Will Heroes star Hayden Panettiere succeed where Arnold Schwarzenegger failed?
While Schwarzenegger’s late 90s endorsement of a Chinese DVD manufacturer was unable to save the company from going bust, Western stars today are eyeing the Chinese corporate landscape for potential endorsement deals.
Not even actors, it seems, can avoid the lure of China’s one billion customers - and product endorsement deals are a steady stream of revenue when piracy cuts into royalties.
The recent deal between Shaquille O’Neal and sportswear manufacturer Li Ning indicates that Western celebrities endorsing Chinese products is not such a far-fetched idea.
While some have attributed the deal to a meeting of needs between an aging star and an upstart brand, others see the deal as groundbreaking.
“Outside of Yao Ming and Li, there just aren’t that many basketball players that the Chinese recognise,” says Charley Kan at MEC in Beijing. “Advertisers know that they have to find someone else.”
“Generally, Western celebs are less well-known than Asian celebs,” adds Ian Maskell at Unilever.
“There’s much interest in Western celebrities, but local clients still have concerns - that they’re not widely known across all of China’s regions, that they’re expensive and that they’re not willing to be readily available,” says Samuel Wang at Hairun Ogilvy in Beijing.
Hairun Ogilvy has positioned itself as an extra, consultative link between advertising agencies and agents. This might be necessary given that agents have different business models.
International agencies, such as Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and William Morris Agency (WMA) have launched China operations. While neither would comment on the different business models, CAA reputedly has translated its international model of finding and grooming talent to a Chinese context as well as representing its international stable of stars on the mainland.
WMA is positioning itself more as a consultant between its international clients in China, and working with existing Chinese agents to launch Chinese talent overseas.
While agencies are pushing hard to get their clients exposure in Chinese society, and interest from Chinese companies exists, even seemingly straightforward matters, such as pricing are fraught with cultural confusion.
“We don’t bid against ourselves,” says a representative from an international agency. “So when Chinese corporates come to us and say ‘we want that star to endorse our product’ we tell them to offer us a price - and they try to get away really cheaply by saying that the endorsement will make our client famous in China.”
Wang agrees that miscommunication has been standing in the way of Western celebrities breaking in to the Chinese endorsement market. However, Western celebrities are gaining traction with the boom of DVD culture and TV-stars are the beneficiaries. “Chinese people only see film stars in one movie, and they don’t have the same gossip magazines as they do in the West,” says a source.
Both agents and artists are hoping for the ‘Hoff-phenomenon’, whereby David Hasselhoff became a huge star in Germany. “All the cast of Friends are really popular, and the guy from Prison Break (Wentworth Miller) - he’s a hero,” points out Kan.
