The "From the Archives" Series Episode 2 - Life on the road as a Chivas Regal Brand Ambassador

It all started with a business card. Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe I was supposed to make the business card so that I'd start looking for ways to turn the vision it outlined into a reality. Depends on whether you believe in synchronicity or not I suppose:



I guess I should start by explaining the term "老外". In pinyin "laowai"; it's the word the Chinese use to refer to a foreigner, sort of in a tongue in cheek way; like "farang" in Thailand, "gwai lo" in Hong Kong, "gringo" in Latin America, and “gaijin” in Japan. And so "老外" (Laowai) Extra­ordinaire (24h Service), then, is like a Chinese version of the "Anything, Anywhere, Anytime" slogan coined by The Goodies (I’ve had this printed on a business card too!) -­ referring to the kind of foreigner who hangs around developing countries, and perhaps, some would say, capitalising on their foreign­ness, picks up all sorts of odd jobs where talent and actual qualifications and experience take a back seat to the requirement for a foreign face. The "socialite and celebrity for hire" line, then, follows from participating in these kinds of jobs and building up contacts over a period of time. Some of the bizarre requests that I'd had and jobs that I'd done during my 18 months in Nanjing (see previous post) -­ which made me realise that it was actually possible to achieve D­-grade celebrity status as a Chinese­-speaking foreigner if you chased it -­ were the inspiration for that section of the card.

Socialite and Celebrity For Hire

In March 2009, a colleague of mine who was doing some part-time work for the British Council forwarded me a job ad. They were seeking a Chinese-speaking caucasian male to give presentations about Chivas Regal 12YO Whisky and run Whisky tasting sessions for Chinese customers, all while wearing a kilt. I didn’t think twice. The gist of my email application was something like "my last name is Wallace, I speak Chinese and I like whiskey. And my legs will look great in a kilt". I'm pretty sure I sent them a copy of the business card too.

I remember telling Nan (my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time) about the job and saying “now that’s what ‘celebrity for hire’ means” (she had been involved in helping me translate the final version of the card after we just met, and was ridiculing me at the time for calling myself a celebrity for hire). It was almost as if the business card had become a self-­fulfilling prophecy. At the end of the shows, I even got to shake hands with the guests as they left, and sign Chivas gift packs. It was all so wonderfully D­-grade-celebrity­-style cheesy.

Putting on my cheesiest smile, 2009

Showing a bit of knee - what's under that kilt?

"Dr Chivas" in the Whiskey Lab, circa 2010

That ain't workin'...

Now, while flying around China on your weekends drinking Chivas in a kilt might sound like fun (and it was), it was also a lot of hard work. I had to learn a fairly complicated Chinese script with a lot of whiskey vocabulary, and be able to deliver it all at a sharp and witty pace alongside a Chinese MC. Often, my Saturdays would involve an 8am flight to a random Chinese city, followed by a dress rehearsal, then three 45 minute shows in the afternoon/evening. The day would then finish with the obligatory marathon Chinese dinner/drinks/karaoke, which would often involve more Chivas.

The job was, of course, not without its perks (as if free single malt whisky wouldn’t be enough of a perk for many people reading this). After being selected for the job, we had to undergo a whisky training day, which included sampling fine whiskies from all over the world, including a 25-year-old and even a 50-year-old whisky. To match the brand's image, we usually stayed in nice hotels too.

Frank, the Chivas product manager for China, was often quite generous with the company account, even after I’d finished all the shows. One summer, a friend was visiting Shanghai, and I was looking for a way to impress him with my “man about town” connections, which hadn’t yet developed to the point they once had in Nanjing. Thankfully, Frank came to the rescue. I casually inquired what he was doing that night (it was a Saturday after all), knowing full well that, as a man in his position, he was likely to have tickets to some alcohol sales promotional event involving lots of models serving free booze.

My hunch proved to be correct, and Frank got us tickets to a Bacardi pool party, complete with models in bikinis splashing each other in a pool, and lots of Shanghai’s beautiful people (a.k.a. “glitterati”, according to the invite for the next party that we were given as we left) mingling with expensive drinks while DJs spun subtly mixed retro tunes. Unfortunately, the Bacardi cocktails were also priced for the glitterati, but Frank, bless his heart, forbade us to pay money for a competitor’s drink, so he graciously bought yet another bottle of Chivas 18YO (in addition to the many that he'd bought for the crew after Chivas shows), which the three of us proceeded to polish off. And then it hit me that the final piece of the puzzle on my business card was now in place – I had become a Shanghai socialite!

And not just because I found myself socialising with the young, well-to-do Shanghai hipsters who ran the advertising agencies. Indeed, in working for Chivas I found myself coming into occasional contact with C-grade celebrities - the kind who were actually scraping a living out of their celebrity hustle and making regular appearances on Shanghai television. As an example, I went through my initial "ambassador training" with Dantes Dailiang, a French musician based in Shanghai who writes songs in Chinese - this video summarises his career nicely. Alas, I wasn't able to make the transition from D-grade celebrity to C-grade celebrity myself (see Table 1) before I left Shanghai in early 2013. 

 Table 1: Celebrity Grading Rubric (produced by author).

	Income	Media Exposure	UK football league equivalent
A-grade	Stupid money	Blockbuster Movies, Madison Square Gardens, etc.	Premier League
B-grade	Enough to live the stereotypical “rich” life - 6-7 figures	Straight to video movies, regular gigs at large festivals etc.	Championship
C-grade	Full-time hustle, enough to live well	Regional TV stations, indie films/albums	League 1-2
D-grade	Side hustle	Occasional regional TV appearances, Youtube Channel	Part-time National League Conference

Questioning the trade-offs

The novelty of working for Chivas as a Brand Ambassador - “customer mentoring” they called it – while wearing a kilt, sporran and long socks began to wear off after a while. Usually, we had to present and mingle with the clients in Chinese, but sometimes they wanted us to pretend that we didn't speak Chinese (presumably because it would seem more plausible that a whiskey expert from Scotland wouldn't know Chinese), which was surprisingly hard to do and could even be annoying at times. Without the challenge of delivering a Chinese script and wowing everybody with my Chinese, waiting backstage in a kilt, smiling for the camera and having to pretend to rely on Chinese colleagues for translations that I could do better myself got a bit stale after a while, and around about the spring of 2011 I began questioning the loss of free time vs extra money tradeoff. Sometimes they asked me to pretend I was from Scotland too, which could get tricky when audience members started asking too many questions. Here's my hilarious attempt at a posh accent - I hastily made the video after a Chivas contact invited me to apply for a Ballantine's promotional gig. In case you can't tell, I was reading from a teleprompter. 

After a hard day at the office, circa 2011

The magic returned; though, when I got a call from a different events management company, asking me to be the Brand Ambassador at a series of Chivas 25YO fine dining events. Apart from the fact that I got to drink 25-year-old whisky all evening, it was a sweet deal because the kilt was replaced with a suit, and I spent less time on stage and more time socialising with guests. After the initial nerves of the first night, subsequent shows were basically like getting paid to have fun. Sometimes they would even bust out cigars at the end of the dinner. And that's before I even start talking about the great nights out at some awesome jazz clubs in Beijing and Chengdu that were had with the Chinese jazz musicians who came along on the tour to provide the live music for the evening. 

All aboard the good ship Chivas 25!

The name's Wallace...Benson Wallace

It's a hard life being a D-grade celebrity.

Slange Var - it's Scottish for "Cheers".

Out on the town in Chengdu, 2012

Like a cricketer enjoying a return to form in their golden years, during that final 2012 tour of duty I was at the top of my Chivas Ambassador game, and I was putting runs in the bank while I still could. Sure, charging 3000RMB to go drink 25-year-old whiskey and socialise with rich people for a few hours was a great gig, but like all good things, it had to come to an end. One could argue that leaving Shanghai when I did killed my momentum and prevented me from making the leap to true C-grade celebrity status(!), but if I'm honest with myself, the writing was on the wall anyway. I could see it in the final Chivas training session that I attended, where I met new ambassador recruits who were younger and hungrier than I was, with better Chinese, and who I'm sure were willing to do the job for much less than I was. The job, much like the product it was promoting, was becoming commoditised, and it was time for me to stop chasing fame and start focusing on something more meaningful and sustainable.

Today, my kilt hangs on the wall (metaphorically speaking) as I sit by the fireplace (also metaphorical) sipping my single malt whiskey in a highball glass with a spherical steel ice cube (that part is real). If anything, "The Chivas Years" have given me some interesting stories to tell when sharing a scotch with someone. So look me up next time you're in my part of the world - I have a second steel ice cube ready for such occasions. Slange Var everybody!