Lenovo’s new VP of AI innovation, brand strategy plans to break through ‘AI slop’ marketing

From the overuse of AI in ads to tech companies’ promotion of tearing down traditional creativity in efforts to promote breakthrough innovations, consumers have grown skeptical of AI and rising tech. Last holiday season, Coca-Cola’s AI-generated Holidays Are Coming spot was dubbed “soulless” and “creepy” by online commentators. A year prior, Apple was blamed for “crushing creativity” with its iPadPro commercial.

That’s where Lenovo’s new VP of AI innovation and brand strategy, Santi Pochat, comes into play.

“Leveraging AI for the sake of efficiency gets you a lot of poorly made videos,” Pochat told Campaign. “We’re still trying to build brands for people — maybe in the future when it’s just a bunch of chatbots talking to each other, that won't be true. But in the meantime, we need to work with effectiveness — making good creative work and using AI in a way that connects us with people.”

According to a study by Proper Insights & Analytics, 60% of multicultural consumers can detect AI-generated content, and 55% of audiences are uncomfortable with AI. Pochat aims to combat the “AI slop,” a term dubbed for tech marketing that uses AI for efficiency rather than effectiveness. He began his role, which is newly created for the world’s largest PC vendor, on September 2.

Pochat will report to Lenovo’s CCO and VP of corporate marketing, Jeff Shafer, and lead a team of over 50 global staff focused on creative, strategy and production to design AI-informed and AI-generated advertising campaigns. 

“It was like looking for a unicorn,” Shafer stated regarding Lenovo’s hiring of Pochat. “It’s hard to find the person who has the ability to drive a $70 million global brand, and also the technological capabilities and understanding of AI to do so in a world that’s changing so rapidly.”

Pochat will pull from 20 years of marketing experience; he was most recently LinkedIn’s VP of brand marketing. Before LinkedIn, he was with Google for over three years, where he worked up a head of brand marketing and policy position; and had a brief stint as Verizon’s marketing director. During his nine years with Edelman, Pochat managed marketing strategy for BlackBerry, Adobe and Samsung.

“This is an amazing opportunity on a personal level for a couple of reasons, one being that I’m a giant hardware nerd and worked for Samsung for a long time. Some of the most interesting things I’ve done have been in the hardware space, and I believe brands you connect with most are ones you can touch and feel,” Pochat explained. “That’s part of why I joined Lenovo.”

In terms of in-person experiences, Lenovo is “entering the biggest and most significant year it’s ever had from a marketing standpoint,” Shafer said. As the official technology partner for FIFA and Formula 1, Lenovo is embedded into sporting events “for the world’s most technologically advanced sport, F1; and the world’s most popular sport, football,” he said. 

At both the men’s 2026 World Cup and the women’s 2027 World Cup, Lenovo’s technology will appear “in the hands of coaches” and will be used by players to “level the playing field and democratize the game globally,” Shafer explained. The tech company will leverage AI to improve visuals and graphics for viewers, including  “hyper-realistic, 3D avatars of players, rather than more rudimentary-looking graphics,” he added. 

Additionally, Lenovo will kick off CES at the Las Vegas Sphere in January with its 11th annual Tech World event. The event will showcase: content created for Lenovo by Sphere Studios, a CES keynote delivered by Lenovo CEO and chairman Yuanqing Yang, product launches and multi-year AI-innovation strategy plans. 

Lenovo reported a 20% increase in year-over-year revenue to $18.8 billion at the start of its 2025 fiscal year — marking the tech giant’s third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth — and claimed its strong performance was “driven by AI” in its earnings report. The company has rolled out a range of AI products this year, from AI tablets to the world’s first rollable AI laptop.

“I’ve been impressed with how far Lenovo has integrated AI generally, into creative flows, its media mix and so many bright spots — and all for the right reasons,” Pochat explained. “I’m excited to join a company that’s leaning into technology to better connect with consumers, rather than just putting out work.”