Lenovo: Olympics Build Brand Awareness

This profile is part of a series on the worldwide Olympic sponsors.

(ATR) Olympic sponsorship newcomer Lenovo is counting on the five rings as an ultimate brand builder as it begins to launch the sale of computers and other hardware outside of China for the first time.

"Our first and foremost goal from participating in the Torino Olympics was to increase the awareness of the Lenovo name around the world. That's very clear," says Philippe Davy, head of Lenovo's Olympic marketing.

Signed on two years ago as a TOP sponsor, the Beijing-based firm has since acquired the personal computer operations of IBM and the Thinkpad brand, well-known names the company can use for a few more years. But Lenovo is ready to stand on its own as a brand outside China, where it already is a market leader, says Davy.

"Outside of China we know we need to start establishing the brand. At this minute we don't have any Lenovo branded product for sale outside of China. It's all Thinkpad with the IBM logo," he says.

With the imminent fading away of those old brands, Davy says the Turin Olympics were able to help the transition to the new brand among important customers. Davy says the company brought 400 guests to Turin.

"We thought this was the perfect opportunity to take them, to show them what we can do. I don't think anybody would argue that the Olympic IT structure which we have put into place is one of the most complex projects we can even think of," says Davy.

He says 6,000 PC's, all the same kind, were deployed throughout the TOROC operation, along with 800 laptops 350 servers and 600 printers.

Supporting the operation was a team of 60 engineers plus emergency squads ready for dispatch from the U.S. and Europe, had they been needed.

"We use the Olympics as a showcase of what Lenovo can do in term of the quality of the product, even in very tough environment, in complex projects, or technology and that our people are up to the task," says Davy.

In Turin, the company hosted a Lenovo Showroom near the Medals Plaza, an internet salon in the Olympic Villages as well as a showroom in Milan.

As Lenovo looks to Beijing where the brand is well-known locally, Davy says the focus will still be on building the Lenovo name worldwide.

"We will use Beijing to keep pumping up the brand awareness. Our market research shows that it takes five to ten years to establish a brand identity. So we don't expect that when the Games are finished [in Turin] we're going to be done."

"For us so far it's a great experience," he says.

After peak demand in the early days of the Games, Davy says Lenovo settled into a "steady state mode, everything performing as expected."

Whether the strategy of using the Olympics to boost brand is working for Lenovo will be answered in the coming months says the Lenovo exec. Davy says brand tracking put into place in the 12 major markets where the company seeks to grow will soon return results.

"I expect by second quarter of this year we should be in a position to start seeing whether we are approaching our objective of improving our brand awareness, our product recognition."

Those results will enter into the company's thinking about whether to move past Beijing with its sponsorship, sooner than later. Lenovo's contract with the IOC ends in 2008, while Vancouver?s IT specifics will soon need to be addressed.

"We are working with Beijing as we speak. And we are working with BOCOG on product and product selection," says Davy.

"I don?t think Vancouver is at that point. But they are not going to be able to wait for another two or three years before they can start answering those questions."