Chinese Internet stars and Mu Mu molls

Hedgehog Mu Mu: no advertising contract for her

Sam Flemming, the man behind the China Word of Mouth blog and BBS monitoring service CIC Data, has posted a piece on the growing commercial success of China’s Internet stars:

1010job.com picked up JuHua Jie Jie (菊花姐姐) (the William Hung for China) for a series of TVC’s earlier this year…

…Pepsi picked up the Back Dorm Boys (后舍男生) for its Pepsi Creative Challenge campaign and for their Mydadada campaign. The boys are also in a TVC with Nicolas Xie for the new Pepsi Max drink…

…Most significantly, a couple of months ago, Sony Ericsson picked Tian Xian Mei Mei (天仙妹妹) as spokesperson for its “Simple Happiness” series of low end mobile phones. This “pure country girl” from Sichuan who became all the rage on Tom.com and Tianya.com BBS, was plastered on Sony Ericsson promotion media all over Shanghai (and I guess the rest of China): on light boxes on Huai Hai Road, in store displays (right next to their Da Vinci Code promotion), and on brochures…

…We are also beginning to see that some potential net stars are promoting themselves with success, such as dodolook. For months, she has been making her self promotion videos and even her own ads for brands.

Read the whole thing: China ‘net stars commercial trend continues — it includes plenty of images and analysis of BBS chatter about Tianxian MM.

As blogging and podcasting become the new routes to fame and fortune in the entertainment business in China, people will try different methods of getting famous overnight. The easiest way is, of course, sex.

A recent example: Earlier this month blog portal Bokee held a Blogging Babe competition, in which the winner was chosen based on votes from Netizens as well as a panel of judges. Criteria included both beauty and evaluations of the blogger babes’ writing. One of the contestants, named Hedgehog Mu Mu (刺猬木木), posted nude pictures of herself to her blog, resulting in soaring traffic and a lot of votes from the public.

She did not win the Bokee competition, but she got well-known enough to be interviewed by cynical Beijing video podcaster Pang Dahai (胖大海), who forces her to explain why she thinks her nude photos are art, and makes her look rather foolish (link to video below).

Note: Hedgehog Mu Mu has nothing to do with the original Mu Mu, a girl in Shanghai who posted sexy video’s of herself dancing and removing her clothes. The New York Times published a story about her in November last year, A Party Girl Leads China’s Online Revolution, but she declined to make revolution and gave up blogging in March this year.