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Coca-Cola is featuring a different kind of celebrity on its cans in China: Warren Buffett.
Key points:
- Warren Buffett's face is being printed on limited edition cans of cherry-flavoured Coke in China
- Billionaire is seen as "a non-corrupt, down-to-Earth" kind of person in China
- He will not receive any direct compensation for the endorsement
While the 86-year-old billionaire is admired and thought of as a folksy straight talker in the US, where Coke is based, using his image to sell soft drink at home would be a tough sell for even the most savvy Madison Avenue marketing firm, even with Mr Buffett's voracious appetite for Cokes.
It is a different story in China, where Cherry Coke went on sale for the first time last month.
On limited-edition cans sitting on store shelves today in China, is the beaming face of "the Oracle of Omaha".
Business leaders in China tend to have an outsized following, in some cases greater than that of sports stars, China Market Research Group founder Shaun Rein said.
And like in the US, Mr Buffett is also seen as "a non-corrupt, down-to-Earth" kind of person in China, another selling point, Mr Rein said.
Mr Buffett is so well known in China, when his Berkshire Hathaway began streaming its annual meeting online last year, it was translated real-time into Mandarin Chinese.
Mr Buffett is also an admirer of the economic prowess of China.
Berkshire Hathaway, in addition to being Coke's biggest shareholder, owns nearly 10 per cent of Chinese car maker BYD Co.
Popularity in China due to interest in country's stocks: Buffett
"I think my 'popularity' in China is due to the huge interest in stocks in China that has developed in just a couple of decades," Mr Buffett told Yahoo Finance.
"I was in the right place at the right time as the Chinese looked around for famous investors.
"I also made a couple of visits to China that received a fair amount of publicity and several American books about me got widely distributed throughout China."
Mr Buffett told Yahoo Finance that he would not receive any direct compensation for the Coke endorsement, but he was happy to help sell the products made by a company he believed in.
And Coke was happy to have his support in China.
"We honestly were surprised when Mr Buffett agreed to the idea," said Shelly Lin, Coca-Cola China's marketing director for Trademark Coca-Cola.
"But we're thrilled, and he's selling well."
AP
Topics: food-and-beverage, industry, business-economics-and-finance, advertising-and-marketing, china, united-states