Lenovo Wins the World Over at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games

 

A Chinese brand that purchased IBM’s PC division, relatively unknown Lenovo faced the challenge of elevating global brand awareness. While the company’s Olympic partnership provided a platform to reach audiences worldwide, Lenovo needed a program to break through the Olympic sponsor clutter. In the face of one of the most controversial Olympics in history, Ketchum guided Lenovo around the negativity to initiate a campaign to communicate brand messaging focused in 12 countries. To this end, Ketchum was tasked with developing a plan to tell the multifaceted stories of Lenovo, its sponsorship and its unique programs to audiences around the world. 

 

Ketchum’s strategy was threefold: plan aggressively, devise a strategy to win at every Olympic moment, and engage everyone from consumers to media. Beginning long before the start of the games to ensure media would grasp the Lenovo story, Ketchum implemented a program with innovative tactics at each stage to keep a steady drumbeat. This included everything from technology-focused initiatives, such as media teleconferences and executive media interviews, to familiarization trips to Beijing with high-profile business media. From a global webcast to unveil the Lenovo-designed Olympic torch, to a worldwide search for “new thinker” torchbearers using Google and YouTube platforms, to a torch-themed notebook PC online auction, the Lenovo attention-grabbing programs counted down to the games to garner coverage. 

 

The program resulted in 3,746 media stories, reaching more than 1.8 billion people. From the period prior to its sponsorship compared with the period following the games, Lenovo’s Brand Tracker showed worldwide consumer awareness rose more than 8 percentage points, while commercial awareness rose 18 percentage points. During the games, the company saw dramatic results online, including a 75% increase in visits to the Lenovo.com “shop” page and a 40% increase in Google searches for “Lenovo.”