Encountering obstacles and difficulties, Takayuki always prefers to take some action rather than sit and wait for the situation to improve, at least do something. Unless he has already anticipated that some obstacles and difficulties will gradually improve with time.
For the phenomenon of Pokémon seemingly not adapting well to this world, he needs to find out the reasons.
There are indeed attractive aspects of Pokémon itself, but during the first generation of Pokémon, there was indeed a period of decline, which was later salvaged through various marketing methods.
However, Takayuki has already made various marketing efforts in advance, such as early planning for the anime, and releasing more advertisements in advance, but the effect is not very good.
He decides to observe more closely.
"Takayuki, the Pokémon TV ratings fluctuate around 17%, which is above the bottom line. Our television station won't easily cut back because of this, but if there are better results, it would be easier for me to be accountable to our shareholders. Will the animation and game crossover you mentioned really work in effectively increasing both audiences?" In a phone call, Kubo, a subordinate of the production department, is reporting the anime's viewership to Takayuki.
"It will help, but the premise is that it must be made well enough." Takayuki replied.
The subordinate quickly assured, "You can rest assured, Takayuki. Our production department has allocated dedicated manpower to produce this animation. Didn't we have a successful collaboration with Dragon Quest before?"
Takayuki answered, "I'm not worried about that, but there's no rush. You can wait patiently for now."
Takayuki reassured the manager of the television production department, then began to contemplate what to do next.
Should he conduct some marketing activities related to the hidden Pokémon Dream in advance?
Takayuki intends to let the players discover the Dream on their own.
But that kind of thing is somewhat uncertain.
There is currently no relevant information on the internet or other public media platforms, and according to his deliberate setting at the time, the Dream has not been discovered by players.
Directly disclosing the hidden message of the Dream might indeed stimulate some players' interest in collecting, but Takayuki believes that while this may increase sales, the effect will not be significant.
Takayuki once again reviewed the sales data and online surveys, trying to find any breakthroughs.
But after searching for a long time, there were still no results.
Takayuki had no choice but to continue to invest in advertising, and then reassure the employees so that they could focus on developing the next game.
The previous successes seem to have made the employees somewhat restless, making them feel that the first-party games they developed always had good sales in the first week.
But this time, it was clearly below expectations, and they appeared slightly demoralized.
However, Takayuki has always remained calm and has not had much reaction to the sales being lower than expected.
Poor game sales are actually quite common.
In the film industry, for example, a film company often relies on several blockbuster films to recover funds and then fill the gaps left by several unsuccessful TV dramas.
What kind of games will be successful is still unclear to many game companies, and it requires practical experience. Players are also not easy to please; without producing enough quality games, they are difficult to satisfy.
The success of Pokémon in the past life was somewhat accidental. If one relies solely on this kind of accident, it would be too passive. One must actively solve problems and utilize all successful marketing experiences from the past life.
Takayuki took out paper and pen and began to recall the successful promotional methods from his past life.
"Promotion through live streamers? Not yet, the internet in this world has just started to flourish, and live streaming bandwidth is not sufficient. Let's wait another ten years at least."
"Product authorization cross-promotion? This can be done, let's note it down."
"Community operation for the game, creating an excellent community discussion ecosystem to increase player stickiness. Hmm, this seems feasible too, but there aren't many kids online, so let's put it as an alternative for now."
"Selecting lucky kids from the children's group, making them opinion leaders, making them the first to have a sufficient number of Pokémon, becoming the most popular kids, and then expanding influence."
...
Takayuki wrote down one idea after another, occasionally marking some of them with asterisks, preparing to implement them according to this plan. Some ideas were temporarily set aside.
Some of the current promotion methods may not be useful for the time being, but it does not mean they will not be useful in the future.
For example, promoting through live streamers will definitely be useful once the live streaming industry becomes popular.
After roughly completing a long list of promotion plans, Takayuki called in Yasunari Natsume.
"President, did you call for me?"
Yasunari Natsume has been quite busy recently, mainly because of Pokémon's marketing affairs.
However, the final feedback obtained was not particularly enthusiastic, which he also found somewhat regrettable. Clearly, many efforts had been made, but there were no good results, and he was also troubled by it.
Takayuki nodded and then handed over the plan he had written, saying, "Take a look at this. If you think there's no problem, arrange according to what's written here. If there's a shortage of funds, let me know. We can afford to allocate another 10 or 20 billion yen for promotion."
Now Takayuki is considered rich and generous. Selling four or five hundred thousand copies of a game will bring in at least 1 or 2 billion in profit. And this doesn't even include the share from third-party manufacturers. In fact, he has gradually surpassed the money earned from developing games.
Yasunari Natsume, puzzled, took the plan, which detailed various marketing methods and details. Basically, it's just a matter of following the plan without having to think too much.
"Oh, I forgot one thing."
At this moment, Takayuki remembered something and quickly picked up a pen to write on a piece of paper.
Yasunari Natsume patiently read through all the content on the plan, becoming more and more amazed.
The cost of this set of marketing would be quite high, but if executed according to this plan, it would probably be the pinnacle of marketing strategies.
Wait a minute, President, how do you know so much? Did you study it specifically before?
He glanced at Takayuki strangely, and just as Takayuki finished writing the plan, he handed another new plan to Yasunari Natsume.
"This one should also be arranged as soon as possible. If there's a shortage of funds, let me know. Now the thing we least lack is money."
In the future, there will be huge investments in electronic games, but the money is just sitting idle now. He wants to have enough reserve funds, but also understands the effect of making money flow, so he just needs to ensure that the reserve funds are within a certain range.