The Guanghua School of Management (affiliated to Beida – Beijing University) invited Gilbert to give a speech during their Forum on 5 January. The topic of his speech: “How Chinese companies can use sponsorship of the 2008 Olympics to make their brands known in the international market”. Basically it all bois down to say Chinese companies can only do it properly through their websites. There are some legal limitations for what they can do outside of China. Unfortunately most of those companies have lousy websites… few have English sections and many fail to give a clear picture of what they really do and what their involvement is in the 2008 Olympics.
In an earlier seminar with the same topic, a not-so-very-bright journalist from “The Economic Observer” (a Chinese newspaper in Beijing) totally missed the point (what’s new?) and basically wrote Gilbert was so negative with his criticism right in front of the sponsors. Oh well, too bad for her, she called Gilbert some days ago for another interview and he was “too busy”.
At least somebody listened after the first seminar – BOCOG’a website was promptly changed and improved one week later (Sohu people were in the audience…).

Long Yongtu – Gilbert speaking – the Q&A session

The Guanghua Forum was a real big event, Mr. Long Yongtu and other VIPs were all in the spotlight. Gilbert felt frustrated (again): he was the only English speaker and the whole forum was conducted in Chinese. Yeah, yeah, I know, I should improve my Chinese. But it was interesting to meet and discuss with some of the other participants (Volkswagen, Cisco, Panasonic, etc.).
The day was closed with a banquet with performances and a lucky draw. The festivity was sponsored by…. Wuliangye, one of the famous white spirits of China (actually quite good, I prefer it over Moutai). OK, I guess no any MBA School in the USA could be sponsored for such an event by a hard liquor company. This is China. We even have THREE beer sponsors for the Olympics. I was hoping that Davidoff Cigars would be one too but, no luck.
I had the honor of popping up the bottle of champagne (well, something vaguely similar) together with Mr. Ren Zhi-qiang (president of Beijing Hua Yuan Group, one of the major real estate companies here).

I can do this! Oops, where did the cork go? Making bubbles

Out of sympathy they let me him win one (more) bottle of Wuliangye. To show my appreciation (the Wuliangye guy was sitting at my table), I kept busy taking care of one of the bottles. (I did have a sound sleep later). The liquor was that strong I even saw a foreign girl floating in the air! I took even a picture!