Chapter 51
I’m translating the chapter now and keeping the in-universe blocks in HTML so the formatting stays valid. The main work here is separating narration from quoted speech and preserving the startup/PR tone in natural English.CHAPTER_TITLE: By Year's End
Seo Jeongwon and Jeong Hyeonwoo had taken first place at the world programming competition.
It was, without question, an achievement that sent shockwaves through the computer science circles.
They had pulled off something unbelievable in such a short span of time.
Unfortunately, that alone was a little awkward to pitch to veterinarians or doctors as a standalone selling point.
That did not mean we could just sit on our hands, though.
> If the employees did something incredible, the company had to make a bigger deal out of it.
Badugi’s words matched exactly what I was thinking.
“Right. If they did something great, we should make sure people know it.”
Of course, the moment the two of them reported their competition results, we moved forward with distributing the PR article.
We had prepared it with their award in mind from the start, so the response was fast.
But that still wasn’t enough to let the bragging stop there.
“Mr. Seonghun. Have the promotional materials for our company already been printed?”
“No. We left them as they were so we could revise them after the two of them won the competition.”
“Good. Then there should already be space set aside for the award details too.”
“That’s right.”
TA Medical was producing all kinds of promotional materials.
Since there would be several updates within a single quarter, we decided to make one A4 flyer for each marketing message.
One for each product benefit, and one for the company itself.
“It’s only one or two extra lines, so I doubt they’ll mind, right?”
“You’re adding one or two lines into two whole A4 pages. That’s a big deal.”
The company brochure was meant to showcase our technical strength and capability.
So it was absolutely worth including Seo Jeongwon and Jeong Hyeonwoo’s competition wins there.
“You must be incredibly busy.”
“When the water’s in, you row. Where else are you going to get marketing material this good?”
With that, we worked over the brochures and then went over to Jaeyoon to request an estimate.
But when Jaeyoon saw us, he suddenly shot to his feet with the look of someone who had just remembered something important and came over to greet us.
“Siwon! Some broadcast outlet that saw our PR article wants to interview Jeongwon and Hyeonwoo.”
“Oh. Where from?”
“It’s cable, but it’s got real buzz.”
That was genuinely welcome news.
It wasn’t one of the three major terrestrial broadcasters, but the fact that places were starting to show interest in them mattered.
It meant that people’s attention was no longer fixed on me alone; it was spreading to the members of our company too.
“It’s a science program, apparently. The kind that invites guests in for talk-show-style interviews.”
“Ah. There was probably a radio station that contacted us too.”
“Really?”
As expected, Seo Jeongwon and Jeong Hyeonwoo, both born-and-bred engineering students, stiffened at the news.
They probably had not imagined this kind of ripple effect.
“A broadcast? What are we even supposed to do on TV? We’ve never done anything like that.”
“Just answer the questions well. And work TA Medical into the conversation here and there.”
“Tch. Couldn’t you go instead, Siwon?”
“I’m not the one who won the competition.”
“Haah.”
They looked thoroughly conflicted, but they agreed to the appearance, saying it would become a memory worth keeping.
“We’ll go and at least make a little noise for our company.”
Just like that, the two of them ended up appearing on one TV program and one radio broadcast.
Unfortunately, their appearances did not produce any dramatic surge in attention.
Even so, it wasn’t as if there had been no reaction at all.
In a few online communities, their clips were immortalized as the textbook image of “the genius engineering student.”
The fact that they didn’t just bask in the compliments, but tried to correct the concept instead and eagerly spouted technical knowledge they knew, must have struck some people as unusual.
Still, thanks to the title of world competition winners, everyone seemed to look at them with amused eyes.
“Ah, if they were going to become a meme like this, we should’ve at least gotten more product-related calls for the company. Right?”
“Exactly. Since the award happened this year, we need to squeeze everything we can out of it this year.”
On the day their content was widely distributed, Seo Jeongwon and Jeong Hyeonwoo, while eating lunch with the team, quietly voiced their mixed feelings.
They seemed disappointed that they hadn’t played the cooler role they had expected to.
So I gave them a grin.
“Don’t worry. We’ve got something big to use this year, just in time.”
At my answer, everyone who had been eating without much interest turned to look at me.
“How are we using it?”
“Online ads?”
I shook my head.
“We’ll probably set up a booth at a major conference. It’s one of the bigger radiology conferences in Asia, and it’s being held in Korea soon.”
Now that we had a product, it was time to start exhibition marketing.
Even in the 2010s, online marketing was already important.
And as more consumers became search-savvy, even B2B companies started trying marketing angles that acknowledged the public, calling it B2B2C.
But in the medical field, B2B still overwhelmingly dominated.
That meant we had to lean heavily on offline conferences, expos, and exhibitions rather than just online marketing.
“Huh? When is this? What are we even supposed to do at a conference?”
Of course, Sunghoon, who handled marketing, was pretty surprised.
“In November. It’s called a conference, but you can think of it as an expo, basically.”
“Wh-when was this decided?”
“An hour ago. The organizers contacted us.”
I answered lightly, but Sung-hoon’s expression coming back at me was anything but light.
“About what?”
“There’s an empty booth spot, and apparently a lot of doctors have been asking about us, so they said they’d give us one.”
Among the people going “whoa” around us, only Sunghoon stared blankly with his eyes blinking.
Seeing that dazed expression, I felt a little guilty.
I’d accepted immediately because he had said he wanted to do as many different kinds of marketing as possible.
Was that a mistake?
“I was going to set up a meeting after lunch, but if this caught you off guard, sorry. I’ll take the lead on it, so don’t stress too much.”
“Huh? I’m not the one doing it?”
But that wasn’t the point he had stayed silent about.
“Oh. Do you maybe want to take the lead on this?”
“Yes! I’ve never even studied exhibition marketing. Wow!”
How exactly was I supposed to describe that feeling?
“So then I’d be designing the booth too, handling communications with outside vendors in earnest, and listening to the VoC from the doctors on site?”
He looked like someone who had just been handed an unexpected gift.
I hadn’t expected him to look that happy about suddenly being given extra work.
“That’s a relief. The schedule’s pretty tight, so I was planning to handle the lead myself.”
“I’ll take it as far as I can, and if there’s anything I don’t know, I’ll ask you!”
“You’re sure that’s okay?”
“Of course!”
Hearing that cheerful voice, everyone around us looked at Sunghoon as if he were something strange.
It really did seem unusual for anyone, regardless of job, to react that way to suddenly being handed their first real assignment.
“You might need to work late a bit. Is that fine?”
“Of course I’ll need to work late.”
“Hmm. Then come to the meeting room after lunch. I’ll send you an invite.”
“Yes!”
At that voice full of enthusiasm, I smiled faintly.
It was the kind of smile you wear when you know you won’t hear that bright, carefree voice for a while.
“Mr. Seonghun, are you okay?”
“Huh? Ah. Yes.”
“Did you work overtime?”
“Yes. Ah. Does it show?”
Sunghoon clearly enjoyed the work assigned to him.
Enjoyed it, really.
But his complexion was going in the opposite direction, so everyone kept worrying about him.
“The brochures in Korean and English are already printed, right?”
“No. We leave the brochures until the last minute because papers and other materials may get updated.”
In answer to my question, Jaeyoon, who happened to be passing by, asked with genuine curiosity, “Then what are you doing right now?”
Sunghoon smiled weakly and answered in a steady voice.
“Planning the exhibition, designing the booth, sourcing with construction vendors along the way, comparing design estimates, that sort of thing!”
“Oh, dear.”
Surprised by the sheer amount of work, Jaeyoon looked sympathetic.
“Hmm. We’ve actually had better results in veterinary medicine, but it’s a shame we can’t use that.”
“It’s not like we can’t use it at all. We can point out that there’s already research out there on TA Medical, and we can also highlight the company from a broader range of angles in the introduction.”
“Ah. Then could you maybe review the draft promotional materials I made with the current research projects in mind?”
“Yes, yes. Did you also put together a storyboard for the video we’ll be showing in the booth?”
Sunghoon’s work really did seem endless.
But he said that making each decision for the company, one by one, was exciting and overwhelming in the best way.
“By the way, where is everyone else? I don’t see them around the office much.”
“They’re busy traveling for business.”
Fortunately or unfortunately, Sunghoon was not the only one buried in work at that time.
“Oh. Are a lot of new people still reaching out these days?”
“Not really. But we still have to maintain the connections with people researching our product or using the demo.”
“Ah. Are the research results coming out well?”
“Yes. It feels like we’re getting the results we wanted.”
When questions came in during the research process, we went out to inspect the product, fixed any errors, separated out the feedback coming in randomly from the field, and pushed those updates into the product.
There was just so much to do.
“Honestly, at the beginning I thought startups were kind of a sweet deal, but it feels like the work just keeps piling up.”
Even candid remarks like that started to come up among the team every now and then.
“It’s hard to be easy, since it’s a startup.”
“I know~ haha. So this is what growth pain feels like, huh?”
The fortunate part was that this really was growth pain.
TA Medical was growing in proportion to how hard we were working.
“Siwon. A university that had been using our product for academic purposes has now requested a demo at their hospital.”
“Which university hospital?”
The proof was that one by one, university hospitals that had been using our product for academic purposes started signing on for on-site demo use.
“At this rate, we might get our product into half the university hospitals in the capital area.”
“It would be great if it spread well to general hospitals and clinics too.”
“To make that happen, you need to give us an incredible booth at this conference.”
“Ah!”
It was a joke, but it was also sincere.
This conference was where medical professionals from all over the country, and even from other countries, would gather.
We could not waste the chance to show them our product and explain it directly.
“Let’s pull off something real before the year ends.”
I had to think of this as a moment that might become the turning point for our company.