Boeing To Co-Star In Chinese TV Miniseries -- Role In Drama To Promote Brand Recognition For Jets

Some companies are gladly paying millions of dollars for a few moments of prime advertising on the final episode of Seinfeld.

But Boeing has pulled an even bigger marketing coup: The company is bringing its products into millions of homes in China by television. Free.

That's publicity money can't buy. And it begins this month, when Chinese viewers get a glimpse of Boeing operations in a 20-part television drama about a Chinese airline and its cooperation with an American corporate giant. The series also will catapult Marta Newhart, a Boeing communications manager, to the unlikely role as co-star of a Chinese television show.

"Chinese Pilot," a drama sponsored and initiated by Air China, the nation's flag-carrying airline, features Boeing prominently. Several segments were filmed in Seattle as actors portrayed Chinese pilots learning to fly 747-400s.

Although it's aimed at the evening television audience in China, the soap-style series also became an infomercial for Boeing. With an estimated 250 million television sets in China, the potential audience is huge.

Such exposure, bringing brand recognition to Boeing and its jets, is especially valuable to the manufacturer in China, where there is a projected market for as many as 1,900 jetliners worth $124 billion over the next 20 years.

More than 70 percent of the commercial airliners flown in China have been produced by Boeing, which has been selling there since 1972. Competition from Europe's Airbus Industrie has been building in the past few years, so it is increasingly important for Boeing to boost its image.

Boeing has spent several hundred million dollars in China, providing training and helping the Chinese develop infrastructure for airports, air traffic control, safety and other aspects of the nation's growing aviation industry. The company has an office in Beijing and an aircraft parts center there. It also buys parts from several Chinese suppliers.

But, for the most part, these activities are invisible to people in China.

"This series will do a lot for Boeing products, and for airlines and aviation, getting people comfortable with travel and learning about airplanes and aviation products," said Ron Woodard, president of Boeing Commercial Airplane Group. "It also demonstrates our long relationships there."

This is only the second time Boeing has worked with an airline on a film. The other, with Singapore Airlines, was more of a documentary, Woodard said.

Understanding the kind of attention the venture would bring his company in China, Woodard said it took "about three seconds" for him to agree to the filming at Boeing centers.

He was asked for access for the filmmakers by Air China President Yin Wen Long, a pilot and an official of the government aviation industry in China. The request was made during a meeting in Beijing in 1996. The series became Yin's pet project.

A crew of more than 40 came to Seattle from China in June for the filming. They also filmed in San Francisco, on a Kentucky horse ranch, and in Paris, Italy and Egypt.

Besides boosting an awareness of Boeing, the series gets personal, too.

It boosts one of Boeing's managers to television stardom, albeit in another country. Newhart, an international communications manager assigned to coordinate the filming, ended up, reluctantly, with the lead female role.

She plays Louise, a Boeing flight instructor, in the series that focuses on the lives and careers of three generations of Chinese pilots, including their training at Boeing.

Five episodes of the series were filmed at the Boeing Customer Services Training Center at Longacres and in its Flight Center at Boeing Field. The production crew also rented a trilevel home in Auburn to serve as Louise's home in the film.

In the television drama, Louise is a loyal Boeing employee and a single mother whose husband recently had been killed. A subtle love triangle develops with two Chinese pilots. Since you won't get to see the film, we'll tell you that they leave her behind in the end.

Chinese television stars You Yong and Wang Shi Huai portray captains whose adventures make up the story line. Two Seattle actors also had parts, Richard Liedle as an American pilot, and 9-year-old Jesse Lee Thomas, who played the role of Daniel, Louise's son. Other locals had bit parts.

In promotional material about the series, film director Zhang Yu said Newhart fit the part he had in mind for an American actress the minute he saw her, as he stepped off the airplane at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

She refused the acting role at first because her job was to work with the filmmakers on Boeing's behalf and to see that all details portrayed in the drama were correct.

"I had no acting experience and I'm not a movie-goer, so I was unfamiliar with the industry," Newhart said. But her co-workers and husband, Manfred, also a pilot and Boeing employee, persuaded her to take the assignment.

She got no extra pay for acting and continued handling arrangements for the film crew in between filming sessions.

"I brought my laptop computer and cell phone and used spare moments to keep up with job-related assignments. The days were strenuous, intense and long - 15 hours, seven days a week," she said.

The other actors spoke Chinese. "I had no clue what they were saying," Newhart said. Her conversation is translated in subtitles. She was given her lines each morning, allowing no time to study ahead.

It's an experience she'll never forget - and likely won't repeat. Already, extensive promotion for the series has put her in the spotlight. She was recognized by fans when attending a recent cast party in Beijing.

Newhart's Boeing job involves China. Her future visits there will have a new aspect, being a public figure, a prospect she finds more than a little overwhelming.

An Olympia native, Newhart joined Boeing 12 years ago as a parts buyer. She had just graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in international business. She later moved into international sales and, last year, became manager of international communications for China and Singapore for Boeing Commercial Airplane Group.

Polly Lane's phone message number is 206-464-2149. Her e-mail address is: plane@seattletimes.com