CMO STRATEGY
Edited by
Natalie Zmuda,
nzmuda@adage.com
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What do you do when your
business outpaces your brand?
Lenovo might be the world’s No. 2 computer maker, but it is
still a relatively unknown brand in most corners of the globe
■ BY BETH SNYDER BULIK bbulik@adage.com
LENOVO IS the No. 2 computer maker
in the world. But when it comes to
overall brand awareness and consumer affinity, it trails rivals. Lenovo
has yet to crack Interbrand’s annual
Top 100 global brand list, while some
of its chief competitors, such as HP
and Apple, have been on the list for
years.
Chief Marketing Officer David
Roman is on a mission to change all
that. He’s intent on building Lenovo
into a power brand, and he’s got the
rest of the company onboard.
Building the brand is now one of
three key strategic priorities for
Lenovo.
Besides strong company backing,
Mr. Roman has other assets. Lenovo is
already global and is a force in its
home country, China, as well as India.
It’s also popular in certain market segments, such as business-to-business,
where its high-end ThinkPad line is
well-regarded.
Most important, it has sales
momentum, bypassing Dell and Acer
in recent months, according to IDC.
Lenovo recorded sales of $7.8 billion in
its most recent fiscal quarter, ending in
September, an increase of 35% from
the year-ago period.
Mr. Roman, a former top marketing exec at Apple and HP, recently
assembled a team of about 15 people
to focus on the brand experience,
which he defines as including social
media, design, branded content, retail
experience, event and strategic
engagement and partnerships. The
team, half located in Singapore and
half in Raleigh, N.C., is a combination
of new and veteran employees with a
variety of titles, from art directors to
brand strategists.
“The business is way ahead of the
brand,” Mr. Roman said. “We’re No. 2
in the industry; yet outside of key
countries like China and India, and
outside of key markets like industrial,
the brand is not well-known. … There
is a tremendous opportunity for the
brand to catch up.”
Targeting the 18- to 35-year-old
consumer market and leveraging part-
nerships to gain credibility, particularly
with that audience, are two areas of
focus.
Like its target audience, Lenovo is
young, created less than 10 years ago
when China’s largest PC maker, the
Legend Computer Group, decided to
expand globally. The 2-year-old
Lenovo made waves in the PC industry
when it bought IBM’s consumer PC
division, and its ThinkPad and
ThinkCentre line of products, in 2005.
BRAND
BUILDING
CMO David Roman
and Tracey Trachta,
VP-branded content,
are working to
increase awareness
of and affinity for the
Lenovo brand.
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keting community, in general, I think
we’re all getting used to that,” Mr.
Roman said. “Especially with this
youth market, where you don’t have
control of your brand anyway.”
Tracey Trachta, Lenovo’s first VP-
branded content, added that “partner-
ships are a jump-start to gain recogni-
tion. ... There’s something their brand
has that we’re hungry for, and their
brand halo extends to us.”
Lenovo’s philosophy for targeting
the youth market is decidedly open-
minded and acknowledges that group’s
digital prowess.
“We really recognize that we don’t
create our brand—they do,” said
Ms. Trachta, who worked with
Mr. Roman at HP. “It’s how they inter-
act with their friends and what they say
about us when they’re not talking to
us.”
“For Those Who Do” is the global
brand umbrella theme. It was created
by Publicis Groupe’s Saatchi & Saatchi
and is intended to appeal to young
consumers.
“The youth market values most
what they’re doing with technology. If
you look at the ads, you’ll see that the
focus is not on the product or even on
the users, but what they’re doing with
it,” Mr. Roman said.
While celebrating action is the
overarching theme around the globe,
creative executions vary from region
to region. In Mexico and elsewhere in
Latin America, for instance, Lenovo
held a competition called “Los Doers.”
In Japan, the campaign has a
celebrity spokesperson, former soccer
star Hidetoshi Nakata, at the center of
its “Do Project.”
In other countries, including India
and Russia, Lenovo has created a “Do
Network” that engages “doers” with
projects such as the YouTube Space
Lab partnership. High-school students
compete to have their experiment con-
ducted aboard the International Space
Station. (Lenovo is an official technol-
ogy provider to the space station.)
In the U.S., the campaign kicked off
with a 60-second TV spot that laid out
the “do” theme, while smaller, subsequent campaigns focused on specifics
such as its Rapid Boot technology. In
one ad, Lenovo throws a PC out of an
airplane and it must “save itself” by
booting up quickly and deploying a
parachute.
Some of the brand-building efforts
have been under way for almost a
year, and the needle is beginning to
move in Lenovo’s quest to make
Interbrand’s Top 100 list. Consumer
purchase consideration, for instance,
was relatively flat from November
2010 through March 2011, but doubled from March through November
2011, Mr. Roman said.
For future growth, Lenovo is banking on its relatively new line of tablets,
its ultrabooks (high-end superthin lap-tops) and its smartphones, currently
available only in China.
“We’re still in the early stages [of
building the brand], but it’s a good
beginning,” Mr. Roman said. “And
because the business is doing so well,
we don’t have some of the short-term
pressures that marketing sometimes
feels.”
