Ronaldo Stops Grinning in Lozenge Ad
When I first saw Ronaldo holding a lozenge and stupidly grinning on Chinese TV I was wondering who the hell the director director was that made this terrible excuse for an advertisement. Then again, I see similar bad advertisements on CCTV 9 so not that surprised actually.
I got used to it and figured that Ronaldo Luis Nazário de Lima got a nice buck for doing this.
Wrong again. Invited to dinner in 2003 by the Guangxi Golden Throat Group (What a great brand name by the way) the poor chap had posed for a picture holding the now famous lozenge package. Why would a drug maker want you to pose with their product…. well, Ronaldo probably grinned like he did because he was wondering that himself as well.
It took a Chinese competitor to wake up Ronaldo’s management more than 3 years later.
From the China Daily:
Ronaldo decided to go to court when another Chinese drug maker wanted a deal with him with a precondition: he must terminate the contract with Guangxi Golden Throat Group.
He did not realize until then that he missed as many as seven chances to sign contracts with Chinese enterprises because of the “Golden Throat” ad. Each contract could have fetched him 3.2 million euros a year.
Of course this is a great example of infringement of image rights etc, etc. On the other hand it’s also very cunning from the Golden Throat Group to trick one of the most popular football players in the world and let him make their product famous all over China. And they will even get more (free) publicity now.
Even if Ronaldo wins the case he will never get the millions he could have got.
Maybe the China Law Blog can help out and give an estimation on how much he can/will get.
Posted
Monday, January 29th, 2007 at 10:52 pm,
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January 30th, 2007 00:32
If he really can prove liability and that the improper ads cost him 3.2 million Euros a year, he would be entitled to 3.2 million Euros per year for a couple of years. This is in theory. In reality Chinese courts tend not to award large sums and I would be surprised if he were to get even a million.
January 30th, 2007 00:38
Thanks for stopping by and your insights here. I have the same feeling as until now I have never seen Chinese courts award big amounts of money.