100 million Chinese people are putting their eyeballs on the Houston Rockets games,” says Andrew Elliot, Senior Director of Strategic Marketing at ZTE. The Chinese company partnered with the Houston Rockets in 2013 before adding the New York Knicks and Cleveland State Warriors to their roster in October 2014. According to Mr. Elliot, the success of the brand awareness campaign in the U.S. has been the biggest driver for signing more teams. “We measured the brand awareness and it went up pretty significantly form less than 1% [in 2013] to more than 16% [in 2014],” he said. It’s the first partnership between Google and a Chinese smartphone vendor, and marks the Chinese company’s changing brand direction.