service battlefield became clear in an instant, and the representatives of the cross-border melee from all parties called off the battle. Only the three companies, Xinda E, Meituan, and Baidu Nuomi, were left, each with their own seed players standing behind them, fighting each other.

Meituan, which has escaped the siege, has seen a sharp drop in pressure. It has shrunk its food delivery business and launched a strong attack on the group buying business. It can also cut into the hotel and surrounding scenic spot ticket business to give Ctrip a few slaps. It is very powerful and capable. New DAE is busy with internal integration, and its food delivery business is not very aggressive. In terms of group buying, it looks at Meituan in front and Baidu in the back. It is a bit struggling to be caught in the middle. It can occasionally get some small benefits by relying on some novel product ideas given by Xie Jingxing.

It won't be long before Meituan will imitate and catch up. For example, Wang Xing shamelessly plagiarized quickly when he turned hotel group buying into reservations, without any of the integrity he had when he shouted to Su He that "no one can make me kneel down".

Once he has sorted out his relationship with investor Alibaba and restored his leading position in the group-buying market, it will be time for him to turn around and launch an all-out attack on the food delivery business.

As for Baidu Nuomi, its head boasted in front of Robin Li at a press conference at the Water Cube earlier this year, saying he would resign if he did not become the second in the market this year.

Unless New DAE and Meituan complete the merger within the year, everyone will just treat this statement as a joke. Anyway, Song Anli is very disdainful.

After all, he is a talented person with extremely bizarre train of thought, who was so showy that he went to make a strategic investment in a movie theater chain in order to overtake others and take the number one position in the online ticketing business.

The scary thing is that he actually did it, and was halfway there, spending 1.5 million to acquire a 1.59% stake in Star Cinemas.

At a time when New Dang E and Meituan have tacitly cooperated in shrinking their battle lines and turning online ticket booking into a quagmire, they actually dared to join in the fun with such a nonchalant attitude of testing the waters.

Sometimes, it is better to do nothing than to make a mistake and lose money.

Compared with the overall situation with undercurrents, it may not be a bad thing for a film project invested by Baidu to cooperate with Meituan. It is more important to bleed Baidu.

There's no need to say hello to Xu Nuo specifically. This should be her responsibility for the platform business, right?
Song Anli was not so sure and put it behind her. After all, "Lost in Thailand" was not solely funded by Xiaoma Pentium. Ning Hao and Wang Gongzi each had their own interests.

Even Concubine Pei wanted to sell better at the box office to secure her status as a movie star, while the four young actresses of her generation were still in the TV circle.

With the temptation of having finally made it, it's unrealistic to expect her to suffer a loss for nothing and sign an exclusive agreement with Dianping, whose conditions are inferior, for the online pre-sale of the movie.

"Mr. Song, we have arranged a dinner, would you like to eat together?"

It was already late after the meeting, so Zhong Lifang invited them, and Ning Hao, Xu Zheng and a bunch of others responded with smiles.

They didn't know that President Song was daydreaming and didn't take it seriously at all. They were afraid that this young girl would suddenly do something and use their hard work that cost them a year and involved hundreds of millions of dollars in profits as a sacrifice.

Speaking of which, Ning Hao just left Xiaoma Pentium last year to start his own business. He has a good relationship with Zhong Lifang and others, and he really doesn't want to have any disputes or unpleasantness.

Last year, he signed the investment terms full of capital game after only meeting Xie Jingxing once. At that time, the girl in front of him was still the assistant standing beside the boss, silently enduring Concubine Pei's face.

It's dramatic enough to make a movie, Ning Hao thought to himself with a smile on his face becoming more and more cordial. From the moment he signed the capital bet agreement, his arrogance as an artist subconsciously faded a lot.

"I just made a dinner appointment before I came here, so I can't miss it. Let's get together again tomorrow."

Song Anli politely declined. She and Liu Qing had made an appointment to go sing K in the evening. This elder sister was "concerned" about what Mr. Xie was doing recently in a roundabout way. If she got involved with Mr. Xie, she would be more cunning than a monkey and not easy to get rid of.

It will also be a problem if Prince Wang comes to the capital tomorrow. It will be just like the old lady at the entrance of the village complaining that Xie Jingxing disappeared after lighting the fire, and the post-investment management service is very inadequate.

Thinking about the worrying stock price trend of Coal City Special Steel, she had no mood to deal with a boring dinner.

(End of this chapter)