Recently, Uncle Leng saw an interesting inventory, saying that the products endorsed by Jackie Chan all have a "near chance of death": if he endorses ten products, except for one that is very lucky, the remaining nine will be in trouble.
In this list of Jackie Chan’s victims, the most famous ones are Bawang Shampoo and Evergrande Ice Spring.
The former was widely circulated on the Internet due to Jackie Chan's magical advertising slogans and became extremely famous, but later he was inexplicably involved in a controversy over the ingredients causing cancer.
Evergrande Ice Spring is a product of Evergrande. Jackie Chan was invited to endorse it in 2014. As a result, news of Evergrande's thunderstorm came out a few years later. By last year, even Xu Jiayin was arrested.
In addition, Jackie Chan has also endorsed the real estate brand "Tahoe Beijing Yard", Tahoe Beijing Yard is on fire; he has endorsed Volkswagen Caddy, but only less than 1,000 units were sold; he has endorsed Missing Dumplings, which were detected to contain... The germs have been removed from the shelves; even as an anti-drug ambassador, his own son is also addicted to drugs...
So why do most of the people who have been endorsed by the eldest brother end badly? Is this really a magical curse as netizens say?
Let’s talk about the story behind Jackie Chan’s endorsement today.
In 1978, the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee was held. The historical curtain of reform and opening up slowly began, and the potential of the Chinese market began to be continuously tapped and realized.
The stimulation of commercial vitality is often accompanied by the loosening of the cultural field. The increasingly frequent trade with Hong Kong has brought about Hong Kong movies and Hong Kong songs, and a large number of Hong Kong stars have become familiar to mainland audiences.
Coincidentally, it was in 1978 that Jackie Chan went from being an unknown newcomer to the film industry to becoming a hit with "Drunken Master" and "Snakehead", and entered a golden period of his career that lasted for more than 20 years.
During this period, Jackie Chan starred in many classics such as "Plan A", "Eagle Project", "Red Zone", "Who Am I", as well as the "Rush Hour" and "Police Story" series.
Among them, "Red Zone" allowed Jackie Chan to enter the Hollywood market, and "Rush Hour" further established his status as an international superstar.
At the same time, hundreds of millions of viewers in the mainland also got to know this Hong Kong star whose movements are as elegant as his hair through movies, television and countless pirated video tapes.
For most Chinese people who have just opened their doors to see the world, Bruce Lee, who died in 1973, is too far away. Jet Li and Donnie Yen are still immature. As for Zhao Wenzhuo, Wu Jing and others, they are still unknown newcomers.
In the Chinese film industry at that time, Jackie Chan was a unique action star. Therefore, more and more mainland companies were eyeing this unique commercial value.
Especially in the 1990s, with the popularization of color TVs, TV advertisements replaced the gaps in newspapers and became a battleground for businesses. A large number of companies began to spend heavily on advertising and publicity.
The first mainland brand endorsed by Jackie Chan is the Xiaobawang learning machine.
On New Year's Day in 1995, the Little Overlord commercial appeared on CCTV during prime time. The classic line "Parents all over the world hope that their children will become dragons, Little Overlord" has become the childhood memory of many viewers.
Jackie Chan's endorsement brought huge advertising effect to Little Overlord. Sales that year exceeded 400 million yuan, once occupying 80% of the domestic market.
However, such scenery was fleeting, because apart from Jackie Chan, the real core of the success of Little Overlord was the then head of the film, Duan Yongping.
He single-handedly led the development direction and marketing strategy of Little Overlord, including hiring Jackie Chan as the spokesperson and writing the popular advertising slogan.
However, after 1995, due to dissatisfaction with the major shareholders, Duan Yongping resigned and went to create another business miracle, BBK.
On the other hand, Little Overlord immediately turned into a headless giant after losing Duan Yongping. Even though Jackie Chan's endorsements are still there, the market continues to shrink due to the decline in product competitiveness, and by the 21st century, it has basically disappeared from public view.
Jackie Chan’s endorsement curse has been continuously fulfilled after Little Overlord.
Not long after the Little Overlord commercial became popular, a VCD company named Aiduo, which was only established for one year, also found Jackie Chan.Hu Zhibiao, the founder of
Aido, is only 27 years old, but his market acumen exceeds that of most of his contemporaries.
In his opinion, advertising and marketing have two key points: finding the most famous people to shoot, and then broadcasting them on the most famous TV stations.
So Hu Zhibiao found Jackie Chan. Although the eldest brother's offer of 4.5 million at the time was equivalent to Aido's entire year's profit, it was nothing compared to the CCTV where this advertisement was going to be sent.
In 1996, Aido VCD paid a sky-high price of 82 million yuan for the 5-second prime time period of the weather forecast, becoming the new king of electronic products in one fell swoop.
Some viewers may be curious. Aiduo is just a new company, and Hu Zhibiao is just a young man. How can he get so much money for advertising?
In fact, VCDs at this time were just like smartphones in 2008. They were extremely popular in the market and sold out instantly as soon as they were put on the shelves.
Therefore, in order to get the goods as soon as possible, dealers from all over the country rushed to make advance payments and deposits to Aido. It is said that the total amount of money at that time was as much as 200 million yuan. This also constituted the reason why Hu Zhibiao hired Jackie Chan and landed on CCTV with a large amount of money. confidence.
After that, Hu Zhibiao drew lessons from Jackie Chan's classic movies and formulated the "Operation Sunshine Plan A". He relied on his technical advantages to fight a price war, driving the price of VCDs from more than 2,000 to just over 1,000, and the company's performance also improved. Soaring all the way.
The fate between Aido and Jackie Chan is not over yet. In 1998, Hu Zhibiao spent another 10 million to shoot a new commercial. The director was Zhang Yimou and the background music was "Real Hero" sung by Jackie Chan, Chow Wakin, Li Zongsheng and Huang Yaoming.
Before that, the price of Aiduo’s CCTV landing had also risen to 210 million. Hu Zhibiao once again beat Duan Yongping’s 200 million offer and became the highest bidder in the year.
However, Ai Duo's mad rush came to an abrupt end at this time.
With the rapid iteration of VCD technology, the price continued to hit the bottom, and dropped sharply from more than one thousand to four to five hundred. Aido was surprised to find that even he could not survive the price war.
At the same time, with the rapid increase of VCD companies and the introduction of DVD technology into China, VCDs, which were very fashionable not long ago, suddenly became an outdated product, and the market quickly changed from short supply to oversupply.
found something was wrong, and dealers and suppliers came to collect debts. At this time, Aido had an equity dispute again. Amid internal and external troubles, the company fell into a serious financial crisis.
Hu Zhibiao, who was surrounded by various lawsuits, struggled hard for two years before he was arrested on suspicion of commercial fraud in 2000 and was finally sentenced to eight years in prison. A generation of business geniuses and Aido VCD also bid farewell to the stage of history.
The legend of Jackie Chan's Curse is still going on.
If the failure of Xiaobawang and Aido was mainly due to their own business problems, then the inexplicable failure of some brands has a touch of metaphysics.
In 2005, Jackie Chan endorsed Bawang Shampoo. At this time, the endorsement fee of the elder brother reached a big level.
reported that from 2006 to 2008 alone, the endorsement fees paid to Jackie Chan by Overlord exceeded 80 million.
Moreover, Jackie Chan’s endorsement fee is high, and Bawang’s total advertising and marketing money is even more, which adds up to more than 600 million in the past three years.
Overlord spares no expense in advertising, and it has indeed brought about very obvious results.
Through this magical advertisement shot by Jackie Chan, the concept of "preventing hair loss with Chinese medicine" has become deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Bawang's operating income has doubled, from less than 400 million in 2006 to more than 1.4 billion in 2008.
In 2009, Bawang took advantage of the situation and was listed in Hong Kong, with its peak market value reaching 20 billion.
However, despite consumer support and investor optimism, Jackie Chan's curse still struck unexpectedly.
In 2010, Hong Kong's Next Weekly broke the news that Bawang shampoo contained the carcinogen dioxane. Subsequently, Bawang's sales plummeted, turning profits directly into losses.
Although after this, the State Food and Drug Administration passed tests and determined that the dioxane in Bawang shampoo did not exceed the standard. In 2016, the Hong Kong court also ruled that Next Weekly had defamed and ordered it to pay HK$3 million in compensation to Bawang.
But at this time, 6 years had passed since the incident. Jackie Chan had photographed the railway guerrillas from the Revolution of 1911. No one had long cared about the bowls of powder in Overlord's belly.
What's more, even if Bawang's dioxane does not exceed the standard, the relevant component analysis still shatters the "purely natural" and "Chinese herbal medicine" brand it advertised in the past. Bawang's market is just like its stock price, and it will never go away. Back. After the
Overlord incident, the urban legend of Jackie Chan's endorsement curse was also widely circulated. In 2012, on the "Let's Talk" program, Sa Beining specifically mentioned this topic to Jackie Chan and asked him what he thought of the endorsement curse.
Jackie Chan is also very frank, admitting that his past endorsements were all arranged by agents and he didn't actually understand them. Now he has learned the lesson and knows to choose those international brands that have been proven.
Then, then Jackie Chan endorsed Evergrande Ice Spring...
It seems that the elder brother has indeed researched on endorsements, but not much.
Finally, let’s go back and summarize what the essence of Jackie Chan’s “endorsement curse” is.
should say that Jackie Chan’s endorsement experience is actually a microcosm of modern China’s business development.
This is not only reflected in the overlap in time between Jackie Chan's career and reform and opening up, but also in the rise and decline of these endorsement companies.
"Emphasis on marketing, light on management" has been a common phenomenon among Chinese companies for a long time. The most typical manifestation is to hire celebrities like Jackie Chan to endorse, and then go to national TV stations to compete for the title of king.
In the final analysis, Chinese companies value advertising because it is effective. The reason why advertising is effective is that after the reform and opening up, various markets in China are growing rapidly.
This includes, but is not limited to, the appliance, retail, digital equipment and real estate industries.
When more than one billion Chinese people want to improve their lives and increase consumption, the top priority for companies is to first tell everyone what products they "have". The most effective way is to use overwhelming advertisements to make you look familiar and build awareness.
This is why Jackie Chan can be so reluctant to endorse, and judging from the communication effect, the proportion of them becoming popular is not low.
However, there is another major feature of modern China, that is, the speed of social progress and industrial innovation is faster than market expansion.
Jackie Chan himself has a deep understanding of this. He once said that modern CG special effects can achieve effects that even he could not achieve in his heyday. In a market dominated by special effects, "anyone can become an action star."
Before the 21st century, a large number of professional martial arts stars emerged in China , but in recent years, this track has almost lost its revenue.
Changes in film and television themes may account for part of the reason, but we must realize that progress in productivity is the most fundamental driving force for social change.
The same is true from movies to other industries. When a company focuses on marketing and promotion and ignores changes in productivity and fails to solve "new" and "good" problems on the basis of "existing" products, it will only be a matter of time before it is eliminated. After all,
has a memory bonus for actors such as Jackie Chan, and we, the audience, are not willing to see them completely replaced by special effects in a short time. However, for companies, there are far less emotional filters.
In a word, there is no magic spell for Jackie Chan's endorsement, and social progress is in order.
As the Year of the Dragon approaches, Jackie Chan's commercial value has been explored again. In January, Jackie Chan endorsed Honor Mobile and Luzhou Laojiao. It seems that large companies are more willing to believe in this more basic business logic and the luck of the name than in urban legends. So will this year be auspicious in the Year of the Dragon? Or will it become a new "proof of the curse"? let us wait and see.
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