Top of the big era

After arriving in London, Zhou Buqi first went to Ziweixing Digital Media to listen to the business report and held another meeting.

Mainly football matters.

Ziweixing Digital Media is going to create a football award to recognize outstanding players every year.

The two most important football awards in the world are the "FIFA Player of the Year", known domestically as the World Player of the Year, which is more entertaining; the other is the "Golden Ball" selected by "France L'Equipe", known domestically as As European Footballer of the Year, he is more professional.

The two awards were merged in 2010.

It became the "FIFA Ballon d'Or".

The intention is to make this award the highest football award with both market effect and professional attributes.

Then it fell apart.

There have been huge controversies for several years.

The core business of Ziweixing Digital Media is to revolve around the football industry, so it is necessary to create an influential football award.

Now that the market has changed, opportunities have emerged.

This meeting is mainly to discuss how to design this award.

The name is easy to deal with.

For market and brand reasons, elements of the name "Ziweixing" must be used.

In fact, this award is used to market the company's brand.

The English name of "Ziweixing" is "EmperorStar", which is a coherent combination of words and a semi-original English word.

This is too simple.

Just break this compound word apart and use it directly.

It's called "The_Emperor_Star".

In English, Emperor means "emperor" and Star means "star".

In football, it is the annual "Emperor Star" award, or it can be called the "Annual Football Emperor" award.

Enough power and domineering.

From the Chinese context, the feeling of "Emperor Star" seems to be no more than that of "FIFA Golden Globe Award"; but in the English world, the impact is much stronger.

One is "Caesar" and the other is "Emperor". These two words are almost universal in alphabetical languages, and they are written in similar ways. The main thing is that these two words are shocking enough.

The characters with such titles were all those who once dominated the world.

Now football players also have the opportunity to fight for it, and it will be easy to operate in terms of marketing and brand building.

There are even longer-term plans.

Now it’s time to award the men’s football team.

If this football award is really implemented in the future, we can also launch an annual award "The_Queen_Star" to be awarded to female football players.

However, there are some differences in the selection plan for the awards.

Zhou Buqi's point of view is to focus on differentiation.

The selection of "FIFA Footballer" relies on votes from coaches and team captains around the world, and the "Golden Ball Award" relies on votes from world-renowned football media.

There's no point in being like them anymore.

"FIFA's best player is still L'Equipe's Ballon d'Or. Every year after the selection, there will be a lot of controversy. After the two awards are merged, there will be even more controversy. A very important reason is this Both awards are selected subjectively." Zhou Buqi gave his own understanding, "The soul of the Internet is subversion, which is to do something different from others. Their selection is subjective, but we don't!"

“Use objective data?”

Vice President of Public Affairs David Dunn is the primary architect of this award.

Zhou Buqi said: "Yes, Ziweixing Digital Media is an Internet company. What we are best at is the processing and analysis of data. By comparing the pros and cons of various data, we can determine which player is better. The data is real It's the greatest justice to leave it there for everyone to see."

David Dunn said slowly: "Use data to quantify capabilities."

Zhou Buqi smiled and said: "We have a player database, and we will record the data of many players."

Cole King, the Internet-born vice president in charge of marketing, said with a smile: "Yes, this data should be packaged and turned into a product to be launched on the market. There are still many old-school coaches in football who use data. I don’t agree too much. Many new-school coaches will agree, but there are more than a dozen data service providers in the market, and they may not buy our data services.”

When David Dunn heard this, his face darkened.

I feel that these Internet people are going too far.

He wants to win this award because he wants to make some contributions to football and out of his love and belief in football.

As a result, it got into the mouths of some people and turned into a business.

I want to promote the "Emperor Star" award as a representative product of Ziweixing Digital Media Data Services, so as to expand the market and cooperate with more teams, media and sports organizations to develop data service-related products. Sale.

Zhou Buqi did not have those obsessions and said with a smile: "Not to mention the business aspect, from the perspective of this award itself, using data analysis as a reference will be fairer and more convincing. Other awards Voting has a lot of human factors. Take the voting for World Footballer. Do you know how our country does it? Normally, the head coach and captain of the national team vote, but FIFA assigns tasks to the football association. In, a department clerk just checked the box and turned it in. How is this fair? There are many fringe countries that don’t even have a professional football team, and they have no understanding of football at all, even if they vote They only rely on the flow of impressions and rely on hot news to vote. How can such an award selection be fair?"

Cole King immediately had a new idea, "In the future, our platform, as well as some other social media, should extensively report the inside story and various unfairness of the 'FIFA Golden Globe Awards' to promote The fans are angry and dissatisfied. Then, in the second half of the year, we will launch the 'Emperor Star' award to compete head-on with the 2013 'FIFA Ballon d'Or' to see who is more fair."

CEO Douglas Merrill agrees, "Well, our awards must be completely open and transparent, and the relevant data must be clearly listed, allowing outsiders to supervise and evaluate to ensure our fairness."

This smacks of business conspiracy.

Whether it is FIFA or the French newspaper L'Equipe, if they want to engage in a scheming market confrontation with Internet giants like Ziweixing Digital Media, they will just hit the stone with an egg.

In the past few years, no commercial organization has been able to discover the value contained in the product "Football Prize".

Even if there are other competitors, they are all on a small scale.

This makes the football awards of FIFA and "L'Equipe" more and more famous and authoritative.

But things are different now.

Ziweixing Digital Media rushed in with the Internet!

The "Emperor Star" award is not only the establishment of the "Ziweixing" brand in the football industry, but also has more product value, just like Cole King said just now.

Data football will be the most important future development direction in the football industry.

As a data service provider, Ziweixing Digital Media needs a representative product to prove its strength to football clubs, teams, media and institutions around the world.

"Emperor Star" will say the best advertising!

Once there is a real profit motive, competition will no longer be on the same level.

How do FIFA and L’Equipe understand the principles of marketing and advertising? The quality of a product is very good, but if the advertising is not good, the sales volume will not be good; the quality of a product is very poor, but if the marketing is good, the supply will exceed the demand in the market.

Many senior executives recognized Boss Zhou's idea of ​​judging awards through objective standards of data analysis, and he made the decision, "Okay, that's it! Our award has just started, and there is no need to cover it in the early stage. There are too many, mainly the five major leagues, plus the Champions League, European Cup, and World Cup, and that’s almost enough.”

David Dunn said very cautiously: "I'm afraid that the data can be deceptive. If there is a player with very good statistics, but his level is very low and he has no championship..."

Zhou Buqi said: "If the data is good but the level is low, then it must be that the competition level is not good, or the team attributes are not good. It must be weighted. For example, if he wins the league championship, then his game data in all leagues can have 10% If you win the Champions League, all the data in the Champions League games will be weighted by 20%; if you win the World Cup, all the data in the World Cup games will be weighted by 50%... Well, 50% weighting is too little, 500 % is almost the same. Scoring 5 goals in the World Cup is equivalent to scoring 25 goals in the five major leagues... Anyway, you organize a team to formulate the specific standards. We are an Internet company. If we can't even play with data, then It’s so embarrassing.”

Merrill said: "You can organize a team of about 10 people to do this, find all the relevant data in the past 10 years, and then use the best-performing players that year as a reference to formulate this standard. Look at what data is going to be counted and how different games are weighted.”

Zhou Buqi waved his hand, "Okay, it's settled then! We have to do it as soon as possible! Well... when will this year's FIFA Golden Globe Awards be presented?"

David Dunn said: "October or November."

Zhou Buqi nodded, "Our award time was also chosen at that stage. After the FIFA Golden Globe Award was scolded by the outside world and caused huge doubts, we will award an objective and fair award that satisfies all parties." "

David Dunn asked: “What if this year’s awards were fair and less controversial?”

Zhou Buqi said calmly: "The degree of controversy does not depend on whether the award is fair or not. If there is no controversy, you can create controversy."

"ah?"

David Dunn was startled.

Zhou Buqi continued: "You can spend more money and invite more famous football players to come to the town. It would be best to make it a grand event like the Oscars in Hollywood. Once done, maybe some TV stations will be willing to broadcast it in the future. You can also earn a broadcast fee.”