Photo of the Day: Ronaldo Selling Great Wall SUVs

This week’s photo theme is World Cup Stars Selling Shit — you can start here with Messi’s Milk.

Having featured Lionel Messi yesterday, we naturally have to feature Cristiano Ronaldo today. The Portuguese talisman is known as C罗 (“C Luo”) in China, largely because by the time commentators have read out his full Chinese name 克里斯蒂亚诺·罗纳尔多 during a game, the action will have switched to the other end of the pitch.

It also helps distinguish him from the Brazilian Ronaldo, who incidentally used to advertise throat lozenges in China:

One of C Luo’s commercial tie-ups here is also in the health sphere, with Mentholatum — a Chinese-Japanese joint venture — having signed the entire Portugal squad at this year’s World Cup to remind male Chinese fans that they need to look after their skin when watching games at 2am on a work night:

A Mentholatum ad on the Shanghai metro

Perhaps more interesting though is C Luo’s link up with “premium SUV” company WEY. The carmaker, based in Tianjin and a spin-off from Great Wall Motors, called the deal “part of the most exciting cross-border cooperation of 2018”, which seems a little over the top, but alright.

According to sportspromedia.com, Ronaldo added in a statement that definitely wasn’t written by the Chinese car firm’s PR department:

I was looking forward to cooperating with WEY when I knew WEY first, and that the VV7 demonstrates the power of Chinese vehicle brand. This is the first time for me to be an ambassador for Chinese luxury SUV brand. I hope my cooperation with WEY will bring more surprise to Chinese football fans.

Hopefully that doesn’t mean he’s not paying taxes on the cars or something, but it has at least led to some new C Luo stickers on the Chinese internet, so there’s that:

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Article Jun 20, 2018