Lenovo: Building a Global Brand

Submitted by: Group 15 Arun Tangri (PGP26138) Umesh Majhi (PGP26180) Vijay Ghule (PGP26186) Vijaynand Mishra (PGP26187)

Question: What are the top 3 criteria for rating IT product brands?
Following are the three most important criteria for rating IT product brands 1. Quality, Reliability and Durability of the products: - These factors help create a long term relationship with the consumers and they would upgrade to a same brand if the existing product passes this mettle in their view. Lenovo wanted to capture this view and promote their new series 3000 of PCs among small business consumers. 2. Innovation in the products: - What are the top 3 Innovation is about having a vision for an idea, spotting the gaps that are in the way of achieving that vision and coming up with a relevant, practical, and usable product at the end. Products from Apple provide most relevant evidence of this fact. The new widescreen ThinkPad Z60 with Titanium cover was created keeping this fact by Lenovo so as to reassure the trust of ThinkPad loyal users. 3. Design, look and feel of the products: - These aesthetic aspects portrayed that the laptop user is progressive and successful, and hence the users would value these features second to none. Hence the brand satisfying hunger of users on these parameters would score high relative to the peers.

Question: What do they rate Lenovo as a brand on a scale of 1-5, 5 being the best?
We would rate Lenovo as a 4 rating brand, i.e., a brand is certainly above average but still can be improved. They very well leveraged the 5 year logo usage permission from IBM, and also effectively built upon the ThinkPad sub brand they owned to strengthen Lenovo master brand. Signing on as the official computer sponsor of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, and the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing was also a very ambitious move to build the Lenovo global brand. Again innovative branding

strategies like using cost effective methods such as branding using Kaun Banega Crorepati etc. were very fruitful for Lenovo. But at the end the quarter by quarter of 2005 till 2006 the market share was decreasing showing despite all this some more efforts were needed, hence a rating 4 would be justified for the Lenovo global brand.

Question: How can an IT product brand be created - top 3 ways?

Following are three ways in which an IT product brand can be created 1. Masterbrand: - In this method almost all marketing resources would focus on building one master brand. HP, Intel, Microsoft, Blackberry are some of the companies using this method. The importance of individual sub brands is not that much highlighted and the global mstare brand is leveraged for launch of new products or promoting existing products etc. 2. House of Brands: - Some companies produce a wide variety of products, that each has distinct benefits to the customer. There is no value in using the same brand for each product since the brand would then stand for a category of benefits. Companies such as Proctor & Gamble (P&G) us this type of strategy as they brand each of their products distinctly (Tide, Ivory, Pampers, etc.) 3. Synergy Brands: - This is a kind of hybrid model in which a master brand is present and one or more hero sub brands, which further strengthens the master brand. Apple with iPod, iPad, iPhone can be a very good example of this.

Question: How can brands be transitioned from one vendor to another, as was the fact with Lenovo owing to purchase of PC business from IBM?
To transition a brand the most important concern is to keep customers loyal to the brand. Any lacuna in the quality, reliability, durability, after sales support, design etc. would be suicidal in this, and if few or all of these are even slightly improved then this transition will be highly successful. Given these factors a smooth and highly effective brand transition strategy is needed. Lenovo management and CMO did these both and made this happen. IBM allowed Lenovo to use its logo for its PC products (Laptop and Desktop) for 5 years. Lenovo only used IBM logo on its ThinkPad series. The 3 steps branding process for transition was very effective for this task and the synergy approach for its branding efforts (ThinkPad and Lenovo synergy) further complemented this transition.

Question: How can an IT product brand be polished / enhanced - top 3 ways?

Following are three ways in which an IT product brand can be polished / enhanced 1. Superior/Innovative Products: - If the products/Services provided by the brand itself are intrinsically superior and innovative a major task to enhance brand is done automatically. Google/Apple products are very good example of this fact. 2. Sponsoring/Associating with big events: - Sponsoring or getting associated positively with a big event significantly enhances brand. Olympics sponsorship was seen as a major positive to the brands reputation primarily in China and Brazil and even in other parts of world it was helpful to enhance brand of Lenovo. Associating the brand with the right brand ambassadors as did in China can also help sometimes. 3. Feeling customer insights: - Getting a real feedback and insights from customers and effectively working on them to continuously improve and innovate the offering and listening to the change in products usage culture etc. is very much essential for enhancing brand. Apple, Google, Facebook are very good examples of this fact.