“The focus of all Lenovo communications globally has been youth”: Shailendra Katyal

Lenovo launched a new global positioning in May, developed by Saatchi & Saatchi (internationally), which said the company creates tools “For Those Who Do”. The campaign has made its way to India, and in an email interview, Shailendra Katyal, director – marketing, Lenovo India, took Campaign India through the reasoning behind it and whether any India-specific initiative can be expected from it:    

Last year, Lenovo ran the 'What's Your Idea of Fun' campaign aimed at youngsters. Does the new thought mark a shift from the earlier positioning?

The focus of all Lenovo communications globally has been youth, especially in the consumer space. But until now, we didn’t have a single, unifying master brand positioning. Like the ‘What’s Your Idea of Fun’ campaign, earlier campaigns were at individual country/regional level. ‘What’s your Idea of Fun’ was a consumer focused campaign, rolled out to target the youth who considered notebooks as a fun element.

For the first time ever, Lenovo has unveiled a new global positioning ‘For Those Who Do’. This positioning lays emphasis on the fact that, for the youth, technology is a tool that helps them achieve something meaningful. It captures Lenovo’s philosophy of enabling the DOers by empowering them with ‘DO machines’. Our machines are the tools that help them reach their goals; In short, we make tools for the “DOers” of the world. We are confident that this positioning will appeal to the youth and help carry Lenovo’s story as a global technology leader to a worldwide audience.

What was Lenovo's requirement for the global communication task as given to the ad agency? How does the new campaign deliver to that task?

Lenovo has been growing faster than the market for several quarters in a row. But the growth was at the business level and Lenovo as a brand was not growing as fast. We therefore felt the need to invest in building brand Lenovo by putting in place a single, unifying, global brand positioning. When we looked within for pointers, we realized that deeply entrenched in our DNA was a DO culture. Lenovo was driven by the motto “DO what you say, and own what you do”. This translated into a DO mindset that cherished creating world class DO machines that enabled its users in achieving their goals.

The task, therefore, given to our ad agency was to communicate this effectively to our target audience. Our positioning needed to communicate that our machines are the tools, which will help the users DO more and DO better. We are the DOers behind the DOers and hence we stand 'For Those Who Do'.

Resonating well with our internal philosophies, the new positioning also captured the attitude of the youth globally, who wanted to DO great things and achieve something substantial. The new positioning articulates our role in creating impactful technology for the DOers.

Will we see more India-specific campaigns here based on 'For Those Who Do'?

'For Those Who Do' positioning represents a significant long-term investment for Lenovo. From our research insight, we realized that youth across countries are homogeneous and their “DO” attitude remains the same. In India, we have recently launched this positioning.

There are three phases to this positioning exercise – the declaration phase, where we declare to the world what kind of a company we are (launch phase); the product proof phase – when we showcase the our product strength and lastly, the people proof phase – where our customers become our brand ambassadors – showcasing real people from various walks of life who have done extraordinary things with the use of technology. We intend to localize this positioning once we reach the third stage and take a leap forward to reach out to our target group.

Will we also see any digital push in India for this new thought?

Youth are spending more time online as a media consumption pattern and also searching and comparing features is a critical part of the PC buying process.  Our target market - youth between the age group of 18-24, spend most of the time consuming digital media. Lenovo, being a youth focused company, has also taken its steps towards achieving a greater recognition in this digital space. We have roped in 22ft, a boutique social media agency, for our digital media thrust. This is our first step in realizing a bigger mind-space for Lenovo on the digital platform. Our presence in the ‘paid’ domain has been well recognized and we are now increasing our focus in the ‘owned’ and ‘earned’ space by starting healthy conversations with our target group.

Which agencies will handle Lenovo's creative in India and how is the mandate divided between them?

Ogilvy India is our Agency On Record (AOR) and has the creative mandate for India. Saatchi and Saatchi India helped us roll-out the first leg of the global campaign as the global pitch was won by their New York team and the India team was part of the global pitch process. We've consolidated the AOR relationship with Ogilvy recently.