Original title: the Yuanzhu Forest you like to drink is originally made by the game boss.
Editor's note: this article comes from the competition, written by Gui Zhiwei, reproduced by authorization of Venture State.
The new consumer empire of the head of the dispute of Kings
"0 sugar, 0 calories, 0 fat", if you have not drunk Yuanzhu Forest, you will probably be influenced by your friends Amway.
A few days ago, 36Kr Holdings reported that Yuanyu Forest is about to complete a new round of financing, with a post-investment valuation of about $2 billion. It also means that Yuanju Forest may break the online celebrity drink record that Xi Tea used eight years to create a valuation of 16 billion in four years.
However, few people know that the founder of Yuanyuan Forest, which is now covered with elevators and TV screens, was Tang Binsen, the founder of the "Happy Farm" food-stealing empire and the dispute between "wise stars" and "kings" before mobile games in SLG.
Kaifu Lee, founder and CEO of Innovation Factory, once said: "he is the most potential entrepreneur I have ever seen. He may be the next Ma Huateng." It can be seen that Kaifu Lee thinks highly of Tang Binsen.
Nowadays, game bosses have switched to the business of online celebrity drinks and are in the forefront of new consumer areas with the posture of a dark horse. This made onlookers curious about Tang Binson himself.
In this article, the core competition will start from Tang Binsen's past resume to explore the mysterious veil of the game boss behind Yuanyuan Forest.
Have no choice but to play games and start the era of food theft by the whole people
"No matter how good you are, your industry is not good, your base probability is not good, you are an idiot, keep in mind." Tang Binsen, who has paid the tuition fee for starting a business for three years, laments.
Dating back to 2005, the 22-year-old Tang Binsen won the prize of the international programming competition and started the campus business process with a bonus of 250000 yuan. At that time, he led the team to do Internet psychological testing products, once ranked first in the field.
Due to the lack of understanding of the business model and environment, the company has been messing with its application for two years. By the end of 2007, the company had not been paid for eight months, and Mr. Tang was almost desperate.
"there was really nothing we could do. We were so poor that we tried the game, but fortunately there was nothing we could do about it, otherwise we would really have to die in this psychological testing industry." This is the direct opportunity for Tang Binsen to enter the game industry.
In 2008, Zhiming Xintong, founded by Tang Binsen, won the first place with a "character signature" in the "Creative programming" contest held by Renren Inc, which attracted the attention of Thousand Oak Group.
At that time, at a time when Cheng Binghao's Kaixin Network was in love with QianOak Kaixin, QianOak urgently needed a social game to retain users who mistakenly hit and registered because of the domain name, and then drained it to the campus network.
With the high stickiness of "Happy Farm" growing and stealing vegetables, Thousand Oak, which opened the social + game business model, encountered the original developer of "Happy Farm" to "timely" drop the chain in five minutes. And this happens to give Tang Binsen a chance to show his skills-"Happy Peasant" came out.
Later, Thousand Oak Kaixin's data were incorporated into the school / Renren Inc, and "Happy Farmer" was renamed "Happy Farm" (the following "Happy Farm" is Tang Binson version).
However, Tang Binsen did not know at that time that "Happy Farm" would once become the web page that dominated the ups and downs of the Internet and the earliest national game.
In 2009, the number of users of "Happy Farm" on campus just exceeded 1 million. After entering the overseas market, it increased tenfold and gained 15 million global users. This lets Tang Binsen taste the sweetness of going out to sea, and also leads the focus of the development of Zhi Xingtong game business overseas.
According to media reports at that time, the heat wave of "people stealing food" covered more than 20 countries around the world and affected 500 million people overseas. It is also one of the most influential Chinese sea games to date.
Since then, Tang Binsen has been hanging all the way:
In 2012, Zhiming Xintong earned 600 million yuan in revenue and 76 million in net profit from the popular game "Imperial War" and received investment from Tencent and Innovation works.
In 2014, the dispute among Kings, an online mobile game, ranked first among Chinese mobile games in terms of overseas income. In the same year, Chinese media acquired Zhixingtong at a price of 2.66 billion.
In 2015, "the dispute of Kings" had revenue of 2.4 billion yuan.
In 2016, Zhi Xingtong ranked 16th among APP Annie2015's top 50 issuers, ranking third among Chinese companies after Tencent and NetEase, Inc. In the same year, Zhi Ming Xintong listed a new third board.
"under a major trend, we can only follow the trend, and no one can change it." At that time, Tang Binsen, who had "really no way", opened up the brilliance that belonged to Zhi Xingtong all the way.
It is worth mentioning that up to now, the COK category created by "the dispute of Kings" is still one of the important reference objects for major SLG game manufacturers.
Create SLG-COK category and lead the trend of going abroad
In 2020, with the exception of the two gold mines of Chicken Kitchen and MOBA, SLG will be the most profitable game.
With the outbreak of "disputes among Kings" around the world, many game manufacturers have been attracted to go out to sea, and many popular SLG mobile games have emerged, such as "Kingdom era" and "Universal Awakening". The domestic market "leading the shores of the Earth" and "the Chronicles of the three Kingdoms: strategic Edition" have also occupied the top 10 of the game bestseller list for a long time.
In 2014, "the dispute of Kings", developed and released by Zhi Xingtong, was launched around the world, and the game is fully interoperable in GooglePlay, IOSStore and PC.
The work has been ranked in the top five in 50 countries and in the top 10 in 80 countries. It ranks in all the top ten in the United States and other European and American regions, South Korea and other Asian regions, Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries, as well as Taiwan.
As a result, Zhi Xingtong "the dispute of Kings" created the category of SLG-COK mobile games.
From 2014 to July 2016, "disputes among Kings" continued to contribute to flowing income, according to the share transfer book of Zhiming Xintong. In the first half of 2016, the company contributed 2.219 billion yuan in revenue, accounting for 79.79%, making it the absolute main revenue force.
With the good performance of "the dispute of Kings", Zhi Xingtong also listed the new third board in 2016. According to the notice of the wisdom star, the total revenue of the work was nearly 7 billion yuan at that time.
"under a major trend, we can only follow the trend, and no one can change it." Tang Binsen's famous remark of introspection at the beginning also seems to be reflected in the entire game market.
2017 is a year for Chinese mobile games to actively go out to sea and continue to explore overseas markets. Zhiming Xintong and Cheetah Mobile Inc's "dispute among Kings" and "Don't step on White blocks 2" led last year's overseas revenue and downloads TOP30 rankings, according to Sensor Tower.
At the same time, there are 25 works from Chinese companies in the overseas revenue TOP30 list, while the Chinese mobile games downloaded by TOP30 come from 16 domestic manufacturers.
It is worth mentioning that according to the data of Sensor Tower and Great Wall Securities, there are about 7 SLG mobile games in the top 15 list of China's overseas mobile games revenue from 2017 to May 2020.
In terms of market share, China's strategic mobile games accounted for more than 76% of the world in 2019, while the United States, Japan and South Korea accounted for about 13.03%, 1.77% and 13.75%, respectively.
To put it simply, Chinese manufacturers split the cake of SLG or strategic mobile games into about 3 candies and 4 games.
Recently, the "Universal Awakening" national service, known as the first SLG mobile game in the world, has been tested on September 23, which has attracted a lot of attention in the industry. Before that, Lilith, the publisher, made a lot of money in overseas markets.
Combing through the timeline of mobile games in SLG, it is not difficult to find that Zhi Xingtong's "disputes among Kings" not only created the SLG-COK category, but also led the trend of mobile games in SLG. Under the leadership of Qianlang Zhi Xingtong, IGG, FunPlus, Lilis, Youta Network, NetEase, Inc, BABA, Tencent and other "Houlang" have also pushed SLG, a minority category of mobile games, into the mainstream.
But looking back, we found that Tang Binsen, who only played games with "no way", had quietly faded away from the game industry. Instead of opening a "farm" or doing SLG, he went to sell Yuanyuan Forest. (starting from June 11, 2020, Tang Binsen officially left Zhi Xingtong)
Although it is not the original "taste", it is still a familiar "recipe".
A game boss who loves marketing.
Tang Binsen's brilliant achievements in Yuanzhu Forest are closely related to his vision and mind in product marketing and positioning. And this is the same as his previous strategy in the game.
"when we generate 2 billion revenue, we dare to spend 1.8 billion on advertising and brand exposure in central cities such as New York, London and Moscow." Tang Binsen believes that he can achieve excellent results in the game field, mainly due to this "high-to-low" style of play.
Therefore, it is not difficult to understand why Yuanqi Forest takes the path of large-scale and high-profile marketing.
From online to offline, the figure of Yuanyu Forest frequently appears in the media and platforms that young people like to browse, such as major variety shows, online celebrities live streaming goods, Little Red Book Weibo Corp and so on.
For example, Yuanyu Forest has successively sponsored popular variety shows such as "our Band" and "Sports Bar Youth"; selected Zhang Yuqi from "my Sister through the Wind and waves" as brand promotion ambassador; and selected head anchors such as Li Jiaqi, Weiya, and Luo Yung-hao to promote carrying goods, even elevator commercials.
Compared with the dispute of Kings, at that time, the work produced a large number of CG advertisements in North America, and South Korea invited Hani, a member of EXID, to promote it. After returning home, it joined forces with XIAOMI and carried out a large-scale advertising campaign in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
It was in this way of bombing that "the dispute of Kings" and Yuanju Forest left a deep impression on people.
In the positioning of Yuanyuan forest products, Tang Binsen also adopted the strategic thinking of creating games.
For a long time, Yuanju Forest has been controversial by the "pseudo-Japanese system". From the early "burning tea" to the current fire of "Yuanyu Forest", it is more ingenious in the product concept and packaging. The concept of "0 sugar, 0 calories, 0 fat" does not want to be fat + the packaging features of skin-changing Japanese products, which not only grabs people's attention, but also helps it to open up the market for healthy drinks.
This product positioning strategy of killing two birds with one stone can be seen in Tang Binsen's game career. For example, "Happy Peasant" borrows a lot from the five-minute "Happy Farm" in art, and "the dispute of Kings" is based on Supercell "Clash of Clans", Kabam's "Hobbit" and MachineZone "Gameof War".
In addition, in August 2015, XIAOMI Mutual Entertainment announced that it had won the exclusive agency of "dispute among Kings" on the domestic Android platform, and Lei Jun personally shouted for it. Slogans such as "Wang, I'll take you home" and "Chinese team to take part in the war" are no less than the appeal of "0 sugar, 0 card, 0 fat" to the younger generation.
Generally speaking, from games to new consumption, from "Happy Farm" to Yuanyuan Forest, Tang Binsen has made remarkable achievements in two different fields.
Perhaps what we analyze is only the tip of the iceberg of the boss's product thinking, but Tang Binson's marketing logic has never changed, only marketing technology and scene.
Using gaming marketing thinking, Tang Binsen hit precisely in the new consumer industry. I do not know the boss's next battlefield, which field will he set foot in?
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