Hong Kong Airlines’ decision to make controversial, slapstick, kung fu movie star Jackie Chan a celebrity ambassador has a Vancouver branding expert scratching his head.
Chan is expected to arrive in Vancouver on the June 30 inaugural Hong Kong Airlines flight to Vancouver from Hong Kong.
His arrival will add some pizzazz to the launch of the airline’s daily non-stop flights and mark the launch of Chan being the airline’s brand ambassador.
Chan is scheduled to schmooze with an invite-only crowd at a party on June 30 and he is expected to be at Vancouver International Airport (YVR) on July 2 to glad-hand passengers bound for Hong Kong.
But while airline executives tout Chan’s charitable work and global name recognition, Simon Fraser University marketing professor Lindsay Meredith is questioning whether pairing up with Jackie Chan is a good idea because Chan has made many controversial political statements that have offended people in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The airline’s chief marketing officer, George Liu, would not directly address Chan’s controversies but he listed Chan’s involvement in charities, such as UNICEF, UNAIDS, the American Red Cross and the Jackie Chan Civil Aviation Foundation in China.
“With our mutual interest in philanthropic and charitable endeavors, the partnership between Jackie Chan and Hong Kong Airlines is an organic fit,” he said.
“Chan offers an opportunity to further establish an East-meets-West, cross-cultural connection for our new customers, and complements our truly Hong Kong brand.”
Meredith, however, told Business in Vancouver that he was surprised that Hong Kong Airlines would want to link its brand to Chan.
“Maybe there is a cultural blind spot,” Meredith said.
He acknowledged that Chan’s charitable work gives him a bit of a halo and that those good deeds could rub off on Hong Kong Airlines.
But Meredith said that Chan’s many controversial statements about Chinese politics have earned him a reputation for being a yes man for Beijing on matters such as greater democracy in Hong Kong and Taiwanese independence.
Given those statements, Meredith said that the move did not make sense “unless Hong Kong Airlines has got a nice group of stodgy, dominant PRC [People’s Republic of China] folks as customers.”
Indeed, Chan’s Wikipedia page includes a lengthy section of controversies.
Back in 2004, Chan told a news conference in Shanghai that Taiwan’s re-election of Democratic Progressive Party candidates Chen Shui-bian and Annette Lu was “the biggest joke in the world.”
That led to calls in Taiwan for Chan’s films to be banned and for him to be barred entry to the island state.
Police and security personnel had to separate Chan from scores of protesters shouting “Jackie Chan, get out,” when he arrived at Taipei airport in June 2008, according to international news reports at the time.
When Chan participated in the 2008 Olympic torch relay, he reportedly spoke out against demonstrators who disrupted the relay in an effort to draw attention to grievances against the Chinese government.
The next year, he said, while on a panel, that he was “gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we’re not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want” – comments that elicited protests from democracy advocates.
(Image: One of the promotional photos that Hong Kong Airlines produced to draw awareness of its partnership with Jackie Chan | Hong Kong Airlines)
He has since suggested that Hong Kong demonstrators’ rights should be limited and that the U.S. is the “most corrupt” country in the world, according to media reports.
“The way celebrity endorsements work in Western civilization is that the guy better be pretty much lily white, have double-dates with God and be apple-pie clean,” Meredith said.
“Anything that compromises that level of purity basically just disqualifies the guy on the spot.”
Hong Kong Airlines' choice of Chan as a celebrity ambassador and its inaugural route to Vancouver coincides with the 20th anniversary of the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong to China from Britain, on July 1, 1997. Indeed, Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Hong Kong to mark the anniversary hours before the first Hong Kong Airlines flight to Vancouver left the ground.
Some of the key activists who were instrumental in sparking the region's 2014 "umbrella movement" for more democracy were arrested June 28, thereby paving the way for few protests on Xi's first day in Hong Kong, according to CNN.
Despite the controversy surrounding Chan being Hong Kong Airlines’ celebrity ambassador, the Vancouver Airport Authority (VAA) has lent its support to its new airline partner.
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(Video: The Vancouver Airport Authority produced a comedic video that shows its CEO preparing for a showdown with Jackie Chan | VAA)
The airport’s communications staff made a comedic video dubbed Rumble at YVR, featuring VAA CEO Craig Richmond, who learns that Jackie Chan is on his way to Vancouver.
Richmond feigns to be preparing for a “showdown” with Chan by working out after wrapping a YVR headband on his head.
“With Rumble at YVR we wanted to create a fun piece of shareable content that would let people know Hong Kong Airlines is starting direct service to YVR on June 30,” said VAA spokesman Christopher Richards.
