According to Lily, Helena is a very outstanding applied mathematician and has conducted market research data analysis for large companies like General Electric and IBM.

But she is a bit introverted, not socializing, and likes to work alone, so after obtaining her Ph.D. from UCLA in June, she has never found a job she wants.

So Shen Chong gave the house, high salary, and the right to work freely, recruited her to Hong Kong, and asked her to cooperate with Fei Xiaodie to establish a market research company similar to NRG.

NRG is a private market research company that has long been unknown to the world. It was not until the Internet where information is everywhere, and it was known to the public.

NRG and the six major Hollywood film distribution companies have signed exclusive service contracts, and its telephone survey data is the standard reference document for major companies to arrange movie schedules.

When the schedule of a movie conflicts with competitors who attract the same group of audiences, the relevant film companies can see the warning information provided by NRG. By comparing the attractiveness of the movie in the core audience, predict in advance which movie will lose the competition. The lost movie will reschedule the schedule - even if the new schedule is not ideal, it is better than losing both sides.

It was because of several storms that Chen Chong learned about the existence of NRG.

In 2002, Miramax was preparing to release "The New York Gangster" and DreamWorks was preparing to release "Attack on Punishment". Both movies were starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and were ready to premiere on Christmas Day on December 25.

Then NRG issued an early warning that the main audience group of the two movies is male audience over 25 years old. In this group, the competitiveness of the two movies is almost the same.

So Jeffrey Carsonberg, the co-founder of DreamWorks, flew to New York to have breakfast with Miramax's boss Harvey Weinstein. After several fierce debates, Miramax compromised and advanced the premiere by 5 days, on December 20.

Afterwards, Katzenberg said this in an interview with The New York Times: "The premiere on the same day is not good for us... because both companies have invested a lot of money in Leonardo DiCaprio."

July 4, 2005, Independence Day is the prime time in the summer. On this day, Paramount wants to release "War Worlds", Warner Bros. wants to release "Batman Prequel", and Twentieth Century Fox wants to release "Fantastic Four".

However, according to NRG's early warning, the main audience of the three movies is teenagers under the age of 25. In this group, they are almost the same competitiveness, but because of Tom Cruise's superstar aura, "World War" will also attract a large number of female audiences.

So according to the competitiveness rankings, "World War" won the premiere rights on July 4, "Batman Prequel" was moved to June 15, and "Fantastic Four" moved to July 8, avoiding fierce competition, and the box office of the three movies was very successful.

Therefore, since the establishment of NRG in 1978, Hollywood has basically no longer seen scenes of similar blockbusters with similar themes.

The plot of Sky Thunder vs. Earth Fire, Ace vs. Ace is only suitable for novels, not for businessmen.

In addition to providing "competitive positioning" reports to help movie distribution companies avoid unnecessary conflicts, NRG also provides data analysis such as movies and music, movies and TV, movies and videotapes, movies and streaming media, etc. These data help Hollywood film companies modify industry rules and better adapt to changes in the times.

And in Hong Kong, this research is blank...

You should know that whether the content is valuable depends entirely on what kind of users it is for. A kung fu film is a feast for men in their twenties, and annoying noise for women in their fifties and sixties.

In Hollywood, film companies are very targeted and try every means to drive the main target audience to the cinema. In Hong Kong, film companies are advertising, without any purpose, just posting posters and shouting in the crowd - my movie is released, so come and see it!

Hollywood seems to be finely farming, where to plant potatoes and wheat, clearly, and then apply different fertilizers according to different seeds to maximize the harvest of fruits.

Hong Kong is like a lazy person farming, sowing a handful of seeds and pouring a pile of compost. As for what it grows, whether it grows well depends on whether God will give it to you...

Of course, this is related to the narrow and insufficient competitiveness of the Hong Kong film market. The film company is lying in the dream of the seller's market, imagining that as long as the screening is displayed, there will always be income and will not bother to do audience positioning analysis.

At the same time, Hong Kong is not as developed as the United States. Even if there is audience positioning analysis, there is no advertising medium for this group.

For example, "Chasing Girls" has a clear positioning, which is a group of young couples. However, in Hong Kong, there are no newspapers and magazines targeting this group. If you want to advertise, you have to spend a lot of money and sell newspapers and magazines with large sales. It is inefficient and wasteful.

However, it is not very useful now, which does not mean it is not very useful in the future. Shaw Brothers Jiahe can lie down and dream, but Shen Chong cannot. As his plan unfolds, there will definitely be many film companies in Hong Kong in the small place. If you don’t make arrangements in advance, you will have a market research company like NRG to coordinate schedules. The internal friction will be very serious at that time.

The Hong Kong Theater Chamber of Commerce is extremely weak and does nothing but box office statistics. Shen Chong is very dissatisfied with this. If this market research company becomes bigger and stronger, it can form an invisible alliance to replace the theater chamber of commerce, so that it can eliminate those junk film companies.

However, market research companies are not easy to do well, and they also need to cooperate with sociologists and psychologists. In this regard, Shen Chong asked Fei Xiaodie to cooperate with several universities in Hong Kong.

Fei Xiaodie was originally an accountant of the magazine. "Movie Age" cooperated with the Hong Kong Theater Chamber of Commerce to calculate and sort out the box office data of Hong Kong movies over the years, the editors were unwilling to do this job. She recommended herself to do this, which attracted Shen Chong's attention.

After a trip to Guangzhou and Taipei, Shen Chong came up with two experiences.

First: I have many talents under my own crouching tiger, hidden dragon and many others.

Second: Even successful people who are famous in their previous lives may not be reliable.

So when the investigation company was established, Shen Chong didn't bother to find the celebrities in his memory, so he simply promoted Fei Xiaodie and recruited Helena from the United States.

Market research companies will play a huge role in the future for a long time, and Shen Chong’s current main energy is how to shoot his own film debut.

Li Ka-shing is about to swallow Hutchison Whampoa, so he invested almost all of his funds in the stock market and frantically acquired Hutchison Whampoa's stocks. So throughout September, Shen Chong had no money and no money, so he could not mess with other things. He used this gap to concentrate on filming "Buried Alive".

In order to get as many aspects of the movie as possible, Chen Chong decided to do everything from leasing shooting equipment, recruiting crew members, and then post-production editing and production.

The script of "Buried Alive" was written by Chen Chong, Chen Yunwen added a lot of emotional dramas, Qiu Gangjian added a lot of connotations, and Jin Shijie, who came to Hong Kong with him, is now staying in the hotel, conceiving to add a humorous skin to these contents.

Chen Chong believed that he had no sense of humor and had no ability to participate in the script, so he went to prepare for other aspects of the movie.

The shooting venue was easy to solve, and Chen Chong went to Great Wall Film Studio directly. After the cooperation of "The Legend of the White-Haired Witch" and sharing the joys and sorrows in the mainland, it was a piece of cake to borrow a studio.

The props for "Buried Live" are also very simple, a coffin, a knife, a lighter, and a phone. These things are done in two or three days with Li Tang.

The phone is a little troublesome.

It is not difficult to be a telephone that can glow in the dark. The question is whether it is easy to be tracked by using a landline phone? If it can be tracked by an individual, the movie will lose its suspense.

For this reason, after Chen Chong returned from the mainland, he went to the Dadong Telecommunications Bureau in Hong Kong and found several telecommunications engineers for consultation.

The Dadong Telegraph Office is a British old state-owned telephone company. It was established in 1860 and has a history of hundreds of years. It is one of the major telephone communication service providers in Hong Kong.

According to the consultation, most of the telephone lines in Hong Kong are buried deep underground. If you want to track them, you can only enter the company's computer room and view the records in program-controlled digital switches. This is not difficult for professionals, but it is difficult for ordinary people to do it. Even if you want to track them, you need to authorize them first.

This answer made Chen Chong feel relieved. Since ordinary people cannot do it, things will be easy to do. They randomly fabricate high-tech illusion things such as signal interferers and set the landline in "Buried Live" that cannot be tracked. Anyway, the audience has always tolerated various high-tech things.

Then he also got an unexpected news that the Dadong Telecommunications Bureau eliminated a batch of old-fashioned door-air-separated program-controlled telephone switches last year and threw them in the warehouse to be sold as scrap.

This is a good business opportunity!

Shen Chong was tortured by long-distance telephone communications in the mainland. He made a phone call from Huangshan to Shenzhen, which took him three days.

The mainland uses old manual wiring methods. Making long-distance calls is a laborious and time-consuming physical work.

To make a long distance first, you have to register and tell the operator to which city and unit you want to call. The operator will manually answer one by one according to the registration order. If there are too many people, you have to wait for several hours. When you wait, it depends on whether the route is busy. If you are busy and cannot be connected, wait again...

Chen Chong was in Tunxi County and waited for three days, so he might as well send a telegram.

Although the door-to-air-separated program-controlled telephone switch has long been out of date, it is still a good thing for the mainland and can be used.

The profits of the telecommunications business are so abundant that even a time traveling party like Chen Chong can't help but be moved...
Chapter completed!