Memo to China: The Customer is Always Right

Despite the lofty and unintentionally ironic ideal behind the slogan 'One World, One Dream,' the Beijing Olympics are about making money through ad sales, endorsements and sponsorships. Leading up to this year's Games, Chinese athletes have done extremely well on the endorsement front, with mega- contracts from American corporations going to Yao Ming (basketball), Liu Xiang (track and field), Guo JingJing (diving), and Wang Nan (table tennis). But by far the celebrity endorsement coup of the Beijing Olympics is the tacit endorsement of the Chinese government by President George W. Bush, and his unwavering commitment to attend the opening ceremonies.

Looking beyond the hype and propaganda, the Olympics are about selling and basic rules of marketing apply. With an endorsement contract, Olympic advertisers pay for an association with a gilded image. When that image becomes tarnished endorsements have a way of vanishing into thin air. Ask Kobe Bryant, Madonna, Michael Jackson and others, all of whom lost endorsement deals when the advertiser viewed something the celebrity did or said as having tarnished the celebrity's image.

The Chinese government genuinely cares about how the world perceives them and this is their moment to strut on the international stage. From their perspective, the Olympics will be successful only if China emerges looking better than it did going in. To that end both China and Olympic corporate sponsors are investing billions of dollars to win over the hearts and minds of you and me, creating a somewhat unusual moment in history where the consumer has real leverage in an international political situation.

Obviously, China's customers and those of the Olympic sponsors alone will not be able to take on the Chinese government and win. Meaningful change will require pressure from a de facto coalition of world leaders, human rights activists, intellectuals and trading partners inside and outside of China. But the court of public opinion leading up to the Beijing Olympics is a time and place where the tenor of the entire debate can be changed. What makes China unique is that they are the first nation to develop a system of what is essentially totalitarian capitalism. And what is the first lesson any capitalist learns? Keep the customers happy.

We are their customers, a record number of whom (1,051,835) over the past seven days signed www.avaaz.org's petition to Chinese president Hu Jinato to stop the violent crackdown on protesters in Tibet. Because of the Olympics, hearing from millions of customers that we are not happy could in fact have an impact on Chinese government policy -- probably not this week, but eventually.

Comments

[WMG]

To believe that the U.S. has leverage over China today, because we are their customers, is silly and absurd. Perhaps 30 years ago, before the significant transfer of manufacturing and business expertise and the slow movement of much of our own manufacturing base, this idea had some relevance. Not today. China is sitting on over a trillion U.S. dollar reserves, and continues to provide us more than we provide them. They look at a debt saddled, tapped out consumer base in the U.S., and are already recognizing their exports have likely peaked and will start to decline because their main “customer” is broke.

Frankly, the U.S. will be lucky if we can conduct monetary and fiscal policy according to the wishes of our elected representatives, instead of those of our creditors. With the deflation (debt destruction in the financial markets) gathering momentum, we need China’s SWF bailouts and continued good will purchases of U.S. debt. This is what happens when you borrow from the world to live in a fantasyland.

We might have been able to help the Tibetans if we, as a society, hadn’t spent the last 15 years bankrupting ourselves buying crap we didn’t need, with money we didn’t have. But we did, so China has the strong hand now.

[Henry]

I think it would be a wonderful stroke of nertralizing the Pope if the PRC were to set the Dali and his followers off on to some "reservation" to "permit them to diminish of disease and disenfranchisement from their own culture" the same way that the USA has done to its native populations that needed to extinguished from expropriated lands. Whaddaya think?

[TakeSake]

The customer may be right, but that is not consequential. Only the reality of the state - a manufactured reality - is important. The true reality becomes illegal. Knowledge that a true reality exists, even without knowing it, is grounds for persecution.

http://ninecommentaries.com/

[swift goat pet for truth]

"Keep the customers happy"? Dunno about China, but in the US that means just one thing, lowest price, regardless of anything else. Ask the US airline customers. Or US phone service customers. Or US cable TV customers. Or Wal-Mart customers (full disclosure, I have NEVER shopped at Wal-Mart, and I will not in the forseeable future, so I could be wrong on this one). I am sure you get the point.

[axisofelvis]

" Totalitarian Capitalism" formerly known as Fascism.

[hopeless277]

You didn't finish you headline. The customer is always right-handed so that's the hand to cut off. That's the China we all know and love.