The dilemma of famous foreign speakers in China

Edward de Bono

Say, you are a famous speaker in the US or in one of Europe's countries. Of course, you want to expand your reach to the rest of the world and especially China enjoys an ongoing flow of celebrity speakers from elsewhere.

There is one big, and some smaller problems here. No matter how much of a famous and acknowledged speaker you might be back home, here nobody here knows you. That happened at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s with famous Western brands. They entered the Chinese market and discovered they had to build up their brand from scratch, to the shock of some of their managers. In the speakers business that experience is still developing.

This week I had to deal with this feature in three different occasions. Most famous of those speakers is Edward de Bono, who will speak this week in both Beijing and Shanghai. A few weeks ago I met one of the sponsors of this trip and he was not really hopeful it would be worth there investment. Similar visits they cancelled because of the lack of interest, but this time they wanted to move forward.

I do believe there is a market for famous foreign speakers. When you name is Bill Clinton or Allan Greenspan, Chinese companies are willing to dig deep into their pockets. But if you go down in this food chain, even a little bit, the Chinese audiences will not know you and are certainly not willing to pay the surcharge for such a foreign speaker.