Vanessa's Big Sell

How global business cashes in on an Asian superstar and vice versa.

When the Rado watch company launched its latest model in Basel, Switzerland, its marketing executives decided to fly in the glamorous young Asian violinist Vanessa-Mae especially to perform at the event. The reason: Rado wanted to symbolize both centuries-old Swiss watch-making tradition and new millennium innovation. And Vanessa-Mae, 21, the artiste who had almost single-handedly made classical violin music both modern and sexy - 'Paganini in hot pants', as one critic described her - is a living metaphor for that message. Explains Rado executive Deborah Rohmer: "She embodies the link between past and future."

Half a world away in Singapore, the people promoting a very different product, StarHub, a full-service telecom provider, also decided Vanessa-Mae was the performer to strike the right chord at its product launch.

Just 4 days after the Rado event, London-based Vanessa-Mae arrived in the Lion City for 48 hours to co-star with Lee Kuan Yew at an invitation-only extravaganza for the great and the good to mark StarHub's midnight entry into a market previously monopolized by Singapore Telecom.

Why fly in Vanessa-Mae? Partly the attraction was that the vivacious violinist, who is of Chinese and Thai descent, was born in Singapore and spent the first four years of her life there.

But arguably of greater importance was her image. Says StarHub spokeswoman Shae Hung Yee: "She embodies the StarHub philosophy of challenging the norm."

Such decisions are not taken on a whim. Singapore has thrown open its telecom market to intense local and foreign competition. And StarHub, a consortium that includes heavyweights Singapore Technologies, Singapore Power, British Telecom and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, is investing $1.5 billion on network infrastructure alone.

StarHub's launch events were considered critical to the company's early success. And by bringing in Vanessa-Mae, the company was investing in a performer who has a proven track record of appearing in high-stakes launches.

Indeed few launches could have had more at stake than the introduction last year in London of the Rover car company's latest model. Even after being acquired by prestige German car-maker BMW, the British marque was widely perceived to be a failing brand. The new Rover 75 model had to succeed. Motoring writers dubbed it the last-chance saloon.

BMW spent $24 million promoting the new car. Then came the PR piece-de-resistance. Enter Vanessa-Mae standing atop the bonnet of a Rover 75 beside London's Tower Bridge playing a piece of music that incorporated the car horns of 75 Rovers, all painted in patriotic red, white and blue.

If that sounds corny, it worked. The Rover launch generated massive press and TV coverage. Awareness of the new model leapt from 7 percent to 63 percent. Although Rover's future subsequently again beame clouded when BMW later decided to sell out, the 75's launch has become a marketing case study. Comented advertisng industry magazine Campaign: The real achievement was generating positive coverage in a hostile media climate.

How much credit can a slip of a girl violinist take for such launches orchestrated by teams of marketing professionals? Quite a lot, it seems. Says a Hong Kong-based advertising executive who has no connection with any of her campaigns: "When companies buy Vanessa-Mae for their ads or promotions, they get more a lot more than a virtuoso musician. Her extraordinary talent, looks, sex appeal and Asian-ness have been perfectly packaged into a commercial whole."

And that packaging works as well for Vanessa-Mae as it does for her clients. Says the executive: "It does not take a rocket scientist to realize Vanessa-Mae is using more than her violin to make her millions."

While neither Vanessa-Mae nor the companies that hire her will talk numbers, it has been estimated that since she burst onto the music scene as a child prodigy 10 years ago, she has earned more than $45 million from concerts, including an increasing number of product launches, and another $10 million from album sales.

Back in 1996, she was already featuring on a list of Britain's wealthiest women even though she was only 17 at the time. With earnings that year of $1.4 million, she ranked number 33, ahead of the likes of actress Joan Collins and singer Sade.

And since then, her earning power has risen sharply. Increasingly too, she is in demand in Asia and by Asian entrepreneurs doing business in the West. Although now a British citizen, she publicly embraced her roots with her second album, 'China Girl'.

In 1997, Vanessa-Mae performed at the Hong Kong handover, playing a 'reunification overture' she composed herself. Soon after, she followed that up with an open-air concert to mark the opening of Hong Kong entrepreneur David Tang's Shanghai Tang store in Madison Avenue, New York. That she was chosen by the fastidious Tang says much for her marketing power. To promote his Hong Kong store that same year he chose actress Gong Li, but only after discounting Cindy Crawford and Jackie Chan.

Last year, when Malaysian tycoon Lim Goh Tong's Star Cruises line launched its latest vessel, the Superstar Virago, Vanessa-Mae was picked to perform on its maiden voyage and, subsequently, at an anniversary party for Lim's Genting casino. Most recently, she has become part of a $5 million advertising campaign for Hong Kong-based Mandarin-Oriental Hotels - the most expensive ever by the luxury chain.

The Mandarin Oriental ads feature Vanessa-Mae and other celebrities including supermodels Jerry Hall and Elle McPherson, movie actresses Michelle Yeoh and Jane Seymore, author Frederick Forsyth and British aristocrat Lord Lichfield, who also took the photographs.

Chantal Hooper, Mandarin Oriental's group public relations manager, says Vanessa-Mae was chosen because "among the celebrities, we wanted to feature Asians who were known internationally. Vanessa-Mae is culturally attractive and she appeals to a wide audience."

Hooper says she also costs a lot of money to hire. However, on this occasion, the violinist and her management were using their business savvy on behalf of charity. Vanessa-Mae donated her fee to the Save the Children Fund.

But her growing popularity in Asia is not detracting from her appeal to non-Asian businesses. Indeed, the German conglomerate Siemens hired her to compose the ring tone for one of the company's mobile phones. And in New Zealand last year to promote her third classical album, 'The Original Four Seasons', no one saw her live in concert, but millions saw her and her band performing Bach's 'Toccata' during television commercials for the national lottery.

What makes Vanessa-Mae so interesting a case study in celebrity marketing is her own impeccably packaged background.

After her China-born mother, Pamela, divorced her Thai-born father, Vorapong Vanakorn, and married British lawyer Graham Nicholson, the family moved to London, where a year later Vanessa-Mae started violin studies.

At 11, she was described by the Royal College of Music director Michael Gough Matthews as 'like Mozart and Mendelssohn before her time, a true child prodigy.' At 13, she recorded Beethoven and Tchaikovsky concertos with the London Symphony.

In 1993, Vanessa-Mae signed a contract wth the classics section of recording company EMI. Under the co-management of her mother and promoter Mel Bush, the career path of the violinist then veered radically.

Her first album, 'The Violin Player', not only tapped into the boom in 'crossover' music, fusing classical and pop. It also injected sex. On the cover: Vanessa-Mae emerging from the sea in a very wet, slinky and see-through dress. From then on, the blossoming beauty began appearing on stage in hot pants, knee-high leather boots and displaying an exposed midriff. She was dubbed the Madonna of classical music. 'The Violin Player' sold 2.8 million copies.

What helped has been her own flair for publicity. She claims the Violin Player cover was her idea. And although once described by an interivewer as having the 'poise and hauteur of a senior Tiffany shop assistant', she generally comes over well in the media.

Last year, Vanessa-Mae, an enthusiastic skier who is dating the son of the mayor of Val d'Isere, a French ski resort, endeared herself to Thais - and particularly her local sponsor, the Siam Motor Co. - by revealing she was interested in acquiring Thai citizenship in the hope that she can represent Thailand in the 2002 Winter Olympics.

This month, she is even coming to the aid of the classical music industry that spawned her. In recent years, classical music's share of the $1.6 million British music business has fallen from 7.3 to 5.9 percent of the market. In a bid to reverse the trend, industry bosses are launching the Classical Brit Awards at London's Royal Albert Hall on May 6. And Vanessa-Mae is one of the big-name artists brought in to promote the event.

Earlier this year, Vanessa-Mae earned herself a rare piece of negative publicity when it was reported she had sacked her mother as her manager and would in future be handled solely by Mel Bush. The violinist vehemently disputed use of the word 'sack', but agreed she had decided it was time to spread her wings.

For his part, promoter Bush described the situation as 'business as usual.' Given Vanessa-Mae's subsequent flurry of lucrative launch appearances, nobody would dispute that.