Chicago Tribune - June 23, 2006
Mike Hughlett, Tribune staff reporter, mhughlett@tribune.com

In the past month, all three have become promoters of Motorola cell phones. Has the Schaumburg-based phonemaker gone star crazy?

Well, it's certainly not the first time Motorola has hooked up with celebrities. Pin-up queen Betty Grable pitched Motorola radios during the 1940s while baseball great Bob Feller promoted the firm's televisions during the 1950s.

But the recent deals with Bono, soccer player David Beckham and actor Abhishek Bachchan mark a relatively new celebrity tack for Motorola: teaming up with non-U.S. stars who appeal to international markets, or even individual foreign countries.

It's not surprising given the international flavor of the cell phone business, particularly since the fastest-growing markets are countries like China, Brazil and India.

The "USA matters less and less" in the cell phone business, said a report this week from Albert Lin, an analyst at American Technology Research. The U.S. will account for about 16 percent of global phone shipments in 2006, down from 20 percent five years ago.

Motorola's efforts are mirrored in other U.S. businesses that increasingly rely on international markets. Oak Brook-based McDonald's, for instance, has long featured Olympic stars from several countries as endorsers in their homelands.

The use of stars as marketing tools appears to be on the rise worldwide, as companies must battle to build their brands in an increasingly fragmented advertising market.

In 2005, celebrities appeared in 11 percent of television ads surveyed worldwide by marketing researchers Millward Brown. That's up from 8 percent in 2002 and 6 percent in 1999.

More media--the growing Internet, for example--makes it harder for advertisers to get noticed, and celebrities are an expensive but often reliable way to burnish a brand.

Motorola's recent flurry of celebrity deals started last month when it launched a special phone with Bono, who is front man for the Irish rock band U2. The phone, a blazing red version of Motorola's Slvr, is part of Bono's Product Red project.

Product Red is a brand. Products associated with it pony up a portion of sales to fight AIDS and pestilence in the developing world. Motorola is the fifth company to join Product Red.

The Moto-Bono pairing isn't an endorsement deal; Bono isn't doing Motorola commercials. But it has the same effect: Tying Motorola's brand to one of the most celebrated pop singers.

U2 ranks fourth in Forbes magazine's "Celebrity 100" list of the world's richest and most powerful stars, and Bono's persona and activism is the reason.

Beckham is the Bono of soccer, and outside of this country and a handful of others, soccer is the world's most popular team sport. Beckham is also married to a celebrity, former Spice Girl Victoria ("Posh Spice") Adams.

The 31-year-old Briton made his name playing for his homeland's fabled Manchester United club before moving to Spain's Real Madrid in 2003.

Sport is just a part of Beckham Inc. He has signed on as a pitchman for scores of companies, including Adidas, Gillette and Coty (which has bestowed his name on a fragrance).

With all those deals, he's among the top five athletes worldwide as far as earnings generated from commercial endorsements, said Marc Ganis, president of Sportscorp, a Chicago consulting firm.

Beckham is the leading non-American on that list, which is topped by Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, Ganis said.

Beckham doesn't come cheap. He makes about $32 million a year, according to Forbes, the bulk of which comes from endorsements. Gillette is reportedly paying him over $10 million annually in a multiyear deal.

Motorola won't divulge what it's paying Beckham to serve as a global "brand ambassador" for three years. But the cost has to be "massive," said Peter Walshe, Millward Brown's London-based global account director. "It's got to be on par with [the Gillette deal]."

To put it in perspective, Motorola's first global brand ambassador, Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova, signed a deal in 2004 for about $5 million over three years.

And Sharapova, Motorola's first major non-American star, is no slouch in the fame department, placing 63rd on Forbes' top 100 celebrity list.

Motorola and Beckham initially talked about promotions pegged only to the World Cup, currently in full swing.

Those talks blossomed into a long-term deal after the two parties realized their "values" had a strong fit, said Jeremy Dale, Motorola's vice president for retail marketing.

Beckham has an interest in the fight against AIDS, appearing in a UNICEF ad spotlighting the disease's harm to children. Motorola was doing the same thing through Product Red, Dale said.

"He really bought into the cause of what we were trying to do (with Product Red)." Beckham handed out the red phone to 550 A-list stars at a pre-World Cup party at his home in England.

Beckham's charitable impulses aren't the only values that line up with Motorola's, or more precisely, Motorola's customers.

In Millward Brown's research, consumers who claim to be big Beckham fans also said they keep up with the latest technology and possess a very good sense of style.

The cell phone business is all about selling the latest stylish gizmos.

As a brand ambassador, Beckham--one of the world's most photographed people--will regularly carry Motorola phones. He of course will appear in advertisements.

And exclusive Beckham "content"--screensavers and video clips of the man in action--is expected to embedded in some Motorola phones.

The Beckham deal is being rolled out in Asia and Europe during the World Cup. A key promotion: About 20 people who buy Motorola phones during the tournament will win a personal training session with Beckham in Madrid.

Meanwhile in China, Motorola has used indigenous pop music stars in advertisements and promotions. McDonald's has done the same thing.

The hamburger giant launched its "I'm lovin' it" campaign in 2004 in China with the popular singer Lee-Hom Wang, a Chinese-American who made his career in Asia.

McDonald's aims to weave together global campaigns with country-focused efforts and is doing so with its current sponsorship of the World Cup, said Dean Barrett, the company's senior vice president of global marketing.

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