Lenovo’s Rebranding Efforts Pay off

Lenovo’s Rebranding Efforts Pay Off (www.lenovo.com)^[1]

Lenovo Group Limited’s acceleration to becoming the world number two PC vendor represents one of the major Chinese company success stories over the past two decades.  Lenovo was founded in Beijing in 1984 and incorporated in Hong Kong in 1988 under its previous name, Legend. Partly due to trademark issues and partly due to a need to have a modern forward-looking brand name the Legend brand was re-branded in 2004.  

The Fortune 500 firm is a multinational information technology and electronics company co-headquartered in Beijing, Singapore and Morrisville, North Carolina.The personal technology company had salesof $21 billion in 2011.  By market share, Lenovo is the world's second-largest PC vendor (after Hewlett-Packard).   According to the company’s Web site，Lenovo’s business is built on product innovation, a highly efficient global supply chain，and strong strategic execution. The company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services.  Lenovo’s product lines include Think-branded commercial PCs and Idea-branded consumer PCs, as well as servers, workstations and mobile internet devices, including tablets and smart phones.

The company markets its product to 160 countries and continues to strive to increase market share and brand performance.  Lenovo faces numerous global marketing challenges, but the biggest challenge that they face is to establish a brand image, in other words, building a trusted and respected brand.  

In essence, the challenge simply revolves around creating a global brand identity. With major players such as Apple, HP, and Dell, it is a daunting task to try to establish a presence in an industry that is already so competitive. The dualpurposes of the sponsorship of two different Olympics (2006, 2008) as well as the National Basketball Association are to expand brand awareness and create brand credibility.In 2011, for its first-ever global branding campaign, Lenovo selected Saatchi & Saatchi’s concept: “For Those Who Do.” The slogan brings to mind Nike’s “Just Do It.” Just as Nike emphasized what athletes could do in its shoes, [the CEO] says, Lenovo is spotlighting how people use its computers–”do machines,” in the campaign’s parlance.In North America, ad placements on the popular television series “Glee” using the marketing slogan “For Those Who Do” are intended to improve the brand’s image among younger consumers.

The company is also investing significantly to improve products.  Lenovo has two design teams who work together on operations and product  development. They also launched an improved consumer unit to facilitate services to individuals as well as large enterprises, and are working on education affinity programs as well.  

One of the paths of growth for the company was through acquisition of other companies.  In 2005 Lenovo acquired the personal computer division of IBM which allowed it to obtain a major notebook brand, the ThinkPad and to add credibility to the company’s products in international markets.