The collaboration with Michael Jackson was rather expensive, directly costing 10 million US dollars. This was mainly because Michael Jackson, due to child molestation allegations, found himself in severe financial straits. To maintain his Neverland Ranch, he required substantial funds, pushing him to the brink of selling off his assets. Thus, he agreed to the publicity cooperation proposed by Jiangnan Group.
Otherwise, given Michael Jackson's previous advertising rates, securing him for 10 million US dollars would have been impossible. After all, Michael Jackson's reputation was now mixed, and many companies were wary of any association with him.
It's worth noting that a previous collaboration with Michael Jackson would have cost at least 30 million US dollars, which was the going rate for an international superstar.
Furthermore, to maintain Michael Jackson's standing, the collaboration agreement specifically stipulated that the cooperation would be limited to online activities and would not extend offline. It was also not an endorsement deal; it merely required Mr. Michael Jackson to play games on the oo game platform and periodically post content online that had been approved by Michael Jackson's team.
As it turned out, the 10 million US dollars spent was well worth it. Firstly, a month in advance, Michael Jackson created a Weibo account. Since the collaboration required online promotion, having an account on the most widely used platform, Weibo, was a logical step.
Michael Jackson naturally opened his Weibo account. Upon news of its creation spreading, it set a record for Weibo since its inception. The day after Michael Jackson’s account was created, it gained 8.69 million followers.
Yes, that's the astonishing figure, a number that remained unbroken for 20 years. Although some later emerged claiming that at least 4 million of those 8.69 million followers were bots artificially inflated by Weibo itself as part of a marketing campaign to coincide with Michael Jackson's arrival on the platform, and that such a surge in followers in a single day was normally impossible.
However, this is merely an urban legend. The alleged whistleblowers were reportedly members of the marketing team at the time but never appeared publicly, so the veracity of these news reports remains unknown.
Nonetheless, this news instantly ignited the entire internet. Weibo was completely dominated by Michael Jackson's trending topics, with a scale of influence that the situation with Tianxing Mobile previously couldn't compare to.
This wasn't confined to the internet. Within a single day, the news spread from online to offline. Almost all television media in the United States reported on Michael Jackson opening a Weibo account, posting his first Weibo message, and releasing a greeting video on Weibo, ultimately creating unprecedented online buzz.
The result was that the next day, Michael Jackson gained over 7 million more followers. For the following three consecutive days, the daily follower increase was more than 5 million. In just five days, Michael Jackson became the top of Weibo's follower rankings, boasting over 40 million followers, nearly seven times more than the second-place account, becoming the undisputed king of Weibo.
Although many later analyzed that three-quarters of these followers were likely inflated, considering the US had just over 50 million internet users at the time, it was improbable that four-fifths of them would follow Michael Jackson, especially since he had as many fans as anti-fans.
Regardless, the popularity was immense. For that particular week, no matter which magazine you opened or which television news station you watched, you would almost invariably see news related to Michael Jackson's Weibo buzz. It was impossible not to know about it.
The direct consequence was that at the company's internal celebration a few days later, Weibo's president, Mark Zuckerberg, excitedly reported to Chairwoman Ms. Versace that Michael Jackson's solo participation had brought over 12 million new users to Weibo in just one week. All of these were live registered real user accounts, with no bot accounts, increasing Weibo's user base by one-third in a single week, a truly terrifying extent.
Those 12 million new users alone were enough to make the 10 million US dollars investment worthwhile. After all, if you told network companies in the future that your stable customer acquisition cost could be around 6 yuan per person, meaning it cost only 6 yuan to acquire a live user, these network companies would likely cry tears of joy and beg you to help them acquire customers.
It's important to remember that in 2020, according to publicly available data, the average customer acquisition cost for network companies had reached 35 yuan per person. This meant that to acquire a user through marketing efforts, whether online or offline, an average of 35 yuan in marketing expenses was needed to gain one user.
Therefore, the revenue from Weibo alone had more than recouped the 10 million US dollars.
But that wasn't all. Upon signing the contract, Jiangnan Group obtained the operational rights to Michael Jackson's Weibo account for a full year, allowing them to use it to post various messages.
Of course, the agreement had its constraints: the account could not post any negative news, all content had to be approved by Jackson's official team, and the account could not be used to advertise other products unrelated to Jiangnan Group's offerings. However, this was still an unimaginably significant benefit.
This was equivalent to acquiring the online marketing rights of the global superstar Michael Jackson for the next year. Honestly, even waiting another five years, Michael Jackson's team would not have done something so outlandish. It wasn't that they wouldn't sell, but they certainly wouldn't sell for just 10 million dollars; it would have cost at least 100 million, otherwise, it would have been a colossal loss.
However, because it was the nascent stage of social media, no one knew how much profit a Weibo account could generate, so it was sold for 10 million dollars. In fact, Michael Jackson's team had no concept of selling online marketing rights; they viewed it as merely an added bonus to cooperate with a company for promotion, similar to how a celebrity might post a status update about using a product while endorsing it, it was just a supplementary promotional activity, with no consideration for its intrinsic value.
If this right had been acquired by a company other than Jiangnan Group, even if the cooperation agreement explicitly prohibited promoting other companies' products, such rules clearly couldn't thwart human ingenuity; they would have found ways to bypass the agreement's restrictions.
However, it was fortunate that Jiangnan Group acquired it. They disdained engaging in such trivial matters. For the next month, they maintained a posting schedule of three times a day, releasing various content.
This included some daily life selfies of Michael Jackson, short videos from his Neverland Ranch, or some rare life videos. Essentially, they operated Michael Jackson's account following the most mature model of future social media engagement.
Ultimately, Michael Jackson's follower count surpassed 60 million. Almost every Michael Jackson fan with a home computer had become a Weibo user, and their daily activity consisted of commenting on their idol's various posts.
Any post by Michael Jackson could garner millions of comments and shares, making him the most terrifyingly popular Weibo influencer.
It wasn't until a month prior that Michael Jackson posted that image of his game score, along with the provocative statement, "Who else?"
To be fair, when this post was first released, it baffled many fans, as they had no idea what it was or what it meant.
Fortunately, enthusiastic fans quickly began explaining in the comment section, stating that based on the game screenshot, it appeared to be from "Bastard Bird," a niche game on the popular oo mobile game platform, and the score shown was the game's completion score.
It was also possible to upload completion scores directly to the game's leaderboards through the oo game platform. Upon checking the records for "Bastard Bird," the top-ranked player indeed had a score of 107, and their username was "Bigboy," which was the title of Michael Jackson's first released album.
Thus, this helpful fan's comment was immediately ranked first in popularity, and subsequently, it was pushed to the top of Weibo's rankings. All of Michael Jackson's fans learned that their idol was playing a game called "Bastard Bird."
Instantly, all the fans were abuzz.
As fans of celebrities, their favorite activity was to empathize with their idols. Whatever clothes their idol wore, they would get the same set.
Wherever their idol went, they would go and check in.
Whatever their idol ate, they absolutely had to eat abundantly.
While this segment of fans might not be numerous, perhaps less than 1%, when encountering a world-class superstar like Michael Jackson, even 1% of his 60 million total followers amounted to a staggering 600,000 people.
However, the aforementioned "same outfit," "same travel," and "same snacks" required significant costs, particularly in terms of time and space. After all, one couldn't spend a huge amount of money traveling to another city or even country to eat at the same restaurant or visit the same attractions as their idol.
But picking up a phone and playing a game that their idol played was incredibly simple; all you needed was a phone!
Especially seeing their idol so ostentatiously flaunting his score of 107, their impulse became even more uncontrollable. If they could surpass their idol's score, wouldn't that attract their idol's attention?
Of course, for a true fan, surpassing their idol was absolutely forbidden. Therefore, even if they could achieve a score of 108, they would never do so.
They could only reach a score of 106, then crash into a tree on the next level, staying as close as possible to their idol, gazing upon the god of their hearts.
Oh, how great they were!
So, the question arises, how could one play this game?