Memo to China: The Customer is Always Right - Susan Kaiser Greenland

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.

Cross-posted from huffington post DOT com