Chapter 178. Sang-do Falls to the Ground
After listening to the song, Park Chan-deok looked deeply troubled for quite a while.
He had seemed so calm in the future-spam video that I hadn't expected him to be this shaken.
"Everyone makes mistakes, so I doubt this will become a huge problem for him personally. But of all places, that mistake had to end up in my movie..."
It wasn't just one mistake.
Park Chan-deok didn't know it, but Jo Yoo-young had built a large number of his songs by plagiarizing other composers.
And all of that would eventually explode at once.
"Making a commercial film really is exhausting."
He looked like reality had hit him hard.
Between Lee Ye-won and this, he'd run into some fairly serious problems one after another.
Still, one thing was certain.
None of this was normal.
After groaning to himself for a while, Park Chan-deok finally raised his head.
"It's fine. I was planning to change the song anyway."
"Really?"
"Yes. Whew... All right. Again. Let's look at the songs you proposed."
Park Chan-deok shook off his distracting thoughts and opened the printed proposal I'd given him.
Several tracks had been marked with highlighter.
"Did any of them catch your attention?"
"Yes. If I change it, I think it'll probably be one of these two."
I'd pushed Sang-do's song pretty hard, but please let it be Anna's.
Unfortunately, the tracks Park Chan-deok pointed to were Kaiser's and Sang-do's.
"I realized I need to decide on the song before filming begins. If I use Kaiser's piece, the whole atmosphere will become much lighter. More dramatic too."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes. On the other hand, if I use Kang Sang-do's piece, it fits the tone I originally envisioned almost perfectly. Honestly, this song surprised me. I had compromised a little when I chose Jo Yoo-young's piece. This one is different. And no, I'm not saying that because of sour grapes or anything."
As expected of my left arm, Sang-do.
Ah.
Were my left and right arms Dae-hun and Jin-hee?
Then Sang-do could be my left leg.
"Kaiser's song is very good in that respect too. It has this feeling of dramatically breaking through something that's been blocking you, doesn't it? That's exactly what it feels like. Sang-do's song is lyrical, while Kaiser's is dramatic."
Park Chan-deok thought for a moment, then spoke.
"I'd like to hear your opinion, CEO Do Jun-hyeok. Which direction do you think we should take? If we use Kaiser's piece, the movie becomes more entertaining. If we use Sang-do's, it'll stay quiet and restrained like I originally planned."
"My opinion?"
"Yes. This time, I think I'll go with what you say."
Oh.
A master of the film industry was going to follow my opinion.
Could there be anything more honorable than this?
Then I needed to think strategically too.
If I wanted to guarantee the success I'd seen in the future spam, namely the Academy Award, then Sang-do's song was probably the safer choice.
That way, the film would stay closer to the direction Park Chan-deok had originally intended.
But Kaiser's song felt like it would make the movie far more exciting.
Honestly, a more dramatic 〈Listen to the Sound of Blue〉 appealed to me more.
Should I simply follow the future spam?
No.
This much, I should choose for myself.
"Let's use Kaiser's song."
"Kaiser's song. Hmm, the title was..."
Kaiser's OST.
The title was 〈Make a Feint in the East, Strike in the West〉.
A very Kaiser-like name.
"Understood. I'll use this one. Should I contact the composer myself?"
"No. You can proceed immediately. He's one of our composers."
"What?"
Park Chan-deok looked surprised.
Technically, Kaiser wasn't exactly an in-house composer.
He was more like...
A secret operative.
"Ah, really? That's incredible. You specifically recommended Kaiser, but I didn't expect one of your own composers to be among the finalists."
"Ah, Sang-do is one of ours too."
My shoulders felt like they were about to hit the ceiling from pride.
"Hahaha...! Seriously? That's hard to believe."
Park Chan-deok almost burst into laughter in amazement.
"Then could I use both of them? I think there are places where each would fit perfectly."
"Those guys own the copyrights themselves. But I'm sure they'll agree. I'll ask if we can negotiate a package deal."
"This is clearly crossing the line. They've selected Researcher Jin Young-chan as a brand model! Have they no sense of commercial ethics?"
Marketing staff from Sriver Electronics, one of the companies with the highest domestic market share, had gathered for an emergency meeting.
Worldwide, Sriver smartphones were quite far behind Aple.
But in Korea, Sriver held a narrow lead.
Behind them, far in third place, ZJ Electronics was slowly chasing after both.
To put it in numbers, Sriver held somewhere in the mid-forty-percent range.
Aple was in the high thirties.
And ZJ held roughly twenty percent.
Still, Sriver's goal was nothing less than conquering the global market.
They needed to surpass Aple's worldwide sales.
They had managed to boost sales by entering China, a market that was relatively underdeveloped in mobile infrastructure and somewhat resistant to American brands.
Even so, their absolute sales figures still hadn't reached Aple's.
Comparing market share country by country was even more painful.
Of course, the employees were human too.
They didn't spend every day carrying around some overwhelming sense of crisis or national mission.
The reason they were urgently holding this meeting was much simpler.
Aple Korea's recent behavior looked extremely suspicious.
"They haven't formally approached him yet, but Researcher Jin Young-chan has already been selected as Aple Korea's brand model. Not just for the latest-generation Aple phone. The brand model for Aple Korea itself!"
"Isn't that cheating? He's a Korean researcher who graduated from a Korean university and works at a Korean research complex. Naturally, he should be the model for Sriver, a proudly Korean company!"
During the KBC newsroom incident involving Do Jun-hyeok's bunny-girl photo, the model of Jin Young-chan's phone had briefly appeared on screen.
Judging from the rear-camera design, it looked like an Aple phone.
Apparently, Aple Korea had noticed that.
He was handsome.
Smart.
And righteous enough to help catch a hacker.
He wasn't a celebrity, but he was practically perfect as a model for an intellectual brand image.
"Then let's just recruit Jin Young-chan into our development team entirely! He doesn't have to limit himself to basic programming. He could work on more industrial applications too! We'd pay him far more money. And I've seen him a few times around the Daejeon complex. Surely he'd hear us out."
"I agree. He's the kind of talent we should cultivate ourselves."
"Honestly, what exactly is inferior about our Sriver series compared to Aple phones? Are they faster? Do they have better cameras? Aple doesn't even support digital certificates!"
The staff began venting furiously.
It was a hollow outburst.
They didn't have the authority to recruit Jin Young-chan as a researcher.
And now that Aple had already selected him as a model, they didn't have authority to offer him an even higher modeling fee either.
They were even angrier because this wasn't the first time they'd lost a potential promotional model this way.
Of course, none of them had thought to use Jin Young-chan as a model in the first place.
"Then let's make Do Jun-hyeok our model!"
"Ah... We can't. Do Jun-hyeok absolutely refuses to do modeling work. It's common knowledge in the advertising industry."
"Damn..."
One of the staff members who had been thinking quietly finally spoke.
