How does a business full of brilliant engineers sell products in a human rather than a geeky way, in a manner that appeals to your average Joe but doesn’t alienate hard-core fans?
It’s a problem that many technology companies face.
At Chinese business Lenovo, the company has relied on the steadiness of its computers to appeal to CIOs (chief information officers), but their employees don’t always have the same attitude.
Part of the solution for Lenovo is to up the ante with marketing, and to that end it will run a competition looking for the 25 ThinkPad laptops that changed the world to celebrate the brand’s 25-year anniversary.
Roman proudly states that there’s a ThinkPad on the International Space Station, and it’s also the computer behind physicist Stephen Hawking’s speech. It will also run a new TV ad for its Yoga laptop, starting in the U.K. in early October, and launched a “Star Wars” augmented reality game with Disney last month.
A human brand
More broadly, Lenovo has briefed a London agency to come up with a “story” for the brand to try to give it a more human appeal.
“Typically the story of the company is something that you do through investor relations, (and the company has previously talked about) the two streams of East and West culture blending,” Roman said. The company has dual headquarters in Beijing and in Morrisville, North Carolina, and is listed in Hong Kong.
Now the focus will be on personality. “What we’re trying to do is really make it relevant, show our personality, show the attitude, what drives the company, what motivates us.”
Roman said his department is helping the company grow in the long term, with a focus on customers and trends, as well as an “outside-in” point-of-view on the business.
“We are in a better position to look at the trends, the changes, so marketing is taking a bigger role in terms of driving the growth of the company,” he said.
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