Starting from a Bar to Sign Internet Celebrities

Chapter 342 - 209: Can Ascend to the Pantheon! Found a Brand?

"I’ve found several traditional craft masters and am in contact with all of them now." Although Sister Hong didn’t know why her boss wanted her to find these masters, she hadn’t slacked off on the task.

Chen Jincheng nodded and instructed, "Good. Arrange for Zhu Ling to go and learn their skills from these craft masters. For now, just have her stream as usual. Let her settle in and build a foundation!"

Chen Jincheng had long ago planned for Zhu Ling to follow the path of the other world’s Li Ziqi.

Her persona was well-suited for transitioning to this track. A major factor was her Bai Yueguang aura, which was an added bonus. Although it was different from Li Ziqi’s aura, they both had a way of making people feel at ease.

However, to follow Li Ziqi’s path, you needed to have real skills. For every craft in her videos, Li Ziqi had personally gone to learn it until she was proficient.

If you don’t actually learn and practice, just faking it for the camera will seem hollow. The audience isn’t stupid.

If Zhu Ling really succeeded in following Li Ziqi’s path, it wouldn’t matter whether she live-streamed or not.

And with Tiao Yin’s feature for videos longer than 60 seconds still a few months away, there was enough time for Zhu Ling to learn a few things.

’I just don’t know if this world will ever see an era of lifestyle vlogs being pushed by the algorithm.’

In the other world, Li Ziqi had only exploded in popularity because of that era of algorithm-boosted lifestyle vlogs.

That era also came about for another specific reason. The pandemic era arrived, and everyone was stuck at home. Unable to go out to film videos, people could only shoot and share their home lives.

And that’s how the era of algorithm-boosted lifestyle vlogs was born.

Under these circumstances, Li Ziqi also exploded in popularity, relying on her food-themed episodes where she made all sorts of traditional culinary masterpieces.

Her *Buddha Jumps Over the Wall* video got over 2.3 million likes; pepper-pork-stomach soup, nearly 2 million; spicy cabbage, nearly 2 million; pork trotters in ginger and vinegar, over 1.5 million; ejiao gelatin cake, over 2.3 million; taro rice, over 2 million; beef brisket clay pot, over 1.5 million; and spicy cold-dressed chicken feet, 1.5 million...

After that, even her less popular videos would still get hundreds of thousands of likes.

But before all that, even though she was already popular on other platforms, her videos on Tiao Yin rarely broke 30,000 likes. She was a relative unknown on the platform.

(The image below shows one of Li Ziqi’s videos from before the era of algorithm-boosted lifestyle vlogs. This data is from people going back to check her old videos and give them likes *after* she became a legend. Back then, it really got no traffic!)

So, in a sense, it was the pandemic era that prompted Tiao Yin to launch the era of algorithm-boosted lifestyle vlogs, which in turn made Li Ziqi.

Now, this was a different world. There might not even be a pandemic era. Without the era of algorithm-boosted lifestyle vlogs, Li Ziqi’s path would be impossible to follow.

However, he soon came to terms with it.

’The Li Ziqi of the other world needed the era of algorithm-boosted lifestyle vlogs to blow up because her foundation on Tiao Yin was still weak after switching from other platforms. But Zhu Ling is different. She already has 21 million followers, and on top of that, she has a boss like me. When the time comes, I can just cook up some hype; she won’t necessarily have to rely on an era of boosted lifestyle vlogs.’

’Perhaps by building Zhu Ling up to follow the path of the other world’s Li Ziqi, I could, in turn, trigger Tiao Yin to start its own era of algorithm-boosted lifestyle vlogs.’

’The sense of accomplishment would be even greater.’

’After all, Li Ziqi ascended to godhood by riding the wave of algorithm-boosted lifestyle vlogs. But Zhu Ling will ascend to sainthood by *creating* that wave.’

’Of course, this is all just speculation for now. It still depends on whether Zhu Ling is up to the task and can endure the hardship of learning those traditional crafts.’

"Alright, I’ll communicate with Zhu Ling and make the arrangements," Sister Hong replied after receiving her instructions.

In truth, she still couldn’t figure out what her boss’s objective was, much less that he was planning something so monumental.

After Sister Hong finished her report and left, he sent a message to Little Maru, asking, "How’s your practice for ’Little Dimples’ going?"

Tiao Yin was going to give him an SS-Class promotional boost for a future stream, and he planned to release "Little Dimples" during that broadcast. Given the success of "Can’t Help Falling in Love," combined with his now greater fame and nearly 16 million followers, the sales for "Little Dimples" should be even higher this time.

In an artistic photography studio, Little Maru had changed into an adorable white fox costume, complete with a pair of fox ears on her head.

She was there with her sister, of course, to take some artistic photos. She had even specially bought this cute outfit and had her makeup done in a sweet style.

When she received the WeChat message, she immediately pulled out her phone to check it. Seeing that it was from her boss, she quickly replied, "Boss, I’ve finished practicing."

After replying, she immediately handed her phone to her sister. "Help me take a picture."

Chu Xiaqing nodded slightly, took the phone, and snapped a beautiful picture of her.

After hitting send, she realized the chat was with her sister’s boss.

This couldn’t help but remind her of what her sister had said after getting involved with him: ’Young, handsome, great stamina, talented, has resources, and can make people famous... It’s hard to say who’s really taking advantage of whom.’

’Looks like my sister has really fallen for him.’

Little Maru took the phone back from her sister and sent the photo, along with another message: "Boss, want to test how well I’ve practiced the song tonight?"

Chen Jincheng saw the photo and the message from Little Maru. He had to admit, while her outfit today was a bit less sultry, it had an added touch of innocence—though not entirely.