The Mintz Dynasty

DMG's breakout moment, however, came when it won a full-scale Volkswagen brand campaign in 2004, the same year China became the German automaker's second-largest market. Initially, Mintz wasn't even supposed to make a pitch for the job--the VW brass gave him a shot as polite acknowledgment of the work DMG had done on their TV spots--but when he did, his years of immersion paid off. Instead of mechanically translating Volkswagen's then-slogan ("For the love of automobiles") into Chinese, Mintz's campaign tapped into ideas indigenous to the country. He based it on the traditional Chinese character for "heart," which is also found at the center of the traditional characters for words such as "loyalty," "wisdom," "ambition"--a host of virtues Mintz wanted to associate with various VW models. To create a suitably stirring soundtrack for the ads, Fenton, from his home base in Los Angeles, had secured the rights to "I Will Come to You," a Hanson ballad that goes straight for tear ducts (and eventually became a huge hit and a staple at Chinese weddings).

When Mintz arrived in Beijing 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. And that all-consuming Chinese middle class was a faint and distant hope.

Volkswagen was bowled over. But there was a hitch: As part of the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao had done away with traditional Chinese characters in favor of simplified versions; meanwhile, Taiwan, its perpetual enemy, had kept the ancient ideograms. To publish something with traditional characters in China has, for years, been deemed an act of treason.

As Mintz puts it, "They shoot you for s--t like that out here." But the simplified characters do not feature the "heart" character in the middle.

It was one of those moments where a business either takes a great leap forward or falls to its knees. An old China hand by now, however, Mintz was ready--and he wasn't alone. Back in his early directing days in Beijing, he'd befriended Bing Wu, a young producer on the small commercial film and video scene, and Peter Xiao, a finance whiz. Now partners in Mintz's company, both bring significant leverage to the table. In Bing's case, having grown up in China's elite Olympic sports program (literally--she was removed from her family as a small child to train) translated into both prestige and access for the former national gymnastics champion. Much of her time now is devoted to overseeing DMG's work on the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

"Peter," on the other hand, "is basically government and military," Mintz says. "He plays at the highest level of relationships." So when, for example, the American athletic marketing giant IMG tapped DMG to bring the World's Strongest Man Competition to China, it was Xiao who negotiated with the leadership of various Chinese cities to secure the best deal for the event. (It ended up in Chengdu and was broadcast to 40 million viewers.) "He's a financial guy," Mintz continues. "He deals with money, he deals with banks, and things like that, but his family is military. And not," he adds pointedly, "staff sergeants."

Having won over VW with his "heart" idea, Mintz now had to win over the Chinese, and he, Bing, and Xiao soon found themselves in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, lobbying the Politburo; the Ministry of Radio, Film, and Television; the Ministry of Propaganda, and numerous other officials. Their appeal turned on a technicality: The old characters should be thought of not as characters, they suggested, but as "pieces of art." Amazingly, it worked. The campaign went forward and VW and DMG's relationship was cemented.

"Why would you think people in government here all think the same when there's nowhere else in the world where that's the case?" Mintz asks. "It's like thinking every Chinese guy knows kung fu."

Even Mintz acknowledges that he didn't triumph that day on the strength of his presentation. "I believe in meetings being mostly formalities," he explains. "You don't walk in with these people cold." In other words, he took great care to know how his petition would be received before he even entered the Great Hall. Most Westerners, he says, "come in with these preconceptions that everyone in China gets along and whitey is the enemy. But why would you think people in government here all think the same when there's nowhere else in the world where that's the case? It's like thinking every Chinese guy knows kung fu."