INTRODUCTION

Lenovo Group Ltd. is a Chinese multinational computer technology company with headquarters
in Beijing, China, and Morrisvill, North Carolina, United States. It designs, develops,
manufactures and sells personal computers, smart phones, workstations, servers, electronic
storage devices, IT management software and smart televisions. In 2013 Lenovo was the world's
largest personal computer vendor by unit sales. Lenovo has operations in more than 60 countries
and sells its products in around 160 countries. Lenovo's principal facilities are in Beijing,
Morrisville and Singapore, with research centers in those locations, as well as Shanghai,
Shenzhen, Xiamen, and Chengdu in China, and Yamato in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. It
operates a joint venture with EMC, LenovoEMC, which sells network-attached storage solutions.
It also has a joint venture with NEC, Lenovo NEC Holdings, which produces personal computers
for the Japanese market.

HISTORY
Lenovo was founded in Beijing in 1984 as Legend and was incorporated in Hong Kong in 1988.
Lenovo acquired IBM's personal computer business in 2005 and agreed to acquire its Intel-based
server business in 2014. Lenovo entered the Smartphone market in 2012 and as of 2014 is the
largest vendor of smart phones in Mainland China. In January 2014, Lenovo agreed to acquire
the mobile phone handset maker Motorola Mobility from Google.
Lenovo is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the Hang Seng ChinaAffiliated Corporations Index, often referred to as "Red Chip.
SWOT ANALYSIS

Question 1

What were the cultural forces that have made the brand successful? Dissect each brand element
and discuss its role in brand building.
Lenovo's corporate culture differs significantly from most large Chinese companies. While
Lenovo was founded using seed capital from the state-owned Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Lenovo is run as a private enterprise with little or no interference by the state. Lenovo's senior
executives, including many non-Chinese, rotate between two head offices, one in Beijing and the
other in Morrisville, North Carolina, and Lenovo's research and development center in Japan.
Yang had created a "performance culture" in place of the traditional Chinese work style of
"waiting to see what the emperor wants." When Yang took over Lenovo's personal computer
division, he strongly discouraged the use of formal titles and required staff to address each other
by their given names. Yang even required managers to stand outside their offices each morning
to greet their employees while carrying signs with their first names. When Yang's division
moved to a new building in 1997, he used the move to break Lenovo's cultural links to the past
by insisting on a more formal dress code and training all employees in telephone etiquette; Yang
wanted his people to think and act like high-tech workers in developed markets.
The cultural forces can be summed as follows:

A strategy that balances short term results with reaching long term objectives
Commitment to and investment in innovation
A strong global leadership organization
Culture of commitment
Performance culture

Brand elements:
Brand name- "Lenovo" is a portmanteau of "Le-" (from Legend) and "novo", Latin ablative for
"new". The Chinese means "association" or "connected thinking" but can also imply creativity.
Tag line- For those who do. What Lenovo came up with is the For those who do! campaign,
which will come in three phases starting this May. The first phase of the For those who do!
campaign will be a declaration of what Lenovo is. Phase two will be product proof showcasing
Lenovo technology. The last phase is called people proof, showing what people can do with
Lenovo technology. As a verb, do also has scatological and sexual meanings that add (unwanted)
ambiguity.
Logo - Blue legend colour and written in blue bold italic letters
Character - Represent an innovative legend

Question 2
Write out the Brand Positioning as is seen from the communications of the Brand selected and
their major competition.
Target Marketing Choice of Lenovo
At present, Lenovo considers the following factors when choosing target market:
1) Strong brand awareness, city customers who have advanced concepts. In the personal
computer market, the impact of Lenovo brand is comparative advantage, so choosing such target
customers can cater to the needs of such customers.
2) Cities customers who have the high level of education, higher on admission, and are aged
below 45. Lenovo called this crowd high-end crowd, the crowd is conducive to high-end
products sales.
3) Developed rural market, those customers have strong brand awareness. This crowd has
formed part of purchasing power, Moreover, Lenovo early did the act of the "free movies for
countryside" to develop the rural market, the activities have brought the brand impact, so
choosing this part of the crowd as the target customer group, apparently can quickly enter the
rural market.
POSITIONING
Technology For Those Who Do
Lenovo designs tools for those who are driven by accomplishment. Individuals who live
for the opportunity to roll up their sleeves, achieve great feats, and leave their mark on
the world around them. Lenovo creates Technology For Those Who Do.
With its wide-viewing angle LED IPS technology, the ThinkVision LT2452p wide
delivers an outstanding viewing experience for professionals demanding highest
performance, image quality, usability and reliability.
Succeed with Substance
Products are tested against MIL Spec criteria to provide rock solid performance in any
environment. The classic design indicates reliability and dependability, and makes a
statement that the owner is serious about business.
Time is Money
Built-in features and services drive down immediate and long-term costs. These products
empower employees and businesses to get more out of each day- more uptime, more
efficiency, more done.
Innovate with Intent
Every tool is carefully developed with purposeful intent to ensure an enhanced
experience for large enterprise customers. Products are built for rich function and
configurability- to handle everything thrown at them so that users are more productive.

COMPETITORS OF LENOVO
1) DELL - Although Lenovo is number one in China, the competition for this position is
becoming intense. Dell is doing well in China and just now has announced that it will be
investing $100 billion in China over the next decade. Dells strengths lie in its low prices
and product support.
2) HP- HP is the largest PC manufacturer by sales. Both HP and DELL are trying to
strength their presence even more. HP has a advantage over Lenovo, and enjoy many of
the benefits of economies of scale. HP is also looking for open large format branded
stores throughout the Asia Pacific region
3) APPLE- Apple is an established and healthy IT brand in the international market today,
with a loyal set of enthusiastic customers who advocate their brand strongly. Apples
strengths in the consumer market have begun to seep into the corporate world as well: in
the corporate market, Apple makes use of their favorable brand perception for style,
safety, and ease of use. Apple has been intelligent about providing solid technical support
on which Lenovos current system is modeled.
Question 3
Analyze the advertising of any ONE medium
TV advertisement

Lenovo executives readily admit that the computer-maker isn't very focused on doing
television advertising and has even less interest in traditional display ads. They have
never been a big TV ad buyer, except in places like China. It's not that TV isn't
worthwhile, it's simply that Lenovo is structured differently from most brands.
Specifically, Lenovo's marketing spend isn't soloed into media categories like print, outof-home, broadcast and digital. Even within digital, the decisions that go into charting a
social campaign or one focused on search engine optimization also flow through to
display, mobile and online video, without portioning out set dollars to each area. All of
these parts of the marketing chain, especially as mobile becomes more important,
mutually reinforces the message from any one area to all the other marketing touch
points.
Depending on the performance of its video ads, Lenovo might eventually decide to
expand that work to TV in more determined way. For most brands, digital video is a
supplement to TV, For Lenovo, TV is a supplement to digital video.

Lenovo TV advertisement : A skydiving laptop must boot up quickly or face certain death

In this Ad, it is shown that if you are frustrated with the sluggish boot speed of your laptop, then
Lenovo suggests chucking it out of an airplane with an elaborate parachute rig set to deploy if,
and only if, the machine can get itself going before smashing into pieces below. Lenovo
speculate that most contemporary computers, given the proper flight equipment, could make the
fall in one piece. But should one find yourself pondering the hunk of twisted metal on the ground
that used to contain your life, you might be ready for a new one.
Lenovo would be the brand for you. Its latest ad shows a portable PC, the epitome of grace and
poise, surviving just such a skydiving tripthanks, of course, to its speedy startup time. It's
definitely fun watching the machine plummet through the stunning azure skies toward golden
prairieextreme computer sports at its best. But it's a fairly contrived stunt, and the actual
selling pointthat the laptop takes only 10 seconds to boot upkind of gets lost in all the
drama. (Perhaps case in point: The parachute takes 15 seconds to deploy in the spot; 10 would
have made more sense.) Meanwhile, we're not sure a 10-second startup is all that compelling in
and of itself. And the spot feels derivativea similar race-against-time concept in Google
Chrome's speed tests is much more effective.
Nonetheless, an unidentified Lenovo shill eagerly attempts to convince us in a behind-the-scenes
video that the whole thing is "real"in the heavily edited, highly stylized manner reality TV
hosts tend to employ.
Question 4
How can the brand go global?
Today, Lenovo has emerged as Chinas first true multinational, surpassing Hewlett-Packard
Company and Dell to become the worlds largest maker of PCs. Sales have grown to $39 billion
as of the fiscal year ending in March 2014, more than twice the level of 2008, thanks partly to
several acquisitions. Its most recent deals, announced within the space of a week in early 2014,
were the purchase of IBMs low-end server business in China for $2.3 billion and the handset
division of Google (once part of Motorola) for nearly $3 billion.
The steps include changing its corporate name from Legend to Lenovo, sponsoring the 2008
Olympic Games and most importantly, acquiring IBM's PC unit.
When you look at the management team, out of the top 10 people at the company, including the
CEO, there are six different nationalities, They call it the global-local model. In different places
around the world, the people that run the markets are in are from those markets. So Brazilians
run Brazil, Europeans run Europe, Indians run India.
One two punch strategy

Build up Lenovo as a strong master brand

Continue to strength the Think Pad product brand, which was special franchise that could
be leveraged to support the Lenovo Master Brand.

Some steps it should take care of

Identify differences in consumer behavior

Adjust the branding program according to the choices of customers
Making the brand by using CBBE model
Balance global and local control