Chapter 365: Is It Really That Ridiculous?
So this is actually a good thing?
Young John Morgan really couldn’t figure out how this could be a good thing.
“Mr. Morgan, I’ve already learned the whole story, and this is indeed a good thing. Doesn’t it give you the perfect reason to ask for money from someone?”
Grov George continued to explain: “This matter is easy to explain. Just say you got sponsorship from Xiaomi, right?
This Chinese Company has a history of sponsoring aerospace, and in the past, they bought authorization from Armstrong through the Purdue University committee. So what’s wrong with sponsoring General Aerospace now?
Moreover, this doesn’t violate the Wolf Amendment at all.
Even if someone wants to make trouble and sue, I believe you can win.”
Young John Morgan thought to himself, yeah, since it happened, just admit the sponsorship openly.
Neither of them considered whether Xiaomi would agree to this.
In the former’s view, would a Chinese Company dare to refuse?
In the latter’s view, the Morgan family has deep interests in China. Is it okay to casually find someone to pressure on this matter?
From this perspective, it really is a good thing. It’s like getting an extra target for extortion out of thin air.
Young John Morgan had to sigh that Grov, this grandson, is a bit greedy, but when it comes to handling things, he really has solutions.
However, this is also covering for himself, covering up the fact that the VIPER Lunar Rover has been just PPT from beginning to end.
Now, the Xiaomi LOGO issue has been resolved, but a new worry appeared in Young John Morgan’s mind, and this worry is even harder to solve.
That is, exactly which link went wrong to cause such a low-level bug, and in the future, what to do, what modifications to make to the process to avoid similar low-level mistakes in the future?
Aerospace is an industry with very high requirements. Although SpaceX has lowered the threshold for spectacle, it’s no longer the grand and lofty image in past promotions, but images of screwing, welding, and stainless steel.
But in reality, whether it’s technical requirements, precision in production and manufacturing, or the rigorousness of the engineer team, all have very high demands.
Now, Young John Morgan doubts whether his team can really handle it. Will there really be no problems?
“Will it be like some people say, that doing manufacturing in America is just asking for trouble?” For the first time, Young John Morgan doubted whether his huge effort in starting General Aerospace was a wrong choice.
“We have noticed that in the recent live broadcast of the America moon landing mission, the image of our company’s brand LOGO appeared, which has attracted attention and doubt from some domestic netizens, and has even been misunderstood as our company sponsoring the moon landing project.
We deeply regret this and attach great importance to the public’s concerns.
Here, we solemnly state as follows:
Our company has never sponsored, participated in, or supported the moon landing project in any form. The appearance of this LOGO is purely an accident, unrelated to our company. We have not provided any funds, technology, or product support to the project, nor signed any cooperation agreement with it. This is completely not our company’s proactive behavior or business decision”
“Lei Zong, the announcement has been sent out.” Xu Fei said in a low voice.
Lei Jun opened his mobile phone, checked Weibo, and nodded: “Good.”
As long as it’s clarified, we really didn’t do it, so clarify openly!
Rather than hanging unclear on the hot search and being wildly led by competitors, it’s better to clarify ourselves, because we really didn’t do it.
Avoid all the guessing.
Again, saying Xiaomi secretly sponsored General Aerospace, wanting to build reputation overseas without causing backlash from China netizens, so keeping it secret.
Simplified Chinese netizens’ imagination is still too rich; even guesses like keeping it secret came up.
I don’t know where the water army came from, maybe competitors, maybe hidden arrows. Anyway, it made Xiaomi very passive, especially right now when Xiaomi SU7 is about to launch. Lei Jun urged the marketing department below to quickly issue an announcement to clarify.
“Hello, Mr. Anmon? What? Hoping we can sponsor General Aerospace.”
Lei Jun was dumbfounded. The announcement was just sent out, and now a call from Qualcomm’s current CEO Anmon, acting as a lobbyist for Young John Morgan, trying to convince him to sponsor General Aerospace.
“Yes, dear Lei, you have a tradition of sponsoring commercial aerospace in the past. General Aerospace’s price is very reasonable, their asking price is low, all thanks to my face.” Anmon’s tone on the phone was gentle but full of implication.
“Thanks to my face,” in English context, generally wouldn’t be phrased this way. It’s obviously, agree because of my face.
“But.” Lei Jun wanted to retort.
Anmon said: “Dear Lei, this time it’s me convincing you. If I can’t convince you, next time it will be Goldman Sachs’ CEO, and after that maybe someone from China. Anyway, you should fully believe in the Morgan family’s determination and will to settle this matter.
Or, if you want to be like Huawei and do everything yourself, that’s fine too.”
Xiaomi is important to Qualcomm, but Qualcomm is even more important to Xiaomi, after all, for high-end mobile phone chips, there are only Qualcomm and MediaTek as manufacturers, while there are OV, Mi, and Honor four mobile phone manufacturers that can absorb Qualcomm’s production capacity.
This is also the principle of who holds the initiative in negotiations.
After thinking for a moment, Lei Jun said: “Good, I understand. I will sponsor General Aerospace.”
This call also made Lei Jun understand what was going on. In short, it’s General’s own mistake, and now they need him to take responsibility.
Letting him take responsibility is one thing, but choosing this timing, after the clarification announcement is out, now they want him to eat the announcement and pay out of pocket.
Slapping his own face and paying out of pocket, what kind of thing is this! Lei Jun was full of indignation, and his determination to develop Xiaomi’s own chips grew stronger.
If it weren’t for the failure of Surge S2, the high-end chip path hitting a snag, would I be so passive?
“Xu Fei, come to my office quickly, now immediately delete the clarification announcement.”
“Yes, you didn’t hear wrong, delete it quickly!”
When Xu Fei arrived at the office, she saw Lei Jun with a very ugly expression, the whole office in super low pressure. Xu Fei felt like she couldn’t breathe here.
She walked into the office without daring to speak or ask what happened, afraid of touching Lei Zong’s bad mood at this time.
“It’s like this, quickly formulate an emergency PR strategy. The main point is to explain that we actually sponsored General Aerospace’s Lunar Rover, so Xiaomi’s LOGO appeared.”
Xu Fei’s brain was spinning wildly, roughly understanding what happened. Turns out we really sponsored General Aerospace’s moon landing before, but Lei Zong had just negotiated it, and the secrecy work was done too well, not unworthy of Lei Zong.
“Lei Zong, high, really high!” Xu Fei gave a thumbs up and said, “Your set of promotion strategy really maximizes the marketing effect from the moon landing! Too high!”
Now it was Lei Jun’s turn to be confused, but he remained calm on the surface, wanting to hear how Xu Fei would continue to make it up.
“Lei Zong, because of Apollo Technology’s moon landing, everyone’s threshold for aerospace has been raised. If it’s just simple sponsorship of a moon landing project, the promotional effect becomes more and more limited.
But like now, Xiaomi’s LOGO suddenly appearing instantly exploded public opinion.
Then first clarifying, and then saying we actually sponsored, can further expand the promotion. Competitors will proactively use their precious promotion resources to help us promote.
This isn’t twice the result with half the effort; it’s spending 1 point of kung fu for 10 points of effect.
Lei Zong, as for the explanation, it’s easy to explain. Just push the responsibility to me, say you were in seclusion fully focused on Xiaomi’s car manufacturing business, didn’t even look at your mobile phone, completely unaware of this.
Then, the reason for issuing the clarification announcement was my own initiative.
You then say yourself that your work has shortcomings, because you were busy with car manufacturing, to bring Mi Fans friends a perfect car with a good start, so you even forgot to tell the marketing department partners about sponsoring General Aerospace’s Lunar Rover such a big project.
After we issued the clarification announcement, America’s Young John Morgan called, and that’s when you found out what happened.
Finally, we get Mi-series KOLs to help whitewash with Xiaomi’s clever marketing strategy as the reason, and this matter is over, right?
At the same time, highlight two key points: You are fully focused on car manufacturing, and Xiaomi’s marketing strategy takes an unconventional approach with invincible effect.
At least since General Aerospace’s moon landing, Xiaomi has been hanging on the hot search, this is real effect.
As for our concern about sponsoring an America company, promote it as pure business behavior, and highlight that America’s moon landing uses China technology. We sponsored Apollo Technology’s moon landing in the past, so this time we continue to sponsor the America company’s moon landing that uses Apollo Technology technology.”
Although Xu Fei’s acting is clumsy, with famous scenes like “we do business not to make money, making mobile phones is to not make money and sell to everyone.”
But her brain turns fast, coming up with nearly perfect solutions on the spot, and with Mi-series KOLs, this strategy is more than enough, not unworthy of Xiaomi’s Chief Marketing Officer.
After thinking for a moment, Lei Jun said: “Good, let’s do it this way. I add one thing, shoot a Douyin for me, I’ll personally explain this matter.”
At the same time, Lin Ran and Li Xiaoman, who knew the whole story from beginning to end, were watching Lei Jun on the computer screen explaining the whole story.
Li Xiaoman murmured: “Ah Ran, is it really this outrageous? From start to finish, no one from General Aerospace or NASA discovered the problem?”
Lin Ran took a deep breath: “Of course, just this outrageous.
In past history, after the moon landing was completed, especially after the Soviet Union disintegrated, NASA had similar errors constantly, you’ve always known about the Hubble Telescope, right.
After it was launched, global scientists were dumbfounded because the photos were very blurry. Later they found the lens had a problem, the shape was completely wrong, and NASA’s countless quality inspection processes didn’t discover the problem.”
