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Celebrity Endorsers Take On International Flavor

Marketers have used celebrity endorsers to help them market their products and services for many years, but that trend has been taking a decidedly international turn of late for at least one major marketer--Motorola. In the 1940s, the company used actress Betty Grable to help them sell radios--and later, star baseball pitcher Bob Feller promoted the company's television sets. Now Motorola's hot item is cell phones, and the advertiser has called on the likes of international rock star Bono, British soccer player David Beckham, and Indian actor Abhishek Bachchan to serve as endorsers. The move is not surprising, given the international flavor of the cell phone business, particularly since the fastest-growing markets are countries like China, Brazil, and India. The "USA matters less and less" in the cell phone business, said a report this week from Albert Lin, an analyst at American Technology Research. The U.S. will account for about 16 percent of global phone shipments in 2006, down from 20 percent five years ago. And Motorola is not alone; the marketer's efforts are mirrored in other U.S. businesses that increasingly rely on international markets. Fast food marketer McDonald's, for instance, has long featured Olympic stars from several countries as endorsers in their homelands.

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