Lenovo Global Branding

LENOVO: GLOBAL BRAND BUILDING

Lenovo emerged as a small distributor of imported computers into china’s leading computer firm. The first original product it launched was Chinese character card, which translated English language operating systems into Chinese.

The success and Risks involved in the process of their brand building is given as below:

Success:

1. Legend card was a piece of hardware that managed its entry in the market for saving the hard disk drive.

2. English-chinese language translator helped “Legend” to enter the market.

3. Most of the companies started to enter the computer market thus dilution of market started. Almost all companies entered with a USP in mind like IBM pcs, Dell (customization), HP (cost effective) and many more.

4. Lenovo had to break its domestic market and enter the global market. This made it to think of a globally acceptable name. This resulted in a name “LENOVO” from the words as Le-legend, novo-new or innovative. Name was acceptable because of its pronunciation.

5. Entered the biggest marketing program of IOC (international Olympics committee) and projected with the slogan of “engaging the world”.

6. Had a DEAL with the biggest computer company, IBM which enabled them to use IBM on its products for 5 years.

7. Acquisition of IBM helped Lenovo to move quickly into international marketplace.

8. Branding strategy was a success: one-two punch strategy where build up of Lenovo as a strong master brand and continue to strengthen the ThinkPad product brand.

9. Awareness programs in India as “Who wants to be millionaire” functions was a success in brand building.

Risks:

1. Great domestic competition hindered the business locally, which was solved by using a global strategy.

2. LENOVO was little known outside Asia, thus brand building was a big challenge.

3. Being innovative and different than IBM ThinkPad would have shattered any duplicate of it. Thus had to stick to look and...