ThinkPad Magic

BMW as a division, in the maintenance of high-end brand image, but also to increase the mass market offensive, Lenovo Business Notebook "Rationalization of Greed" path text "global entrepreneur" reporter Hu Hui Lenovo and BMW car have what in common? This is not an easy question to find out. But Lenovo Group vice president, China Business Division general manager of the instrument Xiao Hui but think they found.　　As early as 2007, Miriam Xiao-hui on the use of BMW in F1 and other high-end sports marketing techniques, in the Williams team's body played on the ThinkPad's logo, firmly entrenched the ThinkPad "high-end business" image. And now, when BMW extends high-end models, 7, 5 and 3 are also sold in the Chinese market, the ThinkPad's products are expanded to T, X, R, SL, W Five series, covering high-end business, super portable, basic business and other market segments. Although some of the new models, such as the SL400 price has dropped to more than 4,000 yuan, the price is "civilians", and other tens of thousands of products opened a very small distance-just as the BMW 3 and 7 system between the price gap is not small-but as a whole brand,　　ThinkPad still has a high-end image on the market. This reflects perhaps the most significant change in the notebook industry in recent years. When the notebook computer from the once luxury, gradually into mass consumer goods, the market base has expanded several times. How to keep the notebook different from the desktop PC, with a certain high-end brand image, but also to increase the market share, it has become all manufacturers to face the choice, the appropriate marketing techniques are more critical. "We've made a lot of new changes in marketing over the past two years.　　"The instrument Xiao Hui to" global entrepreneur "said. The result is that ThinkPad has grown at around 45% per cent since last year, well above the level of industry growth.　　Overall market share increased from 7% to more than 10%, each quarter in the market share of about 1% of the steady growth. Blur border in Beijing in October, the National Tennis Center's annual China Open is in full swing. The ThinkPad, a platinum sponsor, cleverly grabbed the advertising position on one side of the right hand service, so that all television broadcasts could display their huge logo, as long as they had a serve lens.　　It is not difficult to see, Lenovo for the ThinkPad brand communication and image building, extravagantly. As with sponsoring F1, the goal of sponsoring sporting events such as tennis to reach high-end business people is to have the tradition of Lenovo's acquisition of the ThinkPad.　　But it is hard to imagine, at the same time, more than 1000 kilometers outside the Sichuan Mianzhu County, Lenovo employees are here to prepare a ThinkPad store (note, not Lenovo all products of the store) and do market research, planned this store to occupy the county's most important commercial position. This great contrast is preciselyLenovo began to subdivide the ThinkPad crowd. Three or four years ago, the ThinkPad service crowd was the high-end customer in the business crowd, at the core of large enterprise customers.　　Gradually, Lenovo found that the commercial technology applied to ThinkPad was only a small part of the process, and many of the technical patents developed for commercial customers were not fully applied to high-end business notebooks. As a result, Lenovo began to consider whether to include small and medium-sized enterprises and business individuals outside the big clients into the ThinkPad target group.　　In fact, in the ThinkPad notebook is less than 10,000 yuan in the "high-end era", there have been some individual users as a consumer computer to buy, this part is basically the company white-collar, college students and researchers, without exception has a good education background, fancy ThinkPad strong and reliable. So Lenovo decisively changed the brand positioning of the ThinkPad to "high-end business" to "knowledge workers." As a result, the audience can be seen in the network in the "Thinking of unity" propaganda statements followed the ThinkPad logo.　　There is no doubt that this is a desire to blur the ThinkPad position, because only the blurring of the market's boundaries makes it easier for the ThinkPad to gongchenglvede the market outside the business crowd. On the other hand, the ThinkPad has not given up on the product performance, fighting and other quality publicity, hoping to rely on this relatively high-end brand image, to absorb as many of the low-end users. For example, in the 46-line city, ThinkPad has achieved some success.　　Mianzhu, a distributor, told the newspaper that ThinkPad is now the most wanted computer in the local rich, not only the low-end SL selling well, even the high-end T and X series are often asked. Segmented marketing undoubtedly, after the expansion of the market extension, means that the marketing approach has become diverse and complex.　　And the most realistic question is how to keep the sales of low-end products at the same time, the balance does not damage the entire ThinkPad's high-end image. You can't sell products of different levels and functions in the same way. "How to make our products can cover different people, this is the way to avoid confusion." In the process of covering different groups of people, only by different coverage and different paths can we achieve good coverage effect.　　Therefore, within the ThinkPad, the first marketing department is divided into three sub departments: the department responsible for the brand, the department responsible for promotion, as well as the specific implementation of the Department, the implementation of the work of the Department also includes the choice of media delivery, and advertising creative. Next, like all brands, the sales channel and the transmission path are the common focus of these three departments. ThinkPad uses high-end products to shape the overall brand, through a series of event marketing, such as high-end event sponsorship, and other ways to stabilize the brand and high-end image. In the field of product sales, the adoption of different products to cover theWith the customer base, and face different marketing strategies and sales tasks. For example, the relatively high price of T and X series will take the traditional channels of stores and distributors, and the SL series price between 5000 to 7000, is aimed at small and medium-sized Enterprises, "the company's internal for the SL to take a mass marketing approach." Feng, a marketing officer at Lenovo's business department, told global entrepreneurs. As a result, the SL series not only in the ThinkPad stores, and even choose with Gome, Suning and other home appliance shopping malls and large retailers such as Carrefour. In fact, TV shopping as a gradually rising sales channels in recent years, the SL series selling effect is also quite significant. In addition, the SL series also offers seasonal promotions.　　Of course, in recent years in September each year, the campus "student machine" activities for the ThinkPad won more college users. For business customers in the segmentation industry, ThinkPad has a dedicated demo platform. "The" I series will be every year in the tour, we will be dedicated to industry customers to open trade fairs, product demonstrations. "said Gaiyuko, a ThinkPad engineer.　　For example, in Puyang, Henan, Heilongjiang daqing Oil base, ThinkPad have to show. The biggest surprise that ThinkPad brings to users is that, because of the expansion of marketing methods, different users also give the ThinkPad two big intentions of feedback. For example, researchers surveyed found that users used different frequencies for each keystroke, and that the ESC and delete keys were used on average 700 times a week, with the two buttons magnified twice times in later ThinkPad T400s to fit the user's habits.　　And this improvement, incredibly pull the notebook sales, but also in the subtle changes in the ThinkPad more than 10 years unchanged single appearance image. And in the transmission effect, the ThinkPad family for different products using different media advertising mode. T and X series, due to its high-end nature, the main direction of transmission and coverage is to put financial media, airports or high-end competitions. SL Series for small and medium-sized customer base, then network marketing and communication becomes the main choice, "throughout the whole idea is to high-end series of influence to drive other series of sales, so as to ensure the entire ThinkPad brand high-end sex." Miriam Xiao Hui said.