Lenovo: Recruiting a Legion of Followers

Challenge: How does an enterprise focused brand appeal to eSports enthusiasts?
The rise of eSports around the world has created a multi-billion dollar industry. To win in gaming Lenovo needed to move away from its iconic, but enterprise-focused, ThinkPad brand and build a  very different fan following for a totally new portfolio – the Y720 and Y520 gaming laptop range. Our goal was to create a deep and authentic connection between Lenovo and eSports and successfully recruit members to join the Legion community in 9 APAC markets: Hong Kong, Thailand, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

Multi-level, multi-player mode
The 12-month launch campaign was executed in four parts: rumor, reveal, sustain and engage, and the finale. Each phase targeted where gamers reside and activating at the biggest news breaking events in the calendar. Legion was formally revealed at CES and a sustain event followed at Gamescon alongside multiple local market launches. The finale was a three-day Legion of Champions event in Bangkok where 20,000 people gathered to watch teams battle it out for a grand cash prize.

Posting a new high score
The battle to build an authentic connection with gamers delivered a blazing success for Lenovo in the CAP region. The year-long campaign generated 886 media reports and features on Legion, more than 12 million impressions, 800,000 streaming impressions and 142,000 engagements across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitch. All of this resulted in 10,000 gamers recruited into the Legion community in the CAP region across the four phases of the campaign. Legion also proved to be a successful vehicle for product sales. In the Rumour and Reveal phases alone, Y720 and Y520 sales increased significantly quarter on quarter across the CAP region leading to the portfolio being completely sold out region-wide.