| Andrew Ballen | |
|---|---|
Andrew Ballen Shanghai, 2008. |
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| Born | Andrew Craig Ballen 27th April 1973 Manhattan, New York, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | CEO/Founder of AVD Media Group, A&R Executive, Social Media Content developer, TV Personality |
| Years active | 2003-present |
| Religion | Episcopal |
| Awards | Caribbean American Heritage Awards “Vanguard Award” recipient (2008)[1] Credited by CNN Money Magazine with helping to bring Hip Hop and club culture to China (2001)[2] |
| Website | |
| www.avdmg.com | |
Andrew Craig Ballen (born April 27, 1973, New York, NY) is a Jamaican-American television producer, A&R executive, entrepreneur and television personality, based in Shanghai, China.
More often known as Da Long (大龙), or Big Dragon, he is a familiar foreign-face on Chinese TV.[3] Ballen is known throughout China for his role as host of China’s first and most popular nationally aired bi-lingual travel series, Getaway, and as a talent judge on the multi-media reality show REMIX. He is also Chief Executive and Founder of the multi-media content business AVD Media Group, and is credited with introducing Hip Hop and club culture to China’s youth.[4]
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Ballen was born in New York, NY.[4] He is the son of Belize-born and Jamaican parents, Sandra, an artist and Patrick, a general surgeon.[3] Ballen was raised in Greensboro, North Carolina by his father and step-mother, Naomi with sisters Sharon and Jennifer. As an early adolescent Ballen engaged in some riotous antics that convinced his parents he needed greater structure and intellectual challenge than the public schools in Greensboro could provide. After a battery of intellectual and psychological tests affirmed their instincts, his parents decided he would do best in the highly structured and challenging environment of a military college preparatory school. The decision was a good one, because though Ballen would remain an intellectual rebel and outside of the box thinker, the change of environment positively impacted and possibly saved his life. At the age of 14, Ballen left home to attend Hargrave Military Academy, in Chatham, Va. In Ballen’s senior year at Hargrave, he attained the rank of Corps Commander, becoming the first person of colour in school history to do so.[5] Ballen majored in Political Science and International Affairs at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill[4] in the mid 1990s, he was inducted into Pi Sigma Alpha (National Political Science Honor Society) and earned a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in International Affairs. Ballen's Woodrow Wilson Fellowship recommendation was written by Columbia Professor of Sociology Peter Bearman, who was a professor at UNC during Ballen’s undergraduate studies there. Ballen served as Bearman’s undergraduate teaching assistant in his Sociology 010 course. Bearman's use of a few select undergraduates as paid Teaching Assistants was a controversial move, but Ballen credits Bearman's faith in him as a major boost to his unorthodox intellectual style and confidence. Ballen spent summer internships pursuing his interest in sound public policy, spending a particularly rewarding summer writing health insurance policy recommendations for the Lt. Governor of North Carolina Dennis A. Wicker. He later attended Duke University Law School, in Durham, North Carolina. Ballen left Duke after two unsuccessful years, unsatisfied with the constraints of a legal education.[4]
Ballen began his journey in Shanghai on August 29, 2001, roughly two weeks before 9/11. He arrived in China with a thousand dollars worth of traveller’s cheques given him by his father. He came with his then girlfriend, driven Ballen says “by a desire to prove to myself and the world that I could build success on my own terms, even on the other side of the world”.[2]
A recent law school drop-out, unable to speak a word of Mandarin, with no contacts in China, Ballen first found work teaching English at the Wall Street Institute.[3] While teaching he discovered a natural talent for Mandarin, which mixed with a wry but warm sense of humour landed him several guest appearances on Shanghai Media Group entertainment programming and a regular guest slot on the popular Shanghai talk show Live It Up Shanghai.[6] Ballen immediately noticed that there were several unorthodox ways to commercialize some of China’s under-utilized media platforms. Leveraging China’s yet un-commercialized media platforms later became a key trademark of Ballen’s business style.[7]
A long time hip-hop lover, it was while frequenting Shanghai night spots that he and long-time friend Adam Wilkes[8] observed China’s lack of a hip-hop and urban club scene. This led to the idea of Hip Hop Thursday’s, held at popular night club, Pegasus,[3] targeting the younger international student crowd. Ballen and Pegasus were featured in the fly-on-the-wall documentary No Sleep Til Shanghai.[9] The weekly parties became highly successful, leading Ballen to bring to China for the first time the likes of Crooklyn Clan, Ice-T, Coolio, DJ Jazzy Jeff and Asian-American hip-hop artists Far East Movement and MC Jin.[10] serving as the benchmark formula for other clubs in Shanghai and Beijing.[11] Ballen's unorthodox entertainment-driven success was covered in a book by Darren J. Perkins entitled Business is War: The Unfinished Business of Black America[12]
Ballen was also the first A&R Exec. to have Chinese mega-star Leehom Wang perform in a club setting,.[13] when he presented the MC Jin/Leehom Wang collaboration to promote Leehom’s single and studio album “Heroes of the Earth”.[14] Asian-American rapping upstart Tim Wu opened for MC Jin and Leehom at Ballen’s Pernod-Ricard sponsored 2006 club concert series.
In 2002, a well-connected Wall Street Institute student recommended Ballen to radio personality Michelle Wu to become her co-host on popular local radio show “Live It Up Shanghai”, thus starting off his media career.[3] He quickly saw that no sponsors or advertising existed for the show – the same being true later for his TV show Getaway.[15] Ballen seized on this gap in the market, starting his own company (BallenWest Events Media, later AVD Media Group) targeting sponsors seeking China’s youth market and bi-lingual white collar college graduates.[3]
Ballen went on to host China’s first and most popular nationally aired bi-lingual travel adventure series, Getaway from 2003 until 2007.[3] No other non-Chinese presenter hosted a nationally broadcast TV series for a longer duration. On Getaway, Ballen toured China by car, conversing with locals and exploring local culture and cuisine, starring in hundreds of episodes.[15] Getaway appeared on Dragon TV and Channel Young and later aired nationally on CCTV News, and currently airs on ICS.[3]
Several brands have used Ballen’s voice based on its distinctive gravelly bass sound, including China Bank of Communications, McDonald’s, Motorola and Toshiba.[2]
Ballen also served as co-host and co-producer of China's first nationally broadcast Western Pop Music radio show I-music.[7]
In 2008, as China hosted the Beijing Summer Olympics, Ballen was responsible for handling Jamaica’s media, event production and public relations activities, including all event programming related to Jamaican track and field sensation Usain Bolt.[16] His company and partners were the only organization in China permitted to bring foreign artists into Beijing (for non-IOC sanctioned event programming) hosting the likes of Paolo Nutini and Bob Marley's son Julian Marley for Beijing Olympic concert appearances.[17]
In 2011, Ballen’s Company launched China’s first bi-lingual reality series, REMIX, a talent series for amateur young Chinese performers.[4] With auditions via online micro-videos, winners are pitched against Chinese and Western stars to see whose version of global hits is best. REMIX is shown across China and Asia on TV and online. REMIX is the first content plug that inserts content into a newly established 020 (online-to-offline) business model, tying content to offline branded events, that in turn link with online social media and video-based community building, that will in turn reinforce the offline event activations creating a symbiotic cycle of growth.
PBS and Tavis Smiley featured Ballen in their weeklong 2011 expose’ entitled China Week. During the interview Ballen made the startling assertion that he believed “China and its system of governance [had] positively redefined social justice”. Ballen’s interview was the highest rated programme on PBS in 2011 and has subsequently re-aired twice[19] View entire interview here.