Lenovo wakes up to the power of youth

The fifth largest PC maker is opening stores in smaller towns and has launched an aggressive campaign to focus on a segment that will help it grow in a tough market.

Dell, which recently knocked out Hewlett Packard from the No 1position in the Indian personal computer market, isn't the only one to move from the men to the boys.

Lenovo, the fifth largest, has also woken up to the power of youth and is shifting focus from the enterprise segment.

Ever since it acquired the hardware business from IBM five years ago, Lenovo's focus in India had been the enterprise segment, and that's why it still enjoys close to 19 per cent market share in this space.

But it has realised that it can hardly afford to ignore the consumer vertical, which is one of the biggest revenue generating segments in the Indian PC market.

As per latest IDC figures, Lenovo's market share in the consumer market in India is 6.3 per cent compared with a share of 17.3 per cent in the enterprise and government verticals (the company terms it as KAB or key account business), in the April-May-June quarter of 2010.

In the same period, Lenovo's share in the overall PC market in India was 7.2 per cent.

That explains the company's recent bid to connect with those at the middle of the pyramid. Last week, Lenovo inaugurated its first set of LES 'Lite' stores in Bangalore to increase penetration.

LES Lite is a smaller version of Lenovo Exclusive stores and each store will occupy around 150-250 square feet.

These stores will be the company's vehicle to penetrate deeper into tier 3, 4 and 5 markets and the plan is to open around 400 such stores in the smaller markets by the end of this financial year.

The recent TV commercials also are a part of this strategy with the theme being the "pester power" of the youth.

Research found that nearly 60 per cent of household PC purchases are undertaken by the youth with their parents' consent.

So the TVCs show a young man holding his father's leg pleading with him for various things he wants. The only time the father gives in to the son's demands is for a Lenovo PC they both spot in a store.

Hungry and Foolish, a relatively lesser known advertisement agency in Bangalore, is assisting the company in the campaign, though Ogilvy and Mather continues to be its global advertisement agency.

This

campaign formally brings in our more focused approach to target the youth.

While youth was always a segment for us, now for the first time, we have openly declared that the youth is our primary target segment, says Rahul Agarwal, executive director, Key Accounts Business and Think Product, Lenovo India.

"This campaign is based on the local customer insight, and we really don't want to talk about the speed or hard disk of the computer," adds Agarwal.

Lenovo says the reason it consciously decided not to use any brand icon is based on customers' insight.

This also differentiates itself from most other consumer brands as three-four out of every five brands today is being endorsed by celebrities, thus making it a 'blindspot'.

"The father-son relationship is a complex one and very interesting in nature. Everything is fine till you become a teenager and then it's the father's expectations versus the son's desires.

"What his father wants him to be versus what he wants to become, what his father thinks he needs versus what he wants for himself.

"This is where the insight is absolutely bang on to the category and a wonderful platform for Lenovo to own," says Anto Noval, co-founder & chief creative officer of Hungry & Foolish.

In the second leg of the campaign, Lenovo intends to further intensify it with a 360 degree campaign using print, outdoor, radio, retail and digital mediums.

Hungry & Foolish is currently developing the digital extension of the campaign, which has audience participation at its core.

Titled pleasedaddyplease.com, it's expected to go live around mid-October.  This is a follow-up to Lenovo's earlier 'What's your idea of FUN' campaign.

"We wanted to make the best of each medium. What works on films doesn't necessarily make for a fun print ad. We have chosen to treat the whole campaign as a bigger story, with each element telling a different part of the story.

"The digital leg will take this forward and allow our audience to participate in the story and make it their own", says Praveen Raj, creative director, Hungry & Foolish.