The Mintz Dynasty

Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the company DMG as Digital Media Group. It has been changed to reflect the company's correct name, Dynamic Marketing Group.

Like many people, Dan Mintz takes the time to meet his business associates at the airport; unlike most, he does it in a chauffeured Mercedes S600, escorted by a Shanghai police car. The Benz pulls right to the belly of the 747 inching its way to the gate, and the Staten Islander emerges into the brisk evening air--a bundle of affable, regular-guy energy in black pants, a sweater, and sneakers--and bounds up a stairway specially positioned so that he can intercept his colleague, Chris Fenton, before he gets siphoned off down the jetway and into an interminable customs line. As the pair emerges, joking, from the plane, nine Chinese military police officers stand at solemn attention along the path to the waiting car. Fenton sinks gratefully into the backseat while Mintz, the founder and head of Dynamic Marketing Group, one of China's fastest-rising advertising agencies, dispatches an employee with Fenton's passport to claim his luggage and handle customs. "We don't wait on lines here," Mintz explains with a smile.

It is an impressive red-carpet show by any standard, but as guanxi goes, this particular display has become standard procedure for Mintz. Translated literally, guanxi (pronounced gwan-she) means "relationship building"; in practice, it means carefully cultivated clout, a culturally calibrated measure of respect, influence, and honor. It is a personal as well as political form of capital, and Mintz--who moved here a dozen years ago as a freelance commercial director with no contacts, no advertising experience, and no Mandarin--insists it's the key to navigating the country's booming business world and the corridors of government power that feed into it.

"Basically, China either works for you or against you," he says. "The risks are high, but so is the payoff. Here, now, it is the good old days."

A Roll of the Dice

It certainly looks that way: Billings in the Chinese ad business, which came in at an estimated $10.4 billion last year, are expected to hit $14 billion for 2007, and the country is likely to become the world's second-largest media market by 2014. In fact, China will be the world's second-largest economy by 2020, built around a middle class set to grow from 110 million people today to more than 150 million; GDP should quadruple by that year, to $4 trillion. What's more, explains Normandy Madden, editor of AdAgeChina.com, "China's ad industry is now really opening up to independent shops because foreigners no longer need a local partner to get a license to operate."

But these good old days were a long time coming. When Mintz arrived in Beijing back in 1990 to scout locations for a TV commercial, there was no gleaming Blade Runner-esque skyline. The city was low-slung and dingy; infrastructure was grim; you couldn't even rent a car. That all-consuming Chinese middle class was a faint and distant hope. And the recent unpleasantness at Tiananmen Square meant that the only military escort offered to a white guy with a camera was the kind that ended in a cold, dank cell.

Still, Mintz, who's now 41, couldn't get enough of the place. For a few years, he shuttled between New York and Beijing, feeling his way. But China simply wasn't "the kind of place you could freelance in," he realized, so in 1993 he made the move for real. With a few thousand dollars and help from a local producer who eventually became his partner in DMG, Mintz set up shop in a Beijing apartment complex reserved for Westerners.

At a time when American businesses were scarce in China, Mintz's move was a bold one. (Asked how he screwed up the courage, he confesses with a chuckle, "I'm friggin' nuts!") But with few locals able to compete with his American-made production skills, he was soon creating spots for Budweiser, Unilever, Sony, Nabisco, Audi, and Kraft, plus scores of Chinese brands. Before long, his crew had moved into a two-story loft-style office and production studio (their new 30,000-square-foot digs in Beijing occupy the top two floors and roof deck of a modern high-rise) and expanded DMG's presence in Shanghai, the country's business hub (where its offices feature a three-story-high entryway, two-story waterfall, sunken fish tank, exterior deck with a pond and bridge, and Mintz's red Porsche 911 Turbo parked on the sidewalk).