Make Lenovo a global brand
(People's daily online)
Updated: 2006-06-19 17:01
Lenovo Group Limited today is a household name in China.
But it wants more. It has  been trying hard to become a household word in the world since after
its merge with IBM PC business.
As the most global Chinese company, Lenovo already
enjoys surprisingly high degree of international visibility. Its management team
arrangement is rather unique. William Amelio, a former Dell executive, has been
chosen to be Lenovo's new CEO. Among Lenovo top management team members Chinese
face could hardly be seen. In addition, the global headquarter of Lenovo is not
in Beijing but in Raleigh, the capital city of North Carolina, USA.
At the
moment Lenovo is still struggling to improve its profit performance. Lenovo is
still a relatively unknown brand for PC consumers in the United States despite
the extensive media coverage in recent years. But Deepak Advani, Senior Vice
President and Chief Marketing Officer of Lenovo International, said with
confidence that Lenovo is well on its way to become a truly global brand just
like IBM. During a recently interview in his office with Yong Tang, People's
Daily Washington-based correspondent, Advani told a story of how he is doing the
job of brand building for Lenovo and how culture shock has changed the way
Lenovo operates today.
Yong Tang: You look like having Indian origin?
Advani: Yes, actually I am Indian American. I was born in India. Then I moved
to America. I graduated from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Then I became an IBM Vice President. I was in IBM for 13 years being the head of
strategy and marketing for IBM PC business. IBM is a very very international and
global company. I spent a lot of my time outside the United States, in Brazil,
in Japan, in China. Today I have became an executive of a Chinese company.
Thomas Freeman put it well, the world is flat. In the new world there are
more and more companies where your nationality or even the place you live is not
as important as the power of your ideas. For me, in fact someone put a picture
of me on the web and said I was a symbol of the new world: someone who was born
in India and lives in the United States but now does marketing for a company in
China. That is the reality of the world.
(For more biz stories, please visit Industry Updates)
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